Renée Zellweger Criticizes Beauty Industry for Ageism and Claims That She’s Only Become Happier with Age
This year, Renée Zellweger turned 53. For most of her life, she’s been in the spotlight. Everything — from her Oscar nominations to changes in her appearance — becomes a discussion topic. Some people could ignore this, but Renée criticizes the way things are now, and tries to change the world for the better. And it seems that she’s making progress. At the moment, she’s fully in control of her own narrative.
Renée Zellweger in the spotlight: ups and downs.
In more than 30 years of working in the movie industry, Renée Zellweger has had a chance to try a lot of different looks. Some people first saw Zellweger in Empire Records, where the actress had bangs and brown lips. She became really famous after Bridget Jones. She even put on weight specially for the role — 30 pounds.
The movie had 2 sequels. For the 3rd film, she gained just a few pounds. It was the creative choice of the director. And it was a good decision because doctors recommended that Zellweger stopped experimenting with weight gain. She said, “I had a panic attack with all the specialists talking about how bad this is for you, long term, putting on that much weight in short periods of time. They’re all saying, ’You must stop this now, or you’re going to die.’ ”
Renée became famous as an actress that can turn into a character, even if it requires a physical transformation. And the Academy couldn’t ignore such an effort. In 2020, Zellweger got an Oscar for her performance as Judy Garland in the film Judy.
But not all of Renée’s transformations were good. Her work in The Thing About Pam was heavily criticized. The actress wore a fat suit, and the press was furious. “There are plenty of incredibly talented plus-size actresses that could have been hired for the role. For Zellweger to masquerade as a plus-size person is damaging, fatphobic and potentially triggering to other plus-size people.”
Not only are Renée’s roles are constantly talked about, but her appearance is always in the spotlight. When her fans could no longer recognize her in 2014, the journalists started to suspect Zellweger had plastic surgeries. Renée didn’t like the speculation, but she remained strong. “I’m glad folks think I look different! I’m living a different, happy, more fulfilling life, and I’m thrilled that perhaps it shows.”
But things were just heating up. A piece written published by Variety titled “Renée Zellweger: If She No Longer Looks Like Herself, Has She Become a Different Actress?” was released. Renée wrote a response, titling it, “We Can Do Better.”
The 2-time Oscar winner strongly criticized tabloids for their cheap speculations. “Too skinny, too fat, showing age, better as a brunette, cellulite thighs, facelift scandal, going bald, fat belly or bump? Headline material 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.”
Renée is getting stronger and more powerful.
It seems that the pressure of the press only made the actress stronger. In one interview, Renée talked about the problem of double standards that don’t let us realize ourselves to the fullest: “Why are we talking about how women look? Why do we value beauty over contribution? We don’t seem to value beauty over contribution for men.”
The star doesn’t see aging as a problem. She thinks that women become stronger and more powerful with age. And it’s a good thing.
Renée Zellweger is over 50 years old, and she has the power to finally attract public attention to the problems existing in many people’s minds. “As long as we buy into the whole idea that society is obsessed with youth, then we perpetuate it. We have to shift the paradigm.” The actress thinks it’s impossible to do anything with substance if everything you think about relates only to your beauty.
Renée also talks about the beauty industry. She thinks that the marketing of anti-aging products is toxic and aggressive. “All those ads telling us we don’t need to look our real age if we just buy all their creams and their fixes and all that garbage they want to sell us? You’re saying I’m not valuable anymore because I’m 53?”
The star of Jerry Maguire says we should have no regrets. To be beautiful, you should accept your age. And the people that don’t, live apologetically, which is not beautiful at all.
Many celebrities speak out about ageism and unrealistic beauty standards.
Renée brought up the topic of age and unrealistic beauty standards, familiar to any actress and any woman on the planet. Aging has been stigmatized in Hollywood for a long time. Fortunately, now many stars openly talk about it.
For example, this is what Drew Barrymore said about it: “I saw all of that pressure, and I saw all of those women torturing themselves to look a certain way and I thought, ’You miserable people.’ ” The Hollywood star fully agrees with Renée: “I think as we grow older, we have this societal pressure where people start to try to tell us that our worth is diminished, and I think that this is a time in our life when our worth is most enhanced.”
It’s hard to deny the cultural evolution. Superstars are starting to speak up, saying that appearances shouldn’t be judged. Maybe this problem has a solution. It seems that Renée Zellweger has an answer. “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? Maybe we could talk more about our many true societal challenges and how we can do better.”
Do you feel any pressure of the society in terms of your appearance? And what do you think about aging? Do you fight it, or do you accept it as something natural?