Barefaced: Ageing women stars, ‘no make-up’ photography and authentic selfhood in the 2017 Pirelli calendar

TY - JOUR

T1 - Barefaced: Ageing women stars, ‘no make-up’ photography and authentic selfhood in the 2017 Pirelli calendar

AU - Jermyn, Deborah

PY - 2020/6/1

Y1 - 2020/6/1

N2 - Celebrity culture has long been driven to seek out and appraise signifiersof authenticity. For women celebrities, a willingness to sharephotographs of themselves make-up free has become a hazy butprovocative marker of a certain ‘barefaced’ daring, in which they(seemingly) come closer to imparting their ‘real self’. In practice, theseimages are still heavily mediated, often contested, and have becomepart of the celebrity machine itself; indeed I argue here that, for all thestaging of candour and spontaneity they can enact, they are increasinglyeven an expected component of women’s celebrity performance. Whathappens to women’s star status or signification, then, when they foregothe comfortingly illusionary and perfecting properties of cosmetics for‘make-up free’ photography? And how are the stakes entailed in suchphotography more challengingly laden, more hazardous, but also morepotentially gratifying, for ageing women stars? This analysis looks mostparticularly at the widely debated 2017 Pirelli calendar as a preeminentexample of the contentious cultural currency of such star-imagery,photographed ‘make-up free’ by Peter Lindbergh and featuring maturewoman actors including Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman and RobinWright. Constructing a brief critical timeline of the escalation of themake-up free movement across popular culture and social media inrecent years; incorporating extant research drawn from disciplinesincluding cultural and celebrity studies and cultural gerontology;undertaking textual analysis of the 2017 calendar and critical discourseanalysis of its promotion and media reception, the work bringsinterdisciplinary approaches together with a breadth of allied culturalartefacts. Interrogating how ageing women stars may effectively marshalmake-up free photography to signal their growing gravitas, I forge newinsights into both the polemical meanings of the repudiation of make-upin contemporary visual culture, and the import of make-up forconceptualising the nexus of ageing, gender and stardom.© 2020, The Author(s). This is an author produced version of a paper published in EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CULTURAL STUDIES uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self- archiving policy. The final published version (version of record) is available online at the link. Some minor differences between this version and the final published version may remain. We suggest you refer to the final published version should you wish to cite from it.

AB - Celebrity culture has long been driven to seek out and appraise signifiersof authenticity. For women celebrities, a willingness to sharephotographs of themselves make-up free has become a hazy butprovocative marker of a certain ‘barefaced’ daring, in which they(seemingly) come closer to imparting their ‘real self’. In practice, theseimages are still heavily mediated, often contested, and have becomepart of the celebrity machine itself; indeed I argue here that, for all thestaging of candour and spontaneity they can enact, they are increasinglyeven an expected component of women’s celebrity performance. Whathappens to women’s star status or signification, then, when they foregothe comfortingly illusionary and perfecting properties of cosmetics for‘make-up free’ photography? And how are the stakes entailed in suchphotography more challengingly laden, more hazardous, but also morepotentially gratifying, for ageing women stars? This analysis looks mostparticularly at the widely debated 2017 Pirelli calendar as a preeminentexample of the contentious cultural currency of such star-imagery,photographed ‘make-up free’ by Peter Lindbergh and featuring maturewoman actors including Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman and RobinWright. Constructing a brief critical timeline of the escalation of themake-up free movement across popular culture and social media inrecent years; incorporating extant research drawn from disciplinesincluding cultural and celebrity studies and cultural gerontology;undertaking textual analysis of the 2017 calendar and critical discourseanalysis of its promotion and media reception, the work bringsinterdisciplinary approaches together with a breadth of allied culturalartefacts. Interrogating how ageing women stars may effectively marshalmake-up free photography to signal their growing gravitas, I forge newinsights into both the polemical meanings of the repudiation of make-upin contemporary visual culture, and the import of make-up forconceptualising the nexus of ageing, gender and stardom.© 2020, The Author(s). This is an author produced version of a paper published in EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CULTURAL STUDIES uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self- archiving policy. The final published version (version of record) is available online at the link. Some minor differences between this version and the final published version may remain. We suggest you refer to the final published version should you wish to cite from it.

KW - Ageing celebrity; make-up; stardom and authenticity; Pirelli calendar; #nomakeup; gender and celebrity

U2 - 10.1177/1367549420919891

DO - 10.1177/1367549420919891

M3 - Article

SN - 1367-5494

JO - European Journal of Cultural Studies

JF - European Journal of Cultural Studies

ER -