Again, here’s the “problematic” cover for the October issue of InStyle. InStyle did five covers in different styles for Jennifer Aniston, and the one above got the most criticism because of how InStyle darkened Jennifer’s skin. What’s weird is that she has that Mediterranean skin which tans very easily anyway – I have no doubt that Jennifer can and has gotten very dark while lying out in the sun. But this skin-darkening seems especially extra, and especially problematic. Again, InStyle’s response to criticism was that the shot was inspired by Veruschka, a supermodel from the 1960s/70s.
Anyway, Jennifer also did a video for InStyle where she responded to old quotes she had given InStyle in previous interviews. I’ve transcribed part of it below the video:
On her “zen” eyebrow plucking: “I still do pluck my eyebrows, it is my zen time. It’s all the time. I do understand that the fashion for eyebrows is fuller, so I’ve found things to pluck elsewhere.”
Whether she would dye her hair dark brown: “Would I do a bold move like change my hair color? Sure. Do I want to? No. I like my hair color.”
On how she didn’t think she was beautiful when she was younger: “I wasn’t NOT beautiful, I just was a kid, I was growing into myself. All kids are beautiful.”
[Transcribed from InStyle video]
I mostly wanted to talk about eyebrows and how somewhere along the line, it became unstylish to pluck your eyebrows. I still pluck my eyebrows! You know why? Because even though people told me that eventually I wouldn’t have to pluck so much, they are still f–king unruly. And I find new things to pluck all the time, like Jennifer. I like her more for admitting that. Also: her hair looks super-damaged in the video and I hope her hair stylist does convince her to go darker.
Instagrams courtesy of InStyle.
I agree that unruly, grown out eyebrows make you look younger – younger in that you haven’t figured out how to NOT be a fashion victim yet. With age comes wisdom, and that wisdom includes knowing that some eye brow shaping and plucking looks good and most high-wasted jeans DO NOT;)
High waisted look good skinny people. At least theres that. The true sinner is the low waist, which has never looked good on anyone. Normal waist ftw.
High waisted pants looks horrible on anyone. Skinny people with flat behinds suddenly have large, vertical butt cheeks that take up half of the backside and people with some booty just look like Obelix. Proportions are thrown off to a ridiculous level. Low waist pants look good on skinny people with abs. Everyone else is just safe with normal waisted pants.
I don’t think they look good on anyone either, I was at a pro sport event recently where the cheerleaders were wearing high waisted leggings and a crop tops. Every single one of these young women was slim and gorgeous, but the high waisted leggings made their booties look flat and oblong, and they all just looked dowdy with midriff showing but waistband way up above the belly button.
Agree on both points 🙂
Also, if I were rich I’d have someone to tweeze my eyebrows and wash/style my hair weekly. I love having my eyebrows done and I am horrible at doing it myself. They look like beaten up caterpillars when I try 🙁
She’s extremely comfortable with who she is and I find her a lot less annoying than GP. She doesn’t seem to think her life should be anyone else’s goal just that it’s worked out for her and she’s happy.
I don’t like her brow look now. Maybe when Jen was younger she could have pulled off the thick brows near the inner corners of the eyes look that is popular now. But her face has changed (as do all of ours as we get older) and those brows are not flattering at all. I want to tweeze the heck out of them. I have seen older women having darker brows and it usually doesn’t look good.
Oh man I LOVE high waisted pants and I am not skinny. I find them so comfy! I am never going back …
Sorry, but I hate plucking and it’s anything but Zen. I curse under my breath at the maintenance required as we age.
Microblading. I let my brows grow for two months then had it done. Now I just use a little Tinkle razor for stray hairs.
I was walking past a television recently where my younger cousin was watching an old episode of Friends. It was season 2, I think, the one where she and Ross first kiss. And I had genuinely forgotten how beautiful Jennifer Aniston was in those early seasons (this isn’t shade, she still looks great) and it made me wonder how she didn’t see it herself. It’s hard to imagine that she was insecure about her looks but it seems like she was, by her own admission
Lots of good looking people don’t feel or know that they are…her mother told her she wasn’t pretty. That has a life time effect on you.
My mother did similar. When I met my husband and he told me I was beautiful, I didn’t believe him. I met his family and his mom (who was striking) told me I was beautiful, I didn’t believe her. It took years and years…and every now and then a stranger will comment (usually in the tone of, you’re so pretty for a WOC). That sh*t doesn’t leave you especially when it comes from a parent.
