Friday, March 23, 2012

My Weekend Crush

Extraordinary. Brave. Luminous. Real. Oh, I’m sorry, I’m not talking about Cate Blanchett. I’m talking about Cate Blanchett’s face. You see, Cate Blanchett’s face made the headlines recently for being, well, Cate Blanchett’s face. Unadorned. Unaltered. Unphotoshopped. On the cover of a magazine. THE HORRORS. Cate Blanchett and Cate Blanchett’s actual face grace the newest over of Intelligent Life, a lifestyles magazine put out by The Economist. And in the post about the cover, the magazine’s editor made note of the intentionally unairbrushed image.
When other magazines photograph actresses, they routinely end up running heavily Photoshopped images, with every last wrinkle expunged. Their skin is rendered so improbably smooth that, with the biggest stars, you wonder why the photographer didn’t just do a shoot with their waxwork…..

Cate Blanchett, by contrast, appears on our cover in her working clothes, with the odd line on her face and faint bags under her eyes. She looks like what she is—a woman of 42, spending her days in an office, her evenings on stage and the rest of her time looking after three young children.
Granted, Cate Blanchett and her face are still more beautiful and radiant without the help of any digital wizardy than most of us would look after being given the full Pixar treatment. But it’s certainly a comment on our culture when someone actually looking like they actually look in real life actually makes the news. We’ve come to the point where we’re surprised when a photograph reflects the reality of it’s photographing. Call it a little art imitating life for a change. How incredibly refreshing. Happy weekend, all.

10 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:46 AM

    I adore Cate, such classy lady.Still bitterly angry that Gwyneth Paltrow won the oscar, but watching her reaction when Marion Cotillard won makes me less bitter.

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  2. Anonymous3:29 AM

    I love her films, I really do, but, still looks like a lot of botox jabbing to the forehead

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  3. ;) babs3:36 AM

    I cannot wait to see her on stage, this may in Vienna!!!

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  4. Love women with wrinkles! Woot!

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  5. This image is still altered. The publication may not have removed wrinkles/bags-under-eyes, but it's definitely altered in the way that publications want us want to think it's not altered. Look at the whites of her eyes - if she's working as hard as they claim she is, they wouldn't be completely golf-ball white without any veins. She has roughly zero facial hair that is un-uniform...

    I do this to portraits for a living. Nothing that goes to print is unaltered.

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  6. Anonymous6:38 PM

    She looks incredibly hot.

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  7. Wow still looks radiate...
    even without those "Pixar" thing...

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  8. This is great, she looks so ... natural, like how she really is, none of that Photoshop editing.

    I think it's nice that she did this, it makes her more ... I know this sounds corny - but it somehow makes her look more normal. Like she's just another (lovely, gorgeous, incredibly awesome) person.

    Cheers to Cate :)

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  10. tlsintx12:39 PM

    *swoon*

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