Envy-pity

On one ordinary woman's tragic betrayal by a movie star

Learning about proper eyebrow dimensions on Wikimedia Commons

I’m not sure in what universe the author of this piece thinks the movie star Anne Hathaway owes it to her, personally, to eschew cosmetic enhancement. Like the author, I have been told I look like Anne Hathaway, on occasion, over the years. Unlike the author, I took this to mean ‘pale brunette born in the early 1980s’ and not some kind of cosmic connection, whereby each of our actions somehow impact the other, despite our never having met.

We all know that when we’re told we look like a celebrity, this means that we look like a plain-looking version of that person. At least, I thought we did. The author, perhaps, did not.

It’s not just Anne Hathaway’s face that’s a problem (her eyebrows in particular) for the author. She also thinks Hathaway needs to be “getting older and fatter like an ordinary mortal”—because if you don’t get pudgier with age, this is ARTIFICE and therefore badfeminism. Which, I don’t know where to begin. Nobody’s wrinkles naturally reverse themselves, barring freakish medical happenstances (or, I suppose, major weight gains), so whatever your stance on artifice, the mere fact of artifice can be hard to deny. But weights fluctuate, so this seems like a request that another woman’s do so in sync with one’s own. Seems a lot to ask!

But I’m reacting to a piece that is asking a movie star do her primping according to the hazy value system of a woman who happens to have once possibly looked a bit like her, maybe.

The funniest line, however: “I had nurtured a vague hope that Anne would choose to age naturally—or, at least, get subtler plastic surgery.”

Because good plastic surgery is more feminist?

Or no, it’s this: “Other women might make a different choice for themselves for a variety of complicated reasons, and I’m not passing judgment on them.”

That is literally all you are doing here, lady! If you’re passing judgment, the least you can do is own it!

Wait no, this is the one for the ages: “I’m also disappointed because Anne’s choices uphold and reinforce white supremacist patriarchal beauty standards.”

The blogger is white, as is Hathaway, who stands accused of trying to look thin and young. Both of these women are going to be white whatever their primping choices. While I guess there’s a roundabout argument that thinness is white beauty standards (it helps if you conveniently forget that Asia exists), where is the culture that doesn’t value youth in women?

It was the “white supremacist” bit that had me wondering if this was… AI? Is a bot mad at Anne Hathaway, meaning that I am, now, doing a takedown of the personal essay of a bot? I wish I really thought it was, because I feel a tiny bit bad dunking, albeit less so given that others seem to be largely nodding along to it and giving it a you-go-girl treatment.

Whatever its likely non-bot origin story, the tone of the piece could best be summed up as pity that reads as envy. Lines such as:

“While I was getting older and fatter like an ordinary mortal, Anne rebranded herself as a sex symbol in a film about being hot enough to date much younger men.”

Or:

“I have been going through my midlife crisis in blessed anonymity and invisibility, while Anne has been intensely scrutinized in the public gaze since late adolescence.”

Are these the words of someone who considers herself “blessed” to be getting plainer with age?

The real giveaway, though, is the mix between the too-pat conclusion (“I feel a certain relief in looking visibly older”) coming so soon after this: “When I check in with myself about whether I should get Botox to smooth out my forehead, or a chin tuck, I cringe at what that would model for my daughter, or my young eating disorder clients.” If you’re so above these concerns, you would not have specific procedures in mind!

The key to this strange puzzle is in the fact that an apple is being compared with an orange. The author of the essay implies that where she and Anne Hathaway diverge is that Hathaway is this sellout who does face and diet stuff, whereas she nobly eschews. When in fact, the difference between the author and Hathaway is that one of these women is a mega-talented, mega-ambitious movie star who incidentally must look a certain way for professional purposes, to whom any beautification is money-wise a drop in the bucket compared with earnings. If the author decided what the hey and purchased every cosmetic enhancement and went on Atkins vegan Ozempic, she would still not be a movie star. She’d just look the way women look in certain rich neighborhoods, and also have a Substack and a day job.

Here is what I suspect is actually going on: It has become unfashionable to say, It seems like it would be fun to be rich, famous, and beautiful. This is now, as countless memoirs and non-fiction treatments of all sorts insist, a miserable experience. You might think you’d like to be Emily Ratajkowski or Prince Harry but you’re WRONG, you are actually BETTER OFF remaining your plain-looking, budget-restricted self. As if it’s actually kind of insulting to the poor A-listers to envy them. Insulting to them, and cheesy and unsophisticated on your part.

The performance of pity for the seemingly fortunate has become so ingrained that I suspect the author of this dunk-ready piece imagined (and hey, largely got!) a positive response. How bold to state that your humble aw-shucks self actually has it better than some poor movie star, her toned arm twisted by white supremacist patriarchy, forced to look spectacular at 42.

Except the author didn’t nail the tone, so the whole thing comes across as one woman snarking on another’s appearance and life choices. Ah well. We can simply sit and wait for the inevitable follow-up personal essay that will appear when the author decides actually maybe yes regarding whichever beautification for herself, and invites her readers to learn why, in her case, it is actually empowering.