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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: SINGER/COMIC LAURA
AINSWORTH WAGES MUSICAL WAR ON AGEISM
DALLAS, TX – In
her show, "Keep Young & Beautiful" (aka “My Ship Has Sailed”),
singer/comic Laura Ainsworth preaches that "life doesn't happen on a
timetable" and people should pursue their dreams at any age and ignore
the
naysayers. She considers herself to be
the perfect example of that philosophy.
"After years
of working in small theaters and being sidelined by health problems, I
started
doing this show in 2003 on a zero budget in a tiny club where there
were
sometimes about 15 people in the audience," Ms Ainsworth recalls.
Fast-forward to
today: Ainsworth plays top clubs and theaters in the southwest; she has
starred
in a Dallas Comcast Cable TV special, played the Dallas and Las Vegas
Comedy
Festivals, and headlined galas at the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion,
where Gov.
Mike Huckabee declared her “terrific” and said that if he became
President, she
would play the White House. She even
writes her own humorous blog on age and beauty at
www.lauraainsworth.com.
Her message that
"age is the last culturally-acceptable bias" is conveyed through
monologues and wickedly funny parodies of songs ranging from Kern to
Madonna,
whose hit "Frozen" is warped into a deadpan hymn to the unintended
effects of too much Botox. Behind her
appear video projections that illustrate her points, from photos of
herself at
various stages of life to astounding cosmetic and weight-loss ads from
the
early 20th century, proving that making women feel insecure
about
their appearance has been a lucrative business for a very long time.
Ms. Ainsworth is
a second-generation musical talent. Her late father, Bill Ainsworth,
was a
prominent big band musician who moved his family to Texas from Los
Angeles to
work in the commercial jingle business. She
grew up watching her dad back her idols, such as Ella
Fitzgerald and
Tony Bennett, at the famous Fairmont Venetian Room.
But she went in a funnier direction, honing
her song parody chops in radio. She is the
co-creator of The Comedy Wire, a
syndicated humor service used by morning shows worldwide, and her
versatile
voice can replicate styles from torch songs to grand opera. She explains, “If Julie Andrews and ‘Weird
Al’ Yankovic had a child, it would be me.”
It's not unusual
to see tables of up to 20 girlfriends who have all come together to lift appletinis in appreciation of her tuneful
skewering of our society's youth obsession, from jailbait fashion
models to
plastic surgery as TV entertainment. But
Ms. Ainsworth insists her show is for men, too, with material about the
societal changes that are fueling a big rise in the number of men
turning to
cosmetic surgeons, hair dyes and anti-aging creams.
Having worked as
a model, corporate writer, singer, actress and comedian, Ms. Ainsworth
jokes
that she's lucky enough to have personally researched ageism in a
multitude of
fields. This was particularly evident when she returned to the stage
after
several years of curtailed performances due to a serious inner ear
disorder
that was finally cured by a specialist at UT Southwestern Medical
Center. Discovering that she was no longer
considered
for some of her favorite roles, she decided to take matters into her
own hands
and create a show for everyone who is past – or who anticipates being
past -
the "ingénue" stage of life.
Today, she is
ageless…literally. A slender redhead
with a youthful complexion she credits to the Perricone Diet (she even
sings a
mock Puccini aria about eating salmon
twice
a day, entitled "O Worship Dr. Perricone"), Ms. Ainsworth refuses to
tell her age. She advises, "If
someone asks how old you are, simply say, 'I forget...How
much do you weigh?'" While she embraces
other anti-ageism crusaders who say
people should shout
their age to the world, she says that as long as our society is so
"pathologically age-obsessed," telling her age makes it easier for
people to put her into a box, "and I prefer to do my thinking
out-of-the-box."
Ms. Ainsworth
sometimes frustrates critics who want her to make a strident attack on
the
anti-aging industry. But she says
attitudes about age are far too complicated to declare a simple,
"one-size-fits-all" solution, and that it is up to each individual to
decide how much energy to devote to fighting the pressure to look
younger and
how much to spend accommodating it. She
prefers using laughter as a way to point out the mixed messages that
assault us
daily, to make audiences think about the intense demands we put on
ourselves to
keep young and beautiful at all costs, and to be comfortable with
whatever
personal choices we make in dealing with it all. Or
as she says in "My Ship Has
Sailed," "Whatever ship you're on now, you're still the one steering
it."
"But
remember," she adds, "if you open your medicine cabinet and 100
different anti-aging products fall into your sink, your problem isn't
wrinkles
or even shelf space. It's
paranoia." For
information,
visit http://www.lauraainsworth.com.
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30 - CONTACT: Pat Reeder
972-263-3381 |