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Kate Winslet explains why women become more beautiful as they get older

She's not wrong.

Photo credit: Movieway PL

Kate Winslet on TIFF red carpet in 2017

In 2005, Kate Winslet was named one of PEOPLE magazine's Most Beautiful People. But even then, at age 29, Winslet had a remarkably grounded view of beauty. When asked what made her feel beautiful, she said, "The happiness I feel in having a family has brought me a real beauty."

Nearly two decades later, Winslet's take on beauty is even more revealing of her down-to-earth character. In a video sit-down with Harper's Bazaar UK, the 49-year-old actor shared some of her life lessons on different topics, and in responding to what she's learned about beauty, she shared:

"Number one is that women get more beautiful as they get older, for sure, because our faces become more a part of who we are, they sit better on our bone structure, they have more life, they have more history. Things I find incredibly beautiful are wrinkles around the eyes, the backs of hands. I think those things are very beautiful.”

She also talked about the importance of taking care of yourself from the inside. "Not just what you eat and how you look after yourself from a nutritional standpoint, but how you look after yourself from a mental wellness standpoint," she said. "How you feel about yourself emotionally, physically. Your place within the world. How you walk through the world. How you live with integrity and sincerity. I think those things matter and those things do come out in how we look and subsequently, of course, how we feel. And beauty is really a feeling, I don't think it's a thing that we look at."

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People loved Winslet's commentary on aging and beauty, which run counter to so much of the societal messaging we get about wrinkles and other signs of aging being ugly or undesirable.

"As a little girl I remember looking up at my piano teacher as she sat next to me on the piano bench and I looked forward to getting crows feet like she had because I thought she was so beautiful! 😍"

"To me, this is an obvious truth. I feel sorry for people who cannot see the beauty in an ageing face. It's like going to an historic city like Venice and wanting to put new plaster or new facades over all the crumbling walls."

"Every line tells a story. Growing old is a privilege. It’s incumbent upon all of us to unlearn the lies we’ve been sold by the beauty industry that only youth is beautiful."

"More of this thinking please 🙌❤️ let’s celebrate what is natural and re-balance our attitudes towards aging. As a 45 year old woman who is about to be a grandmother this video made me feel really good 😌🦋🙏🏼✨"

"My AGE is a BLESSING not a BOUNDARY.🔥"

"Exactly one of the reasons I adore Kate Winslet and will watch anything she’s in. So strong. So wise. So real. So fully human. A luminous beauty — and she’s right, she is more beautiful with age. Even when she plays characters with very plain make-up and clothes."

In the full video, Winslet also shared what makes her feel beautiful:

"I think the answer to that question is that it just changes all the time. Often I will feel my most beautiful when I'm just relaxing. I'm working on achieving the relaxing thing more and more. In fact, this year I'm doing quite a lot of that. But often I will feel my most beautiful, perhaps, when I'm just at home with Ned and the children, just being my natural self."

Winslet has previously shared that women get more powerful and sexy in their 40s, which is music to middle-aged ears:

"I think women come into their 40s, certainly mid-40s, thinking: ‘Oh well, this is the beginning of the decline and things start to change and fade and slide in directions that I don't want them to go in anymore.’ And I've just decided no," she said. “We become more woman, more powerful, more sexy. We grow into ourselves more, we have the opportunity to speak and speak our mind and not be afraid of what people think of us, not care what we look like quite so much. I think it's amazing."

In her Bazaar UK video, Winslet also shared what she's learned about friendship, confidence, style, empowerment and more. Watch the full video here:

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

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Pop Culture

'God, what if I was 15?': Julia Roberts responds to being shamed in a photo with her niece

It opened her eyes to the toxicity of social media.

via U.S. Department of State/Wikimedia Commons and Dominick D/Wikimedia Commons

Julia Roberts and Emma Roberts

Actress Julia Roberts was late to the game when it came to joining social media, so she was blown away when she finally saw first-hand how toxic it could be. She started an Instagram account in June of 2018 and, shortly after, was the target of trolls mocking her appearance in a post by her niece.

Roberts was upset about the negative comments people made about her looks and then was gutted when she considered social media's effect on young women. In a 2018 interview with Oprah Winfrey for Harper’s Bazaar, Julia recounted the story.

“Although something did happen recently on my niece Emma’s Instagram that I think taught me a lot about what it’s like being a young person in today’s society. One weekend morning Emma slept over, and we got up and were having tea and playing cards and having this beautiful morning, and then a couple of days later, she posted a picture of us,” Roberts recalled.

“And the number of people who felt absolutely required to talk about how terrible I looked in the picture—that I’m not aging well, that I look like a man, why would she even post a picture like this when I look that terrible!” she continued. “And I was amazed at how that made me feel. I’m a 50-year-old woman and I know who I am, and still my feelings got hurt. I was sad that people couldn’t see the point of it, the sweetness of it, the absolute shining joy of that photo. I thought, ‘What if I was 15?’”

