Breaking news struck the country last week, shocking millions, sparking a frenzy of media coverage.
Not Ebola.
Not Obama.
Not even the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
No, this week’s earth-shattering bit of “news” was that Renee Zellweger had the audacity to age.
And not just age, but age gracefully, causing her face and physical appearance in general to be slightly less familiar to her fans. When she stepped out at an Elle magazine event, many were unable to recognize her. Many speculated plastic surgery, even though no one took into account how long it had been since she’d made a public appeareance.
Add this to the list of unbelievably shallow things our nation simply can’t wrap itself up in enough.
I’ll spare you the “how does this stuff get news coverage?” rant because, well, been there done that.
But when examining this more closely, it’s really a sad situation.
Zellweger stated that the reason for her seemingly “unrecognizable” face was that she was living a more relaxed, less strenuous and natural ?lifestyle.
And if you take a moment to look at her face now compared to 10 years ago, it’s obvious that this is definitely the case.
Major features like her nose, eyebrow line, lips and hairline are all identical. There clearly has been no surgical ?alteration.
Then what is it, you might be thinking, that makes her face look so much different?
This unbelievably common and not newsworthy event called aging.
She’s no longer the 27-year-old woman from Jerry ?Maguire, she’s a significantly older woman.
And after taking a multi-year Hollywood hiatus, obviously she is going to look different, so I don’t understand why we’re all so fixated on this.
Not every celebrity can defy age as freakishly as Jennifer Aniston.
Among the new trend of being “more natural,” “feeling comfortable in your own skin” and “everyone is beautiful and unique,” I don’t understand how we can assess that this poor woman and her newly grown out eyebrows and wrinkled skin are some sort of tragedy.
If we can run Dove “Real Beauty” advertisements claiming to display all kinds of diverse, happy, healthy, natural women, then why are we headlining Zelwegger’s perfect example of this concept in a negative connotation?
And how messed up of a society are we currently living in that a face that hasn’t been nipped, tucked, plumped and stretched is some sort of freak metamorphosis?
I love that the trendy concept now revolves around a naturalistic makeup style, and I wish we could have appreciated Renee Zelwegger for setting such a positive example.
She certainly did for me, and I hope many others whose opinions and appreciation unfortunately aren’t represented in news coverage.
cmcelwa@indiana.edu
