Julie Goodyear photo - Bet Lynch

[littlecottonbud]

The husband has released a photo of Julie Goodyear - I feel this was best kept private, and to remember her how she was a glamorous blonde fierce bombshell, and not looking a shell of her former self. She has dementia so thankfully won't be aware of the published image (which I won't post here)

I agree with @GoodVibesHere

I have not looked. None of us know what Julie’s wishes were. There may not be consent. However the couple may have discussed what Julie wanted when she was first diagnosed. That could be anything from never show me not at my best, let people see me as I age or maybe do whatever feels right and helps you (the one going through the loss).

Obtuse

I don’t see it as a harmful act but an act of love and celebration. She’s smiling and happy as she is now, teeth or no teeth.

There’s no harm done but perhaps some good, letting people know they don’t need to hide away when their looks change as they age. It comes to us all.

Perhaps seeing a picture like that will help us have some humility in life - lots of people in the world are forced to live without teeth real or false from a much younger age because of lack of availability of affordable dental care. That doesn’t make them people who should hide away.

It’s like going grey, or bald, or getting gnarly joints with arthritis - it can happen to people at any age. She is who she is at each moment of her life. She’s beautiful.

I’ve just come back from seeing my mum, who has Alzheimer’s but is still My Mum - I would prefer to be reminded of and celebrate the fact that Julie well looked after, clearly loved and still cherished by her audience. She’s not a ghost, she’s not dead yet.

Well, like many others I suspect, have looked at it thanks to you OP.

And she looks happy and not in any distress so that’s nice. Nobody knows whether she told him it was ok to let people see her or whether she would’ve been happy. Not even randoms who think they know her because they saw her in town once 😅

I don’t think people are objecting to seeing photos of older women. It’s the fact that she is suffering from a terminal disease and cannot give consent .

The photo is lovely. She looks happy and content. Her husband -who actually knows and loves her- has shared a happy picture of his wife. He campaigns about dementia. This is what she looks like. He’s not ashamed of what she looks like. She’s an old lady with dementia. She looks well.

At the end of my mums life she was a shadow of her former self.
Mum never left home without her hair nice, lipstick and nicely dressed.
The last 5 photos are not very nice. I keep them private. She would have been horrified if anyone saw them.
Re julie Goodyear I'm sure there are better photos of her. Yes publicise dementia but remember the person for who she was.

I also thought that she looked really happy. I thought it was sweet.

Thank you for posting this … I felt very sad seeing that photo. (More that her husband had posted it). … this link to the interview has made me feel much better. Thanks you.

This has come up on my Active feed (not a soap fan!), but I completely agree with the fact this is about consent, not ageing. I lost a parent to early onset Alzheimer’s and there’s a possibility it’s genetic. I would be horrified if I developed it and someone posted a picture of me looking what I didn’t consider ‘myself’. I feel the same about these videos made giving elderly dolls and such - I have no issue with the therapeutic side, but recording those with dementia thinking they’re holding a real baby with some patronising twit filming it for oooh/aaahs/likes really pisses me off. That was a human who lead a whole adult life being made to perform like a child. I’ll bloody haunt anyone who did anything like this to me.

I love the picture. She looks really happy.
Should people have no more photos when they get old?

If someone took a photo of you sleeping and posted it online, would you be ok with it? Even if it was a perfectly fine photo, just napping away, would you say ‘well that’s just a nice photo of me asleep’, or would you actually be angry someone took away your right to say ‘that’s not a photo of me I’d ever share’. Consent is important, if the person can’t tell you what they’d prefer, just don’t do it.

You don't actually have that right. Anyone can take a photo of you and do whatever they choose with it. The photographer owns the rights to the picture, not the subject.

I'm a runner there are some shocking pictures of me out there, I really don't care what others think about how I look and I have no rights over those pictures if I did.

I’m not saying about who has the rights to a photo, I’m saying about how the individual would feel about said photo being taken and shared. It’s about respect and how taking pictures and videos of someone with dementia, knowing they are not the person they would have been without the awful disease and sharing it knowing that isn’t how they would have presented themselves, is not respectful.

Of course it’s fine to be old and to look old, to be wrinkly and to have lost your teeth but this was a woman who liked to look good and took pride in her appearance. I’d be very surprised if she had all her faculties that she wouldn’t be taking steps like doing her hair and putting her teeth in. My mother in law was in her eighties and was still dying her hair chestnut and having it ‘set’ once a week. My great aunt was exactly the same. They would not have consented to this. I don’t know Julie personally but I know her ilk and I’d put money on her not liking this.

Some people don't want to wear dentures. How is anybody going to know whether one of her choices - as dementia doesn't mean they can't refuse to have something in their mouth they don't want - was that she doesn't want them?

I am another one who thought it was a lovely picture and thought she looked well for an 83 year old with dementia. I thought it was really warm and she was obviously happy. I would love to know what’s driving the polar opposite responses to the picture, there is obviously some real differences in thinking. Putting aside what people think she would want, why would she not want a joyful picture sharing?

It’s a lovely photo of her.

Never in a month of Sundays would someone as proud, consistently well turned out and (in the nicest non offensive way) vain as Julie Goodyear have allowed themselves to be seen by the public like that. It makes me so uncomfortable.

Reminds me of when Princess Margaret was brought out in public without her full knowledge after her strokes.

I also thought it was a lovely picture, she looks happy and relaxed. I hate it in general when articles about elderly women or obituaries, like the recent ones of the magnificent Marianne Faithfull are illustrated only with pictures of them in their youth or the last point at which they were deemed attractive and socially acceptable, as if the last half or quarter of their lives didn’t matter. I’d have been delighted to see a picture of my gran at 83 beaming like that, her dementia was unrelenting torture.

He posted it on Facebook, it wasn't an exclusive story for a newspaper.

Agree - I think some awareness and context is needed. She has in the main been kept out of the press by her husband but I think the current photo shows her to be happy considering the circumstances.

The problem is that she was always famously proud of her appearance and made no secret of always wanting to look glamorous, which was a huge part of her identity and clearly important to her. Now that she no longer has the mental capacity to consent to having her photo taken, her husband (who is 30 years younger than her) has released a photo of her with no makeup on, wearing a tracksuit and with most of her teeth missing. She hasn’t given her permission for that photo to be released. Her husband has probably been paid for it.

My mum and MIL are the same age as her and both would absolutely HATE to be photographed like that.

The issue isn’t that she is old. It is that she has dementia and therefore hasn’t been able to give her informed consent for that private photo to be made public.