There’s more to beauty than sheer physical perfection

GWYNETH Paltrow at Apple Store Soho in New York City AFP

Poor Gwyneth Paltrow. There she was, minding her own business, occasionally starring in films like “Iron Man 3” while living the good life with her husband and children. Then, all of a sudden, People magazine chose her as its most beautiful woman of the world for 2013—and a flurry of dissenting opinions hit the fan!

Apparently, there were some people who (loudly and vociferously) didn’t agree with the magazine’s choice—but, instead of taking it out on the publication, they focused on dissing her!

In their bilious views, it wasn’t possible for a now 40-year-old wife and mother who acted only occasionally to “deserve” the coveted “title,” which should instead have gone to a younger, more with-it and more ravishingly gorgeous goddess of pneumatic perfection.

Paltrow may have been deemed luminous and gorgeous when she was in her 20s—but at 40? Come on!

Naturally, Gwyneth’s bashers were in turn roundly trounced by people who disagreed with their obvious disdain for the over-the-hill, mature beauty. They railed against the haters’ implied criticism of all famous women who resort to the services of stylists and personal trainers who help them keep the inevitable signs of physical wear and tear at bay.

How different is the mind-set in Europe, where mature or maturing beauty isn’t disdained or scorned, but is in fact celebrated and desired!

Famous beauties like Melina Mercouri, Audrey Hepburn and Anouk Aimée were rhapsodized over even as they aged, because their mature beauty spoke volumes about how they had, oh, so passionately and audaciously lived and loved—and the many lessons and insights they learned and “earned” along the way!

Yes, Gwyneth Paltrow may no longer look great in a string bikini, but why would she even want to? There are scores of much younger and pneumatically toned starlets out there who can more than adequately provide that kicky and kinky kind of community service?

We need the more accomplished and “validated” likes of Paltrow, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Kate Winslet to remind us that there’s more to beauty than physical perfection. It’s true, test and vindication come after the law of gravity has done its worst—and yet the mature screen icon’s thespic gift survives brilliantly and shines—at its very best.

True enough, only a week after the storm over Paltrow’s “undeserved” People magazine honor had boiled and roiled over; the naysayers had slunk back into the hole of anonymity from which they had crawled, and Paltrow’s defenders were clearly having the last word.

Among them was the no-nonsense and no-BS Ellen DeGeneres, who even went as far as literally crowning Paltrow, with a tiara and everything, on her hit TV talk show.

Long live the quintessential queen!