Justine Bateman Defends Her Decision to Age Naturally: 'My Face Represents Who I Am. I Like It'

Justine Bateman says confidence in your image should grow as you age, not diminish.

The director, author and actress who shot to fame in the 1982 sitcom Family Ties wants to share her body-positive message with anyone who needs to hear it.

Speaking with 60 Minutes Australia, the 57-year-old said she has heard people criticize her natural appearance and had a simple message for them: "I just don't give a s---. I think I look rad. I think my face represents who I am. I like it."

Bateman admits she has in the past thought about things like botox and fillers. But the actor-turned-director's realization was that these procedures could take away something that was far more important than what they could give her.

"I feel like I would erase, not only all my authority that I have now, but also, I like feeling that I am a different person now than I was when I was 20," she said, adding "I like looking in the mirror and seeing that evidence."

When Justine Bateman was in her early 40s and writing her first book Fame: The Hijacking of Reality, she remembers Googling herself and finding the autocomplete: "looks old." Justine Bateman looks old.

She then looked at the photos presented as "evidence."

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"I thought my face looked fine," told PEOPLE in 2021 ahead of the release of her book Face: One Square Foot of Skin. "Because of some of the fears I had, unrelated to my face, I decided to make them right and me wrong... I became really ashamed of my face, ridiculously so."

Those societal pressures still remain, and Bateman told 60 Minutes Australia it was troubling to think about how people can become obsessed with trying to reverse the natural process of aging.

"I feel sad for them, I feel sad that they are not just enjoying life. I feel sad that they are distracted from the things that they are meant to do in life … with this consuming idea that they've got to fix their face before anything else can happen."