Culture

E! News Says Anne Hathaway Is “Aging Backward” And What Do They Think A 30-Something Looks Like?

"I can't believe she's able to look like this at 70. It's truly magic."

by Reena Gupta  23 March 2022
anne hathaway photo

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Entertainment stalwarts E! Online jumped on Twitter over the weekend with what seemed like the express intention of pissing everyone off.

Specifically, they posted some pictures of Anne Hathaway and Jared Leto posing on the red carpet at the premiere for WeCrashed with the caption: “Did Anne Hathaway make a deal with the devil? She is literally aging backward.”

I mean, I’m not even sure there’s a word in the English language to describe what is going here. Is it a backhanded compliment? Some kind of… neg? Let’s just coin a term here and now: backdoor sexism.

As several people on Twitter have pointed out, Anne Hathaway is 39, so it’s a bit weird to accuse her of “ageing”, backward or otherwise. She’s only ageing in the same way that everyone is, from the moment they’re born. Meanwhile, Hathaway’s co-star Jared Leto, who is posing with her in one of the photos, is more than a decade older than Hathaway — but commentary about his ‘ageing’ process is curiously absent.

“I can’t believe she’s able to look like this at 70,” one Twitter user deadpanned. “It’s truly magic.”

To be fair, Jared Leto, alongside actors like Paul Rudd and Keanu Reeves, has also been praised for not “ageing”, but these actors are 50, 52 and 57 respectively, at which point most people do look quite different to what they did as young adults.

But in this case, Anne is in her 30s, and the overwhelming sentiment on Twitter seems to be: what do we expect her to look like?

It’s hard to imagine similar comments befalling a 39-year-old male actor. Where’s our tweet about Kieran Culkin ageing backwards? How about Jamie Dornan or Seth Rogen? You’d struggle to find descriptions of any of these men as “ageing”, whether wrapped up in a ‘deal with the devil’ compliment or not.

Anyway, I think I’ve made my point. It’s 2022, and sexism remains alive and well. At this point, though, it’s getting dull.

Photo Credit: Emma McIntyre/WireImage