Yesterday the Hollywood Reporter noted that of the prominent ladymags -- Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Elle -- will all feature actresses over 40 on their September covers: Halle Berry, Jennifer Aniston, and Julia Roberts, respectively. It's wonderful to see that Hollywood isn't disposing of actresses as they get older -- if anything, older actresses are becoming more valuable, since Sandra Bullock has become the top-paid actress in Hollywood last year when she pulled in $56 million. (Such a rise in older actresses doesn't appear to be the case in the porn industry, though, because 28-year-old Aurora Snow was relegated to playing MILF roles once she turned 24.)
But let's face it, the women who will grace the covers of the highest selling month of fashion magazines of the year certainly won't look 40 by the time Photoshop is done with them. Jezebel's Photoshop of Horrors series does a great job of revealing exactly how terrifying Photoshop gone wrong can be. Even before Photoshop, it's not much of a stretch to say that the women in Hollywood tend to still fit a certain mold of beauty. And for all of the praise over the fact that Berry (soon to be 44), Aniston (41), and Roberts (42) will be gracing magazine covers, these women are still in their early 40s. It's harder to say if these women will still be valuable and grace magazine covers 10 or 20 years from now.
Furthermore, although it's great to see a woman of color like Halle Berry, the first women to portray an African American role that was nominated for an Oscar, women of color in fashion magazines are still few and far between. An analysis done by Sociological Images recently did an analysis of Bride.com, revealing that of the 600+ images of brides on the site, just 43 were African American. The site portrayed few women who could be identified as Hispanic and zero women that could be classified as Asian. By far, white women are still portrayed as the standard of beauty.
As I've mentioned before, I understand that achieving diversity is a challenge. It's not something that can be slapped together, and I recognize many of the institutional problems that must be tackled first. People should also be praised for doing something well. I'm glad that Hollywood and the fashion industry are still including the over-40 demographic. I do hope, though that the industries of fashion and movie-making don't just pat themselves on the back and go on to business as usual. It would be nice if they kept working on expanding the definition of beauty and talent.