Chaumont-Zaerpour
Even Chloë Sevigny—quirky, award-winning actor and one of fashion’s most cherished It girls since the ’90s—struggles with the impossible beauty standards that continue to plague our society.
“I think because I’m so involved in fashion, there’s a pressure to maintain a sense of whatever it is that I’ve cultivated,” she says in her May cover story for Harper’s Bazaar. “You know what I mean? And so that can sometimes be challenging, and wanting to not disappoint people with my looks.”
At 51, Sevigny is still walking runways (Miu Miu, this March), and booking major film roles and fashion campaigns. She is stunning, cool, and widely respected, but in her mind, she doesn’t feel like “a part of Hollywood,” and still makes herself flash a little smile in front of cameras to avoid showing her “resting-bitch, dour, whatever, old-lady face.”
“The more challenging aspects and more annoying aspects are the way we’re photographed now: phones, public, the lighting on the red carpet, the lighting on the runways. Nobody’s doing anybody any favors,” she said. “There’s no more glamour or nuance to it. As an aging woman, it sounds less enjoyable to be a part of all that, because it just feels really vulnerable and exposed, and then you’re just being picked apart on the internet.”
Chaumont-Zaerpour
Sevigny has not gotten any “major” work done—nothing that would truly change her face—but she does have difficulty with the whole aging thing.
“But I think also for women, if you were always touted as ‘the most beautiful woman in the world,’ it must be just really, really challenging [to age],” she continued. “I don’t have that. I’ve never felt that.”
“I never felt pretty my whole life,” Sevigny said. “There were very pretty girls in my class, very conventionally pretty, especially within the ’80s standards of what that meant. I knew that I wasn’t. I’m the unconventional beauty.”
Early on, Sevigny leaned into alternatives for fitting in—funky fashion, bold haircuts, niche movie roles. She has carved her own space in every industry she has dominated, and that is beautiful.