My mom told me six times a day how ugly I was and told me how stupid I was six times a day too.
When i was 13 she added the f-word and told me daily how fucking ugly I was and how fucking stupid I was. I believed her, I had no reason not to. One day when I was 30, I glanced into the mirror I was walking past. What I saw stopped me right in my tracks. It was at that moment I realized I wasn’t ugly at all. Up until that point I had avoided looking people in the eye when I talked to them, my whole life. I didn’t want them to have to look at my ugly face and I didn’t want to see the pity for me on their face. What I saw in that mirror led me to seek help for the first time. I went because I wanted to know what other ways mommy had destroyed my life and psyche and how to fix them. I’ll be forever grateful to the therapist who treated me. First visit I told her a few of the things my mother had done to me and about the mirror, and she was crying when I left. I really didn’t want to go back because I had upset her. It was a while later when she told me how utterly robotic my voice sounded detailing my childhood. She said there wasn’t the slightest trace of any emotion in my voice while reciting what had happened to me and why I was there. For the record, I can feel now:) and I did the exact opposite with my son. He was told daily how smart he was and I made sure he loved himself growing up. My overriding goal was that his childhood be a happy, healthy one.
Since I can remember people would point out that I wasn’t beautiful like my parents or brother. To make matters worse I had a younger sister and she became beautiful and sexy by the age of 12 (she was beautiful before but you get my drift). Don’t let me start on my cousins.
My own father told my younger sister to look out for me because I would never get married as I wasn’t beautiful enough and I would always be alone. The thing is I have been loved and whatnot. It was my choice to not get married for a long time not because of my looks. Because everybody around me was beautiful and tall I looked “bad” in their eyes. I have had my share of success in my life that the opinions of others didn’t matter that much to me. And my mother thinks I am cute. So there’s that.
I never thought of myself as beautiful and for that I worked on other things just in case 😂🤪
She’s so beautiful
I’m always changing my hair. I’ve decided dark tones aren’t for me.
I’m growing out my bangs, what a roller coaster
I haven’t plucked my eyebrows in YEARS and YEARS. They are huge and black. 😂🥴 I guess I’m in style now, WOOT!
I think sometimes people go lighter with hair color as they are bc it’s easier to hide grey hair. I have always died my hair dark brown but now that I’m nearing my 40s I think I have to go lighter so the greys don’t stand out so much. Sighhhhhhh
THIS!! I’m one of those people. I’m naturally lt brunette/dk blonde, but I have to keep it colored on the lighter side just so my grey doesn’t show as much. I’m 39 now, but started seeing greys in my early 20s.
I am a victim of the 90s over plucking sigh… and nope, they never did come back in much (as sometimes, you get the actual root out and once that’s gone…). Between the over zealous plucking, age, and chemo (when I was sick 5 yrs. ago), I have almost nothing left! And what’s there is so blonde…!! lol. I look perpetually surprise 😄
I’m starting to look into finding a *really* good microblader, so I can have a *bit* of brow when I don’t color on brows. If any CBers know of anyone great in the Beverly Hills/West L.A./Santa Monica area, please let me know! (Thanks in advance!)
Sorry about the war wounds from your chemo. I am a victim of an overzealous eyebrow wax from the ’90s. My skin scarred between my eyebrows so no hair grows there. I’ve had microblading, but I’m looking to upgrade. The ones on my wish list are Kristie Streicher (microfeathering) at Striike and Dominique Bossavy, both in Beverly Hills. Both are very expensive though!
I love picking my eyebrows. It is zen to me too, I get it.
Maybe its my phone, but she doesnt look darkened in the cover to me? Tanned sure. I’ll have to check on my laptop later.
Yeah, she just looks tanned. I would not have thought a thing about the cover.
I agree. She just looks like she has one of those super dark “St. Tropez” tans women used to aspire to in the 60’s/70’s before we realized it will turn your skin to leather.
I’m old enough to remember those “Bain de Soleil for the St. Tropez tan” commercials. (The phrase was set to catchy music.)
ChillyWilly you just reminded me of those old ads…”Bain de Soleil for the St. Tropez tan….”
Lol…I loved those commercials! I actually used Ban De Soleil in the early 90s. They had this gelee formula that made your legs look shiny and luminous but offered very little sun protection. I got scorched using that stuff at the beach one summer. Now I avoid the sun like a vampire.
