14 DAY TRIAL // Penelope Cruz rarely talks about her personal life with the media but, when she does, it’s safe to say she does it well. Speaking with You just recently, as cited by MSN Wonderwall, the Spanish actress revealed that she doesn’t read beauty magazine because they are all sending the wrong message to impressionable girls: namely that only thin equals beautiful, which is far from the case.
The industry has set up a few rules that few women dare break as regards body size, Penelope says. One of them says that women should be thin to be deemed beautiful or at least acceptable, which is not true. Sadly, because all magazines emphasize that weight is all it boils down to, girls as young as 12 or 13 grow up with the idea that they need to strive to be as skinny as possible, otherwise no one would even give them the time of day.
“I would close down all those teenage magazines that encourage young girls to diet. Who says that to be pretty you have to be thin? Some people look better thin and some don’t. There is almost a standard being created where only thin is acceptable. The influence of those magazines on girls as young as 13 is horrific,” Cruz says for the publication, arguing why mags that follow this trend should be closed down. Not only does beauty come from inside, but it’s also in the eye of the beholder.
Another rule set in stone in Hollywood is trying to be younger than one’s age – and Penelope is opposed to it as well. “I never want to lie about my age. If I look around at the actresses I admire, they are all women who have not fought growing older, but embraced it – women like Sophia Loren or Audrey Hepburn… It’s a good thing to be old, because that means you haven’t died yet right? And when I do get older, I want to have the grace to be proud of it, not to lie about it or try to fight it. The people who love me, love me for who I am. They love me for a mixture of things that makes anyone love another person, and those things will still be there when I am 40, 60 or 80,” she says.
Penelope is not the only one to voice her discontent with the pressure placed on women to look a certain way – and not necessarily on those working in showbiz either. Just the other day, British equality minister Lynne Featherstone was saying all women should aspire to a body like Christina Hendricks’: a curvy, healthy and gorgeous size 14.
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