Beauty influencer Samantha Marika combined the audio of Julia telling the story, added it to the candid photo of her and Emma, and posted it to Instagram, and it went viral.

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Julia’s concerns about teenage mental health aren’t unfounded.

A 2022 report by Pew Research shows that online bullying is pervasive among teenagers and looks are a common target. “Nearly half of U.S. teens have been bullied or harassed online, with physical appearance being seen as a relatively common reason why,” the report said. “Older teen girls are especially likely to report being targeted by online abuse overall and because of their appearance.”

Even though online bullying is common, those who watched Marika’s video were disturbed by what happened to Roberts and her young niece.

“Before I listened to the whole thing I thought to myself how wholesome this photo was that the two of them are playing cards and look so happy! People are really sad and depressed that they wanna judge on how someone should look it’s the saddest thing about humans. We can’t even see joy anymore,” ChantsBoomBoom wrote in the comments.

Even though Roberts was disturbed by the comments she saw on Instagram, she’s glad that it helped her grasp what’s happening to young people online.

“I was so happy that happened because I had this whole new glimpse into a way of living that I didn’t get at all,” she told Winfrey. “You have to go through things to understand them, and this was just a little paper cut of what can really go on with social media.”

This article originally appeared on 2.16.24

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Ballerina Misty Copeland is no stranger to making history on the stage.

All images by Ken Browar and Deborah Ory from the NYC Dance Project, used with permission.

Just last summer, she became the first black woman to become a principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre. It was a proud and empowering moment for people everywhere (and about time!).

Now, she's re-creating history for the camera.

Copeland re-creating Degas' "The Star."

In the upcoming March 2016 issue of Harper's Bazaar, she's helped re-create some of the world's most iconic ballet paintings and sculptures by famous artist Edgar Degas.

The spread comes in advance of a new exhibition opening up at New York's Museum of Modern Art that highlight Degas' work called "Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty."

The photos are beautiful and impressively spot-on. But they also come with a deeper meaning: The faces of ballet are changing.

Copeland as Degas' "Dancer."

Degas' focus on dancers helped him create some of the most popular images in 19th-century art. Ken Browar and Deborah Ory, the project's photographers and founders of the NYC Dance Project, wanted to bring them into the 21st century.

"It wasn’t so much us trying to reproduce Degas' paintings as it was to bring Misty into them, and to bring the ballet community up-to-date," Ken told Upworthy.

"We’re seeing all body types, all types of people: black, white, Asian, you name it. We’re seeing everything. It's time that gets reflected."

Copeland as "Swaying Dancer (Dancer in Green)."

Photographing Misty as if she were in a Degas painting shows the world that ballet doesn't have a specific race or ethnicity.

You don't need me to tell you that the industry has been overwhelmingly white throughout history.

Just picture a traditional ballerina in your head, and you'll recognize that truth. Even though the times have changed, though, it's still been difficult to find images of dancers that represent the variety of shapes, sizes, ages, and backgrounds they actually come in.

That's one of the reasons Ken and Deborah started the NYC Dance Project: to show and celebrate the dancers of today.

"A few years ago, our younger daughter wanted to have her room redecorated and wanted to have her favorite dancers hanging up, and we had a hard time finding photographs of them," Deborah recalled over the phone. "There wasn’t that much of the current stars out there. Ken was like, 'Let’s just photograph them ourselves.'"

With that, the NYC Dance Project was born. A study of dance and movement in photographic form, their work has gained quite a following in just a few years, with a book expected to drop this fall.

"I definitely feel like I can see myself in that sculpture — she just seems content but also reserved," Copeland said about re-creating Degas' "Little Dancer Aged Fourteen."

One of the keys to their success may be where they photograph most of their subjects: in their living room in Brooklyn. It creates a more comfortable and intimate atmosphere, though Deborah noted, "sometimes we are literally moving our cats out of the photo."

Together, they're part of a larger push to move diversity in dance forward. Because not only does a broader mix of people help to show more girls and boys that they do have a place in the industry — combating the phenomenon that you can't be what you can't see — it's financially smart too.

More diverse dance companies create bigger, more diverse audiences. And you know what that means? Cha-ching.

Like Ken and Deborah, Copeland knows that the ballet world has a long way to go, but that this is a good start.

She's shattering the glass ceiling, pointe shoes and all, but she knows it's not just about her.

Real talk on "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert"/YouTube.

There's so much talent and untapped potential out there. Someday we'll get to a place where people of all races and ethnicities see opportunities to succeed in the world of ballet and in many other stereotyped professions.

In the meantime, it's encouraging to see those leading the way into the future on the stage, behind the camera, with a paintbrush, or with their words.

