Why is the world losing its mind about Renee Zellweger's face?

Update:

Renee Zellweger has responded to the day’s tsunami of rumours about her face.

The actress, 45, told People magazine: “I’m glad folks think I look different! I’m living a different, happy, more fulfilling life, and I’m thrilled that perhaps it shows.”

“It seems the folks who come digging around for some nefarious truth which doesn’t exist won’t get off my porch until I answer the door,” she said of speculation that she’d gone under the knife,” she said.

“People don’t know me in my 40s… Perhaps I look different. Who doesn’t as they get older?! Ha. But I am different. I’m happy,” she said.

Previously, Mamamia wrote:

The entire universe is talking about Renee Zellweger’s face today. And no, we are not exaggerating in the least: The. Entire. Universe.

Hundreds and thousands of google searches, endless online magazine stories and a flurry of social media reveal that right now Zellweger’s face is pretty much the number one topic of conversation globally.

Why? Because Zellweger used to look like this:

And on Monday night, at an awards event for ELLE, she walked the red carpet and looked like this:

Renee Zellweger is 46-years-old. She is a woman who is getting older in a profession that’s entirely consumed with appearance and hotness. With image and ageing. If she had attended the Elle Women In Hollywood Awards in LA with grey roots and crows’ feet, we would be having a very different conversation. But she attended the Awards with a smooth forehead, a questionable tan, and possibly puffier cheeks.

As a result, this is the conversation everyone is having:

Today’s headline in the Daily Mail. 

Cue phones ringing in cosmetic surgeons‘ offices around the world. None of these people will have met or treated Renee, but they will be quoted as authorities on what what she may or may not have done to her face.

Yes, Renee looks different. Definitely different. But shocking? No.

Renee Zellweger was once the young ingenue. Remember Jerry Macguire?

She is now in her mid-40s. She is trying to stay relevant and employed in an industry that considers women ‘over the hill’ at age 28.

An industry where every year there is a new young actress – Jennifer Lawrence, anyone? – who is every bit as talented as you are, but who everyone isn’t tired of looking at, whose private life hasn’t already been eviscerated by the tabloids (“She was married for like, FOUR MONTHS”) and crucially, whose body and face conforms to every conventional beauty standard – pillowy, pert and unlined. For actresses – but certainly not only for actresses – as Renee’s friend Cameron Diaz says, “It is almost as if we have failed if we don’t remain 25 for the rest of our lives.”

Given all of this, why are we in the least bit surprised that a beautiful woman in her 40s has succumbed to the pressure to alter her face to look more youthful than she is? We can write that off as some sort of character flaw and a tragic weakness on her part, or we can recognise that it’s Hollywood’s obsession with youth and beauty – and therefore our own obsession with youth and beauty – that leads women to consent to needles full of chemicals being jabbed into their faces, and to create an enormous medical industrial complex of doctors, happy to slice into their skin with scalpels.

Of course, it isn’t only celebrities who succumb to this pressure to look young. Any woman over the age of 25 has probably had a moment of dark panic about their face giving them away when inside they still feel relevant, energetic and young. But celebrities are the most visible examples of womanhood, standing up there on the red carpet, reflecting back all our prejudices and insecurities.

So yes, Renee Zellweger has done something to her face. Something drastic.

But let’s dial down the faux shock and surprise, shall we?

Here are some more pictures of Renee’s transformation…