Elle Fanning Gets Done Up
By Glinda
I’ve no problem with actresses getting glammed up for photo spreads.
Except when that actress is 12 and very heavily made up.
You can try to tell me that she is a film actress who is already used to having her makeup done, which is true. But I’m betting that they aren’t trying to make her look like a 21 year old ready to go clubbing.
She isn’t all sexy-fied, which is good. However, I think there is TOO MUCH STUFF on her face. Actress or no, she is not even a teenager yet.
As a young girl, I would apply makeup covertly whenever I got the chance, but the only person that saw me was, well, me. I wasn’t being exploited for magazine sales or Internet hits.
Mountain out of a molehill you say? Possibly, but I wouldn’t allow my daughter to go out of the house looking like that, so I’m sticking to my guns and saying that this photo shoot was all kinds of wrong. No matter how good she looks.
False eyelashes + heavy eyeliner + missing teeth = does not compute.
December 28th, 2010 at 6:49 am
It’s true: the adult teeth have not yet arrived, that’s how young she is. Not sure why they would “make her up” this way unless they’re unaware of how sexualized make-up actually is, and just how magnified this fact becomes when it’s presented on someone far too young.
We all know she’s a pretty child and she’ll likely grow up to be a pretty girl–we can see that was true with her sister, who was lucky enough to insist on “age appropriate” appearances and interviews. Even now! I only wish her younger sister would be allowed the same amount of consideration.
December 28th, 2010 at 10:58 am
But the art director of the photo shoot does not live in the same world that you and I do. Our world consists of teens negotiating make-up with moms & dads, from LipSmacker at the middle-school end all the way to full-on foundation-and-the-works for senior prom.
The art director for the photo shoot, on the other hand, lives in a world in which everything that moves in front of the camera wears make-up. She IS age-appropriate, he screams. Her tousled hair is braided, and she has a concealing camisole on under the frilly top that would be sexy on an older person. Her lipstick is subtle, we left off the iridescent eye-shadow, and snipped the false eyelashes to an almost-believable length, which is to say, half the length mandated for a mascara ad. Liquid eyeliner?Everyone must wear liquid eyeliner, or we are hopelessly out of touch. We put eyeliner on an INFANT last week, after it fell asleep.
Pass the LipSmacker.
December 28th, 2010 at 7:24 pm
The entire photo shoot eseven worse; the clothing choices are entirely inappropriate. While not quite stripper-iffice, they’re not exactly DeGrassi, either. The Project Rungay guys had a good review of it, even if I do think they didn’t go quite far enough:
http://tomandlorenzo2.blogspot.com/2010/12/elle-fanning-for-interview.html
December 29th, 2010 at 11:30 am
Eurgh. Looking at that first photo, before I even read what you’ve written, I said to myself, “Yikes! She looks about nine and yet twenty-four.” This helps me put my finger on what horrifies (and, yes, fascinates) me about things like junior miss beauty pageant contestants: the cognitive dissonance between their adult makeup, clothing, and behavior, and their actual youth–their still-babyish features, etc. It creates a kind of ambiguity that I find profoundly creepy.
I once watched a performance of tango by a pair of similarly weirdly ageless junior ballroom performers. They were probably about twelve or thirteen. Tango has a reputation of being a dance of passion and heartbreak–and I found myself wondering, as I watched, “What does this pair of infants know about heartbreak, really?”
Do these kids know about what they are doing?
January 24th, 2011 at 3:28 pm
Yes scary indeed. I do however think that there is a certain maturity about these kids (and when I say these I mean the Fanning kids) that preserves their innocence.
This specific photo shoot was tastefully done, artistically.
I do agree with you however about the fact that her age can be misconstrued.
It makes me think that if done properly, a photo shoot for a young girl of this age can make her feel/look beautiful without objectifying her.