Why Are People Shaming Renee Zellweger for Looking Her Age?

In a scathing article published on Monday, the Daily Mail picks apart Academy Award-winning actress Renée Zellweger for the “crime” of taking a bad photo while being 47 years old.

The story, which leads with the headline, “Maybe Stay Out of the Sun, Renée,” shows two pictures of Zellweger, taken a day apart while the blonde beauty was out promoting her newest film and the latest in the Bridget Jones franchise, Bridget Jones’ Baby. In the first photo, taken Sunday night in a flattering light, the actress “defied age,” the publication pointed out. But in a photo taken just one day later, “Renée Zellweger was unable to compete with the unforgiving glare of the sun, which illuminated her fine lines and wrinkles,” according to the Daily Mail.

The harsh assessment ignores a few key factors that are plain to see. For one, the woman is caught at a moment when she’s raising her eyebrows. Almost anyone’s forehead will scrunch when she makes this expression — specifically, if she’s Botox-free. Secondly, the “harsh glare” of broad daylight can even be unkind to a face as young and fresh as Gigi Hadid’s. Thirdly, the woman is aging; we don’t have any right to expect her to look like Dorothy Boyd in “Jerry Maguire” forever.

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Of course, there’s also a chance that the picture in question has been Photoshopped — an assumption, but not one without motive. Zellweger has been bullied on the Internet — with the Daily Mail leading the charge — ever since she stepped out at ELLE’s 21st annual Women In Hollywood Awards looking “astonishingly different” (aka older) according to a 2014 article. The searing sentiments were driven home by endless other sites including TMZ, The Telegraph, and an unapologetic Huffington Post.

For its part, Yahoo Style weighed in on the 2014 pile-on with the story “Renée Zellweger Is Unrecognizable — But Don’t Shame Her for It.” We pointed out at the time that Zellweger was not only the target of ridicule for her look, but also of speculation for the idea that she may have had plastic surgery (in Hollywood? No way!). Dr. Robyn Silverman, a body-image expert who spoke with Yahoo Style at the time, noted that “Women who receive recognizable, excessive, or bad plastic surgery get double-shamed.”

Another essay, by a Guardian writer, was titled, “There’s Nothing Wrong with Renée Zellweger’s Face. There’s Something Wrong With Us.” “To be a female celebrity is to lose at every turn,” the article boldly declared. “Dare to age? Face-shame at best and be out of work at worst.”

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But two years later, the Daily Mail still hasn’t moved past it, insisting on shaming Zellweger and jumping to the conclusion that the actress hasn’t taken care of her skin and needs “smoke and mirrors” to look good — and ignoring the possibility that poor lighting or a bad angle may be to blame for her visible wrinkles the next day. The publication spoke with skin expert Mark Norfolk, who was quoted as saying, “Lighting and good make up are key to why she looks so different — in the earlier image, the picture has been taken inside a studio in which she appears much smoother and fresher in the face.”

The other possibility, of course, could simply be the aging process, something no one — famous or not — should have to apologize for. According to Scientific American, factors that cause our skin to wrinkle as we age include less collagen production (it starts dropping at age 20!), “diminished functioning of the sweat and oil glands” and “less elastin production.” Of course, sun exposure, smoking, and pollution all affect our skin’s aging process too, as the Cosmetic Toiletry and Perfumery Association points out on its website. Avoiding these youth-zappers as well as staying well-moisturized can, of course, prolong skin’s suppleness.

So yes, let’s play devil’s advocate and say that Zellweger didn’t take care of her skin as well as she could have. Or that her genetics are causing her to wrinkle faster than other women her age. Is that really a reason to shame her? Most readers of the Daily Mail piece don’t think so.

“She can’t win can she? Bashed for her unusually taught [sic] looking skin, now bashed for being a bit wrinkly,” wrote one flustered commenter. “Oh, leave her alone. We’re all older than we all were once. Why are you surprised? She’s a human being as well as a woman,” said another. “All you have proven is that apparently she doesn’t do Botox, if she did she wouldn’t be able to squint her face in the sun. Good detective work!!!” pointed out a third.

After spending months as the center of conversations and op-ed articles in Hollywood about plastic surgery and the pressures placed on actresses’ appearances, Zellweger weighed with a scathing note on the Huffington Post — just this month — “We Can Do Better.” In it, she acknowledges “It’s no secret a woman’s worth has historically been measured by her appearance.” She then explains that she broke her silence in order to be fair to herself. “I must make some claim on the truths of my life, and because witnessing the transmutation of tabloid fodder from speculation to truth is deeply troubling,” the actress wrote, calling out the tabloid media “which profits from the chaos and scandal it conjures and injects into people’s lives and their subsequent humiliation.”

Zellweger plainly states in the essay that she has not had cosmetic surgery on her face or eyes, “not that it’s anyone’s business,” she writes. She then takes down shaming culture. “Too skinny, too fat, showing age, better as a brunette, cellulite thighs, facelift scandal, going bald, fat belly or bump? Ugly shoes, ugly feet, ugly smile, ugly hands, ugly dress, ugly laugh; headline material which emphasizes the implied variables meant to determine a person’s worth, and serve as parameters around a very narrow suggested margin within which every one of us must exist in order to be considered socially acceptable and professionally valuable, and to avoid painful ridicule,” she declares. “Maybe we could talk more about why we seem to collectively share an appetite for witnessing people diminished and humiliated with attacks on appearance and character and how it impacts younger generations and struggles for equality.”

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