LOOOL I can’t get passed how dark she looks? She honestly looks darker than Beyonce when she was on the cover. How does this kind of stuff get past the editors? I am not even offended, just confuddled.
I’m surprised by how much I like the fake bangs on her. The whole hairstyle is actually really cute, and she pulls it off.
She does look hella tan. I kind of wonder if the photos were taken in darker lighting and cut out and placed on a white background for the cover? Because the lighting just doesn’t look ‘right’ – something is off, and I don’t think that they just darkened her up for the cover. I mean, who knows at this point – we see weird covers all of the time. But it doesn’t seem like the logical choice – and it’d be more work.
I just have to laugh at the photoshop. She looks like a cartoon on the cover of the mag. Why? They don’t do this to men. The skin darkening is really baffling. We know that’s not her real color…even when she’s tan she’s not that dark. Maybe it’s Aveeno lol.
It’s bizarre.
I don’t think her hair is damaged. Her hair is like mine–wavy/curly with frizz. My hair looks like that unless I have a professional intervention.
With respect to the Zen aspect of her comment–I totally get it. I do my own mani-pedis. I find it to be extremely relaxing. When I’m crazy stressed I’ll change my nail color every 3-4 days.
As deep as a puddle, this one.
Really.
My feeling exactly. Can she ever talk about anything of substance or would the effort give her a brain hemorrhage?
@Carmen
Agree 100% 😂 😂 😂
@Carmen:
Thinking about anything of substance would require more than just two brain cells.
In fairness, though, she’s only ever asked about superficial things in interviews because magazines know what her fans want to hear. I think most of her fans like her for her hair, her body, and her whole “zen/yoga” schtick.
I agree that she’s probably not the deepest person, but I also think she’s settled on an image and won’t stray from it because it’s served her so well for 25+ years.
I’ve been rewatching Friends lately and she is just so charming and cute-not traditionally beautiful, like Courtney Cox was, but she has that je ne sais quois that somebody like Julia Roberts had in the early ’90s. Watching her style, weight, tan, hair, etc. change each season is also interesting. She and Cox get thinner and thinner and thinner, its very bizarre.
My daughter was always very cute, a bit of a tomboy I couldn’t get her out of sweats or baggy jeans. One day I was standing by the kitchen window and saw a beautiful young woman walking down the street. I remember wishing my daughter had the confidence and style of that young woman. I watched her turn and climb the stairs to my front door and walk in. My then 18 year old daughter was wearing my clothes along with my trench coat and sunglasses full makeup and her long unruly curly hair was straight. I realized my darling little tomboy grew up. She loved Rachel on Friends and decided to model her new look on Jennifer Aniston.
Aniston got especially thin after she started dating Brad Pitt. I think they started dating at the end of season 4, and I still remember watching the first episode of season 5, and being shocked when Aniston walked onto her first scene. She was transformed, her curves were gone. I’d always thought she was cute before that, but after Pitt, she was just a stick.
Could you imagine if she got bangs for real? I would fall off my chair in shock.
Super dark, super weird. Skin tone isn’t a costume.
I don’t think Jen will ever change her hair. She’s gonna be like Goldie Hawn and keep that ‘do foreva!
Goldie’s hair has always bugged me – that super volume messy look, I’ve always thought it looked too heavy on her.
I’m 100% not a fan of hers, but she looks great.
People forget she is half greek, huh? However, there is no need to darken a person’s colour in 2019.
Why do I get the feeling that she has a LOT of zen time, like basically, nothing BUT zen time…
I was just about to type the same thing ! It seems like her life is very Zen. Just yoga and meditation 24/7 lol. Not a bad life at all.
That necklace, oh that necklace. I really really want.
Are we back to Angie is promoting a movie let me get my face out there for attention.
Y’all are commenting on her darkened skin, but, as mentioned in the last CB article featuring these photos, the photoediting was meant to evoke 60s supermodel, Veruschka.
https://www.wallofcelebrities.com/celebrity/veruschka-von-lehndorff/pictures/veruschka-von-lehndorff_1547640.html
I get that myself but I think most would rather criticize. My mother in the early 70’s tanned from morning to late afternoon. She was of Scandinavian descent and became as dark as Jen on the mag. cover. It was a thing for some back in those days and that’s what’s being represented.
Why are we talking eyebrows when Aaron Carter just got a tattoo of Rihanna on his FACE?