‘Ladies, never let anyone tell you you are past your prime,” Michelle Yeoh told a rapt audience as she accepted her Oscar on Sunday. She made history from a number of directions with the victory – the first woman from an Asian background to win best actress in 95 years, and only the second Asian lead even to be nominated. The first was Merle Oberon in 1936, and there is no better barium meal into the bowels of Hollywood racism than Oberon’s life story. but give the place a break: only 87 years later, it’s fine not to be white.
On the age point, though, Yeoh was thought to be taking a wider swipe at culture as a whole, specifically referring to the CNN television anchor Don Lemon, who said last month that Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was “past her prime”. Challenged live on air, he clarified: “A woman is in her prime in her 20s and 30s and maybe 40s.” When that didn’t wash with his co-hosts, he said that it wasn’t according to him, and to Google it.
