[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_text module_class=”custom-post-title” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_font=”Black Han Sans|700||on|||||” header_text_align=”center” header_font_size=”46px” header_letter_spacing=”4px” custom_margin=”25px||5px||false|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||true|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”Black Han Sans|||on|||||” text_text_color=”#000000″ header_4_font=”|||on|||||” header_4_text_align=”center” text_orientation=”center” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n
Words by Georgia Aspinall [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2024\/09\/GettyImages-2169309690.jpg” alt=”Jennifer Aniston” title_text=”%22Maria%22 Red Carpet – The 81st Venice International Film Festival” force_fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” min_height=”107px” custom_padding=”||0px|||” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n 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\u2019s most adored celebrities. And yet, she too is not immune to the ageism that underlines traditional beauty standards \u2013 this week, her appearance received a depressing amount of commentary purely for the fact that she has (shock, horror) visible veins.<\/p>\n Yes, dear reader, visible veins are the hot new insecurity right now \u2013 because stretch marks, love handles, FUPAs and hip dips simply weren\u2019t enough to keep women\u2019s brains occupied. Now, people on TikTok are pointing out that Angelina Jolie\u2019s veins on her hands, arms and face distract from her otherwise ethereal beauty.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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\u2019 worth of legal battles. Now, however, Hollywood\u2019s most enviable starlet is back \u2013 and immediately subject to the markedly harsher crowd of TikTok critics.<\/p>\n \u2018The veins showing, Is that from age?\u2019 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 \u2018thirst trap\u2019 (a video posted to attract attention or desire because the subject is so attractive). \u2018Holy veins,\u2019 another commented, receiving more than 60,000 likes.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_code _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_code][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n Others pointed out that \u2018she\u2019s aging\u2019 with crying emojis, or said things like \u2018But she\u2019s only 49,\u2019 as though a woman who has spent almost 50 years on this earth isn\u2019t meant to show any signs of maturity. The consensus in all of the commentary is that Angelina\u2019s appearance is too old for what\u2019s normal (yes, seriously) and that her visible veins are a big part of that.<\/p>\n Honestly, throw the whole internet away at this point. Need we point out that at 50, it\u2019s EXTREMELY normal to have skin that appears thinner due to it becoming less elastic in time and fatty tissue decreasing \u2013 it\u2019s also normal to have hair that\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n We have long seen women in Hollywood going under the knife as they age, it\u2019s nothing new for a celebrity over 50 to suddenly appear on the red carpet with a new face \u2013 but what\u2019s changed in the last decade is that non-invasive procedures have, for lack of a better word, democratised getting work done.<\/p>\n Cheaper cosmetic tweakments have made it commonplace to make age-defying changes, it\u2019s 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 \u2013 celebrities or not \u2013 that don\u2019t show a person\u2019s true age. What makes this scarier than the usual ageist body-shaming is that we\u2019re moving beyond wrinkles or age spots, thin lips or sagging skin. The usual signs of ageing that everyone has been trying to \u2018correct\u2019 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 \u2018correct\u2019 visible veins, we must ask?<\/p>\n 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 \u201830-minute Hollywood facelifts\u2019? Truly, how far do we take ageist body-shaming before we\u2019re 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Frankly, at times like this it feels like the horse has left the gate and we\u2019re headed for all-out body image destruction the way social media has warped all of our minds when it comes to beauty.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ divider_position=”center” divider_weight=”2px” module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”0px||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-texts” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|||on|||||” text_orientation=”center” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n IMAGE: GETTY<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It comes after the 49-year-old actor appeared at Venice Film Festival in promotion of her new film, Maria<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":4033,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"kschwarz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4032"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4037,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4032\/revisions\/4037"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/strong><\/p>\n\n
So, when a celebrity pops up with one measly sign of ageing (because let\u2019s be honest, Angelina\u2019s face is as taut and voluptuous as it ever has been) it\u2019s seemingly more shocking to a generation that simply cannot fathom letting a wrinkle stay on your face. Social media won\u2019t help, with face filters completely altering our perception of what normal skin looks like at any age.<\/p>\n