Check out this behind-the-scenes look at how they channeled Edgar Degas' work for Harper's Bazaar. They nailed it.

After 50 years, a controversial calendar surprised the world in a wonderful way.

"I felt I looked more beautiful than I've ever felt in my life," Amy Schumer says about the Pirelli calendar.

Progress is usually measured in calendar years, not calendars themselves. But this may be an exception.

For more than 50 years, Italian tire manufacturer Pirelli has released an annual calendar. Typically filled with pictures of models posing provocatively in various states of undress, the almost always NSFW calendar was the very epitome of the adage "sex sells."

For the 2016 calendar, they decided to try something a little different.

All GIFs from Harper's Bazaar/YouTube.

The 2016 Pirelli calendar features women ranging in age from 19 to 82, and only one of them is a professional model.

This is a marked difference from calendars in past years that featured the likes of Adriana Lima, Kate Moss, Karlie Kloss, Miranda Kerr, and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.

But the 2016 calendar lineup — shot by Annie Leibovitz — features writer and editor Tavi Gevinson, tennis champion Serena Williams, artist Yoko Ono, author Fran Lebowitz, rock legend Patti Smith, famed producer Kathleen Kennedy, businesswoman Mellody Hobson, director Ava DuVernay, philanthropist Agnes Gund, visual artist Shirin Neshat, model (and Pirelli calendar alum) Natalia Vodianova, and comedian Amy Schumer.

The calendar embraces the fact that women come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. It's a feminist statement.

And that seems to be a sentiment shared by many of the calendar's stars. For example, here's DuVernay, the history-making director of "Selma," on what the calendar's shift means to her.

Neshat echoes those feelings with her own statement. What's interesting, however — and what might actually be the biggest sign that yes, this is a step in the right direction despite there being so much more progress to be made — is how simple these goals seem.

Honoring women based on accomplishment and not solely on youth or appearance shouldn't have to be a statement in and of itself — but it is.

There's no real "shock value" in overt, hyper-sexualized pictorials anymore.

"A white, able-bodied cisgendered woman being naked is just not revolutionary anymore," Rookie Magazine founder and editor-in-chief Tavi Gevinson tells the New York Times. "I don't think anyone is going to be like, 'Damn, I wanted those naked chicks.'"

There is no shortage of "naked chicks" in magazines or online. But places that used to use sexualized nudity to draw attention — such as Playboy, which has announced a sunset of the magazine's famous nude photo spreads, and the rebranding efforts of magazines like Maxim — are finding there can be more success in simply taking things from a more real (and less airbrushed) angle.

The 2016 Pirelli calendar promotes self-love and finding your own definition of beauty.

No, it's not "Real women have curves" or Meghan Trainor lyrics about how awful "skinny bitches" are. Those cases simply trade in one pain point for another. We can do better.

Amy Schumer tweeted her picture from the calendar — in which she's wearing nearly nothing — along with a perfect rundown of the contradictions women (and all people, really) are forced to navigate on a daily basis.

But during a behind-the-scenes interview, she really summed up what makes Pirelli's 2016 calendar so great: She can see herself in it. Literally.

And while unlike Schumer, you and I may not actually see ourselves in the pages, maybe we can catch glimpses of ourselves a little bit here or a little bit there in the calendar's pages — the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly — more so than ever before.

2015 saw some great progress for women around the world, and this is a great way to keep up that momentum in the new year. What better way to start 2016 than with some love and acceptance?

harper s bazaar

Kate Winslet explains why women become more beautiful as they get older

She's not wrong.

'God, what if I was 15?': Julia Roberts responds to being shamed in a photo with her niece

It opened her eyes to the toxicity of social media.

Misty Copeland puts a 21st-century twist on history's famous ballet works.

Ballerina Misty Copeland is no stranger to making history on the stage.

Now, she's re-creating history for the camera.

The photos are beautiful and impressively spot-on. But they also come with a deeper meaning: The faces of ballet are changing.

You don't need me to tell you that the industry has been overwhelmingly white throughout history.

Like Ken and Deborah, Copeland knows that the ballet world has a long way to go, but that this is a good start.

After 50 years, a controversial calendar surprised the world in a wonderful way.

"I felt I looked more beautiful than I've ever felt in my life," Amy Schumer says about the Pirelli calendar.

Progress is usually measured in calendar years, not calendars themselves. But this may be an exception.

The 2016 Pirelli calendar features women ranging in age from 19 to 82, and only one of them is a professional model.

The calendar embraces the fact that women come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. It's a feminist statement.

There's no real "shock value" in overt, hyper-sexualized pictorials anymore.

The 2016 Pirelli calendar promotes self-love and finding your own definition of beauty.

Learn more about the making of Pirelli's calendar in this video from Harper's Bazaar.

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