Helen Mirren is Peoples Most Beautiful: Most of us are not beautiful

Helen Mirren is People Magazine’s Most Beautiful Person. A good choice, I think. People’s Most Beautiful issue has undergone a lot of changes over the past decade, and they actually are trying to be more inclusive about beauty. Meaning, beauty without bias, racism, colorism, sizeism or ageism. Has People Mag actually achieved all of that bias-free beauty? Eh, but they are doing better. Here are some highlights from 76-year-old Helen Mirren’s People interview:

When she found about this cover: “I was absolutely sort of gobstruck, as we say in England. I never considered myself ‘beautiful.’ And [at] my age! So I was amazed. Don’t get me wrong — I love beauty and I love looking at beautiful things. But I don’t like the word beauty [as it’s] associated with the beauty industry—makeup and products, skincare and all the rest of it — because I think it excludes the vast majority of us who are not beautiful.”

On beauty: “There are incredibly beautiful people in the world, and it’s an absolute delight to look at them, male or female. Beautiful people are a wonder to behold. But most of us are not beautiful. We have other stuff, which is just as powerful as beauty. And I would like to see us celebrate those things … I love the word swagger because I think swagger means I’m confident in myself, I’m presenting myself to the world, I’m enjoying the world around me. I think what is called the beauty industry should be called the swagger industry. We’re giving people swagger.”

She still gets nervous before starting a new project. “I get very nervous about the day-to-day process. And meeting and dealing with new people. And not knowing whether I am going to remember my lines or not. I just get very frightened until I get into the swing of things and then I kind of relax. Once it’s done I’m not nervous, because it’s done, you can’t pull it back. It’s the doing of it that I get nervous about.” (Though she still doesn’t read film reviews—good or bad.)

You have to continue to grow up: While she admits “you have to continue working on yourself to a certain extent,” the best salve for her fears has been time. “Simple really: Getting older. It happens. Other people call it growing older, but I call it growing up. And one of the advantages is that you literally get to be wiser. Life is a constant process of learning.”

[From People]

Harsh: “Beautiful people are a wonder to behold. But most of us are not beautiful.” Is that fair? I don’t think so. I remember reading some Chloe Sevigny interview and I’m not going to quote her directly but she was basically like, as I get older, I understand that everyone young is beautiful. As in, kids are beautiful, you’re beautiful when you’re young, and when people are older, they either get more interesting and develop other kinds of “beauty” or they don’t. I don’t know, I didn’t expect to pontificate on beauty today. But I am more of the Chloe Sevigny kind of mindset – there are so many beautiful people out there. Helen is right about growing up and everything being a process though.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Avalon Red, cover courtesy of People.

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