I _x000D_ would close down all those teenage magazines that encourage young _x000D_ girls to diet. Who says that to be pretty you have to be thin? Some _x000D_ people look better thin and some don't. There is almost a standard being _x000D_ created where only thin is acceptable. The influence of those _x000D_ magazines on girls as young as 13 is horrific.
Interpretation
The quote challenges societal standards of beauty, particularly the emphasis on thinness for women.
Penelope Cruz criticizes the harmful influence of teenage magazines that promote the idea that being thin is the only way to be considered beautiful. She suggests that beauty comes in many forms and that the pressure to conform to unrealistic standards affects young girls negatively, particularly those as young as 13, leading to a damaging perception of self-worth and body image.
In practice
In a discussion about media influence on body image, this quote serves as an example of the negative impact of societal standards.
I've seen my grandmothers grow old and they are so beautiful, every wrinkle in their face tells a story. I want to feel that in 30 years. I would always choose that kind of beauty over that comes from having too much done to yourself.
I know a girl who just looks at her face in the medicine cabinet mirror and never looks below her shoulders, and she's four or five hundred pounds but she doesn't see all that, she just sees a beautiful face and therefore she thinks she's a beauty. And therefore, I think she's a beauty, too, because I usually accept people on the basis of their self-images, because their self-images have more to do with the way they think than their objective-images do.
Look, whenever I hear or read I’m beautiful, I simply don’t understand it … I’m certainly not beautiful in any conventional way. I didn't make my career on beauty.
There is one order of beauty which seems made to turn heads. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle.
I grew up in a world where a woman who looks like me, with my kind of skin and my kind of hair, was never considered to be beautiful.
How I feel about myself is more important than how I look. Feeling confident, being comfortable in your skin - that's what really makes you beautiful.
There is no shame in black beauty.
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