People are freaking out over Renee Zellweger’s recent plastic surgery, revealed on the red carpet for the ELLE Women in Film event last night. Her face looks different than it used to look, which is what happens when you get plastic surgery, which a million percent of women over 40 in Hollywood have gotten to one degree or another.
This Is What Renée Zellweger Looks Like Nowhttp://t.co/nvAE6yJ0nB pic.twitter.com/S8EVQNcEsv
— BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) October 21, 2014
This situation brings to mind Kim Novak’s appearance at the Oscars earlier this year–her appearance as a presenter and after what looked like fairly extensive plastic surgery on her face. People were quick to slam her new look, tweeting quips about her face being “Frozen,” accusing her of trying too hard to look young, and suggesting that she belonged in the “in memoriam” section of the show.
Is it any surprise? I mean, I will probably never have plastic surgery, but I sit behind a computer for a living. If I were in an industry where I was regularly scrutinized for any hint of a crow’s eye or gray hair or smile lines of loss of collagen, who’s to say where the pressure would lead me?
Photos like this are cropping up all over the internet today. Photo by zennie62 via Flickr (http://bit.ly/1taDQe0)
We have created a celebrity culture that is quite literally crazy-making for women, and we see the effects on some of our younger stars in terms of their mental health as well as physical appearance. The Daily Mail called her face “suspiciously puffy.” What, exactly, are they suspicious of? That an actress might have had plastic surgery to look younger? If that’s a crime, you’ll have to charge most actresses and a few actors, too.
On the one hand, we praise women for their beauty. We put Sofia Vergara on a pedestal at the Emmys, laud Missy Elliott for her “dramatic weight loss,” and wonder what went wrong with Lindsay Lohan’s face. On the other hand, we act like an aging woman is a dead woman and rank actresses “past their expiration date.”
The moral of the story? If you’re an actress, stay young. Do whatever you can to look young, to look pert, to look sexy; whatever you can up until the line of what is too much, too far. Cross that line and you’re desperate. Stay too far on the other side and you’re irrelevant. What do we want Renee Zellweger to do after this surgery? Do we want her to stay away from public life from here on out, to never show her face again because we’ve stacked it up next to her 21 year-old face and judged it overworn and overworked?
This is already a mad world in which to be a woman, and every headline wondering what happened to Renee Zellweger makes it worse. We happened to her. We will keep happening to women until we can accept every wrinkle and wart and zit. And that’s a long time coming.
