What Hollywood Gets Right (and Wrong) About Women’s Beauty

Hollywood has long been the epicenter of global entertainment, a powerful cultural force that shapes ideals, trends, and public perception—especially when it comes to beauty. From silver screen icons like Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn to modern-day stars like Zendaya and Margot Robbie, the portrayal of women’s beauty in Hollywood continues to have a significant impact on how beauty is defined and understood around the world.

While the film industry has taken steps toward embracing more diversity and authenticity in recent years, many of Hollywood’s portrayals of women’s beauty still cling to outdated or narrow standards. This article explores what Hollywood gets right—and wrong—about women’s beauty, examining its progress, pitfalls, and the ongoing need for change.

What Hollywood Gets Right

1. Celebration of Glamour and Individual Style

One undeniable strength of Hollywood is its ability to showcase glamour in a way that inspires confidence and creativity. Through costume design, makeup artistry, and cinematography, Hollywood celebrates the transformative power of beauty. Red carpet events, fashion-forward films, and biopics often highlight how personal style can be a form of empowerment and self-expression.

Actresses like Lupita Nyong’o, Cate Blanchett, and Tilda Swinton are often praised for using their appearances to make artistic and political statements. Hollywood at its best recognizes that beauty can be bold, avant-garde, and meaningful, not just ornamental.

2. Spotlight on Aging Gracefully

Although ageism remains a problem, Hollywood has made strides in featuring older actresses in powerful roles that highlight mature beauty. Actresses like Helen Mirren, Angela Bassett, and Jamie Lee Curtis have defied the industry’s former obsession with youth, proving that beauty doesn't fade with age—it evolves.

TV shows and films that highlight older women as multidimensional characters rather than stereotypes are increasingly gaining popularity, signaling a cultural shift in how aging and beauty intersect.

3. Recent Push Toward Diversity

In the last decade, there has been a growing push for greater representation of diverse skin tones, body types, and cultural backgrounds. Actresses like Mindy Kaling, Viola Davis, and America Ferrera have challenged the conventional Hollywood beauty mold and opened doors for more inclusive casting.

Films like Black Panther, Everything Everywhere All At Once, and Barbie brought fresh narratives and visuals that celebrate a broader range of beauty ideals, helping normalize features and appearances that were historically marginalized in Western media.

What Hollywood Gets Wrong

1. Unrealistic Beauty Standards

Despite some progress, Hollywood often continues to promote unrealistic and homogenized beauty standards. From digitally altered skin to surgically enhanced features, many actresses are presented as flawless—an image that’s nearly impossible for real women to emulate without access to professional stylists, personal trainers, and cosmetic procedures.

These standards disproportionately affect younger audiences, who are bombarded with idealized images of beauty that suggest a woman’s worth is tied to her appearance. The pressure to conform to these ideals can contribute to body dysmorphia, low self-esteem, and disordered eating.

2. The Thin Ideal Still Dominates

While body positivity has become a louder conversation, the dominant body type in Hollywood remains slim—often extremely so. Plus-size women are still underrepresented or relegated to comedic or sidekick roles. Even when body diversity is present, it’s often tokenistic or presented as a "quirk" rather than normalized beauty.

When films cast curvier actresses like Rebel Wilson or Melissa McCarthy, their weight often becomes a central theme of their characters, reinforcing the idea that being outside the thin ideal is something to explain or make jokes about, rather than just a normal variation of the human form.

3. Racial and Ethnic Erasure

Though progress has been made, white-centric beauty ideals still dominate Hollywood. Eurocentric features such as light skin, straight hair, and slim noses are often glorified, while features associated with Black, Indigenous, Asian, and other non-white identities are sidelined or exoticized.

This erasure is further complicated by the casting of white actresses in roles meant for people of color, as well as the frequent lack of diverse hair and makeup professionals on set. Actresses of color have spoken out about having to bring their own products or stylists to set because the team was ill-equipped to work with non-white skin tones or hair textures.

4. Anti-Aging Obsession

While older women are becoming more visible, there is still a pervasive fear of aging in Hollywood. Wrinkles, gray hair, and other natural signs of aging are often concealed or "fixed" with Botox, fillers, or CGI. The industry's fixation on youth suggests that a woman’s beauty—and by extension, her relevance—has an expiration date.

This obsession has created a strange paradox: actresses are expected to look youthful well into their 40s and 50s, but are criticized for undergoing the cosmetic procedures that make that possible. It sets up a no-win situation for women in the industry.

5. The Male Gaze Still Shapes Beauty Narratives

Many of Hollywood’s beauty standards are still filtered through the lens of male desire. Female characters are often styled, lit, and shot in ways that emphasize their sexual appeal rather than their individuality or authenticity. Even when a film’s narrative isn’t overtly romantic or sexual, the aesthetic treatment of female characters often reinforces the idea that they exist to be looked at.

Although female directors and writers have brought more nuance to these portrayals in recent years, mainstream blockbusters and big-budget franchises frequently fall back on old tropes that reduce women to eye candy.

Why This Matters

The way beauty is portrayed in film and television doesn’t just affect the entertainment industry—it shapes societal expectations, personal identities, and cultural norms. Girls and women around the world internalize the images they see, whether they realize it or not. When beauty is narrowly defined, it sends a message that only certain types of women are desirable, lovable, or successful.

Moreover, these portrayals influence everything from hiring practices in professional industries to how women are treated in healthcare. Biases around beauty can lead to real-world discrimination, often in ways that intersect with race, age, weight, and socioeconomic status.

The Role of the Audience

Audiences today are more media literate than ever before, and that awareness can be a powerful tool for change. By demanding more diverse casting, supporting films that break away from traditional beauty norms, and challenging the status quo on social media, viewers have the power to influence what Hollywood produces.

The popularity of indie films, streaming content, and platforms like TikTok and YouTube has also democratized beauty narratives. Creators who don’t fit the traditional Hollywood mold can now reach massive audiences and reshape public perceptions in real time.

Moving Forward: What Needs to Change

To continue evolving, Hollywood must:

Expand Representation: True progress means making diverse portrayals of beauty the norm, not the exception. This includes women of different races, ages, sizes, abilities, and gender identities.
Hire Inclusive Teams: More diversity behind the camera—directors, writers, stylists, makeup artists—leads to more authentic representations on screen.
Normalize Aging and Imperfection: Beauty should not be synonymous with youth or flawlessness. Hollywood must begin to value authenticity over airbrushed perfection.
Tell More Varied Stories: Beauty doesn’t always have to be the focal point. Telling stories where a woman’s appearance isn’t central to her character opens up new possibilities for representation.
Deconstruct the Male Gaze: Moving away from visual storytelling that objectifies women can lead to more complex, humanizing portrayals.

Conclusion

Hollywood holds a mirror up to society—but it also distorts that reflection. While it has the power to celebrate the beauty and individuality of women in transformative ways, it often falls back on limiting ideals rooted in age-old biases and commercial interests.

The good news is that change is possible—and already underway. With increasing pressure from audiences, the growing success of inclusive media, and the voices of women in the industry demanding better, Hollywood has the opportunity to redefine what beauty looks like in the 21st century.

Real beauty is not a trend. It's not a body type, a skin tone, or a hairstyle. It’s authenticity, confidence, and diversity—and Hollywood is just beginning to catch up.