Angelina Jolie has long been hailed as one of the most beautiful women in the world. That combination of perfect bone structure, voluminous lips and deer-like eyes have made her the envy of generations of women, and to this day she maintains her top spot of Hollywood’s most adored celebrities. And yet, she too is not immune to the ageism that underlines traditional beauty standards – this week, her appearance received a depressing amount of commentary purely for the fact that she has (shock, horror) visible veins.

Yes, dear reader, visible veins are the hot new insecurity right now – because stretch marks, love handles, FUPAs and hip dips simply weren’t enough to keep women’s brains occupied. Now, people on TikTok are pointing out that Angelina Jolie’s veins on her hands, arms and face distract from her otherwise ethereal beauty.

It comes after the 49-year-old actor appeared at Venice Film Festival in promotion of her new film, Maria, in which she depicts opera icon Maria Callas (it’s been dubbed the performance of her career, by the way, receiving an eight-minute standing ovation). Angelina has largely avoided the spotlight in recent years with her turbulent divorce from Brad Pitt making headlines due to eight years’ worth of legal battles. Now, however, Hollywood’s most enviable starlet is back – and immediately subject to the markedly harsher crowd of TikTok critics.

‘The veins showing, Is that from age?’ one person commented on a TikTok video of Angelina walking the red carpet at Venice Film Festival, posted by E! News with romantic music over top – the intention was to create a ‘thirst trap’ (a video posted to attract attention or desire because the subject is so attractive). ‘Holy veins,’ another commented, receiving more than 60,000 likes.

Others pointed out that ‘she’s aging’ with crying emojis, or said things like ‘But she’s only 49,’ as though a woman who has spent almost 50 years on this earth isn’t meant to show any signs of maturity. The consensus in all of the commentary is that Angelina’s appearance is too old for what’s normal (yes, seriously) and that her visible veins are a big part of that.

Honestly, throw the whole internet away at this point. Need we point out that at 50, it’s EXTREMELY normal to have skin that appears thinner due to it becoming less elastic in time and fatty tissue decreasing – it’s also normal to have hair that’s turned grey and to have wrinkles or age spots. With thinner skin comes more visible veins, and truly, the only reason one might think this is anything other than normal ageing is because of how warped our perceptions of age have become with the popularity of plastic surgery and cosmetic tweakments.

We have long seen women in Hollywood going under the knife as they age, it’s nothing new for a celebrity over 50 to suddenly appear on the red carpet with a new face – but what’s changed in the last decade is that non-invasive procedures have, for lack of a better word, democratised getting work done.

Cheaper cosmetic tweakments have made it commonplace to make age-defying changes, it’s easier than ever now to suddenly appear plumper in your cheeks, for a wrinkle to disappear with one Botox injection or your entire face made taught with facial threads. Now, with almost everyone able to access treatments that make them look younger (although, one could argue that case too), it seems as though all of us are simply too used to looking at faces – celebrities or not – that don’t show a person’s true age.
So, when a celebrity pops up with one measly sign of ageing (because let’s be honest, Angelina’s face is as taut and voluptuous as it ever has been) it’s seemingly more shocking to a generation that simply cannot fathom letting a wrinkle stay on your face. Social media won’t help, with face filters completely altering our perception of what normal skin looks like at any age.

What makes this scarier than the usual ageist body-shaming is that we’re moving beyond wrinkles or age spots, thin lips or sagging skin. The usual signs of ageing that everyone has been trying to ‘correct’ in the last few decades are no longer ripe for cultural critique, now we have to go even more niche with our ageist insecurities. What does one do to ‘correct’ visible veins, we must ask?

Are people going to start having vein ligation or stripping (treatments reserved for damaged or varicose veins) as cosmetic enhancements? Will your local aesthetics salon start offering a lunchtime endothermal ablation treatment, the same way they offer ‘30-minute Hollywood facelifts’? Truly, how far do we take ageist body-shaming before we’re pulling ourselves apart from the inside out, putting ourselves through unnecessary surgeries, to counteract a very normal part of the human experience? With the surge in demand for Botox and fillers in recent years, from women even in their teens, it’s not unreasonable to wonder how picking apart a woman as beautiful as Angelina for having a few visible veins will snowball into a larger problem the aesthetics industry will be more than happy to monetize.

Frankly, at times like this it feels like the horse has left the gate and we’re headed for all-out body image destruction the way social media has warped all of our minds when it comes to beauty.