Impossibly Beautiful

Shaker Vgnvxn sent me the link to the poster for Nia Vardalos' new film, My Life in Ruins, which features a highly-retouched image of Vardalos:


[Click to embiggen.]
Vardalos is 46 years old, and in candid images of the actress at the premiere of the film, she looks like a 46-year-old woman:


[Click to embiggen.]
There's nothing wrong with being a 46-year-old woman, and there's nothing wrong with looking like a 46-year-old woman. There's also nothing inherently and objectively unattractive about a 46-year-old woman. Only according to some bullshit beauty standard that expects women never to age is there shame in showing the hard-earned lines of a life fully lived, and only in a vain and immature culture which axiomatically favors youth over experience can there be found justification for dehumanizing Vardalos into a plasticized doll-version of herself and calling that an improvement.

------------------------

By way of reminder: Comments that try to suss out what changes, exactly, were made, and even comments noting that, for example, the removal of laugh lines because they are ZOMG wrinkles actually robs a face of its character or humanity, are welcome. Discussions of how "she looks prettier/hotter/better in the candid picture" and associated commentary (which would certainly make me feel like shit if I were the person being discussed) are not. So please comment in keeping with the series' intent, implicit in which is the question: If no one can ever be beautiful enough, then to what end is the pursuit of an elusive perfection?

[Impossibly Beautiful: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty, Twenty-One, Twenty-Two, Twenty-Three, Twenty-Four, Twenty-Five, Twenty-Six, Twenty-Seven, Twenty-Eight, Twenty-Nine, Thirty, Thirty-One, Thirty-Two.]