Barbra Streisand breaking beauty stereotypes

Barbra Streisand breaking beauty stereotypes
As the Paris fashion magazines regularly supply the world with new clothes, Hollywood has for many years offered the viewer various versions of movie stars. The enigmatic Greta Garbo, the victorious Marlene Dietrich, the charming Dina Durbin, the seductive Elizabeth Taylor, the exquisite Audrey Hepburn, attracting Marilyn Monroe, and the determined Jane Fonda …
However, the suicide of Monroe in 1962 seemed to violate something in the orderliness and methodicity with which the Hollywood conveyor “threw out” the newly-made idols of the crowd. Only in 1968, after a six-year break, the public was offered another star named Barbra Streisand.
Considering her on the big plans in the film “Funny Girl”, the American spectator was discouraged: the star turned out to be ugly. Yes, defiantly ugly! This has not happened yet. Other movie heroines, however, fell into funny situations and seemed funny, but at the same time they were very attractive and pretty. And Barbra Streisand impressed not only the simple-hearted public, but also the sophisticated criticism with her incoherent figure and asymmetrical face. Magazines Look, Life, Time, Newsweek, competing in wit, ridiculed her “crooked legs”, “slanting eyes looking at each other”, and, most importantly, “long nose”, which, according to one journalist, “starts from the roots of her hair and ends at a trombone in an orchestra.”

Not without malice, the reviewers noted the monstrous bad taste with which Streisand dresses. They remembered that when in 1962 Barbra first appeared at the contest of singers and naively, with a child’s voice she sang a song “We do not fear a gray wolf”, then she was wearing a dress of 1925 bought in a junk shop, some repainted boa, monstrous old-fashioned shoes, etc.
And yet the fact remains: the “Funny Girl” had a great success.

The actress surrounded herself with a certain aura of “eastern mystery.” When at the beginning of the singer’s career a journalist approached her to take the first interview and asked her where she was born, Barbra said: “In Madagascar.” Subsequently, a critic from Time Magazine commented on this statement: “Her eyes really remind us of the African-Asian world, and her Mesopotamian face seems to hint at the fact that the actress was born somewhere between the Tigris and the Euphrates. In fact, however, she was born in Brooklyn, New York.”

In childhood and adolescence, Barbara grew up an abandoned girl, without father, entirely left to herself. Often she climbed on the roof of the house, smoked there secretly and indulged in sweet dreams. She will definitely become a movie star! But after all, all the movie stars are beauties. And what should she do with her long nose, slanting eyes? Barbara ran down to a tiny flat where she lived with her mother and brother, and began to feverishly put on her mother’s dresses, and then, standing in front of the mirror, applied cosmetics on the cheeks, lips, and the eyes. Then she seemed almost beautiful. If someone had told her at that moment that she was ridiculous, Barbara would probably have burst into tears. And later, while studying at the school of dramatic art, she was offended when she saw that the students laughed at her.

At the same time, she realized that if she can not compete with other students in beauty and femininity, she must take something else. And Streisand begins to develop her own style in life and on stage. The basis of this style is extravagance. It was then that black boa appeared, red wigs, old-fashioned dresses, etc. She wanted her name to be more catchy, original. And from her usual, mediocre, very common in both America and Europe name – Barbara, she decisively crossed out the second “a”, turning into “Barbra”.

The desire for originality manifested itself in her first performance on the stage of the theater. It happened in the Broadway musical “You Get It All Right”, where the newly-born Barbra played the role of secretary of an important boss. When the curtain raised at the beginning of the play, this secretary had to stand alone on the stage. Thus, her song opened the show. But Streisand came up with an unexpected mise-en-scene. When the curtain went up, her secretary did not face the auditorium, but sat on a revolving stool near the desk. In this position, she sang, taking one telephone receiver, then another, recording something and turning to the audience, then sideways, then back. As a result, the debutante heard “bravo”!

A year later she was invited to the main role in the Broadway musical “The Funny Girl”, which was later screened by Hollywood.

The fate of the character of this musical – the operetta actress Fanny Bryce was much like the fate of Barbra Streisand. Funny is also ugly, ridiculous, funny, but very active, assertive, and active. Thanks to activity and talent, she achieves fame on the stage.

Not so long ago, Barbra Streisand’s outfits were indignant, even pointed a finger at her like a scarecrow, and in magazines she was laughed at for bad taste. And now the same magazines glorify her “irreproachable taste” and “unerring instinct of fashion”. “Since she became a superstar,” writes Newsweek, “her exotic clothes, bought in the shops of the junkies, and the style of Barbra’s behavior, and Barbra’s hair, and generally the whole appearance of Barbra Streisand, have become fashionable. Even to be ugly became fashionable.”

In all this, an unwritten Hollywood law manifests itself: the stars are a matter of mass imitation. Noteworthy, a contest of doubles Barbra Streisand was organized, in which twenty-eight women, similar to her, and two disguised men participated. The winner received the prize. So, Barbra, who for so long seemed like a refutation of all the standards of beauty and almost a deviation from the norm, became a trendsetter.

Was not that little glorious dream of a little Jewish girl from Brooklyn? Did not the eternal Hollywood fairy tale about Cinderella, who achieved her happiness, come to life in Streisand’s destiny? After all, her shoe has become a model for feet of all sizes. And her photographs take up a lot of place in today’s American magazines, as once the images of Marilyn Monroe – the sexual symbol of America.

But, according to the self-statements of Barbra Streisand, published in interviews, it’s unlikely that she felt happy. The position of the movie star clearly began to irritate her. “It’s all garbage,” the actress says with disgust.

And in the bright photos we will see Barbra in luxury outfits, at her car or at home with a dog in her arms. A lot has been written about the habits of the dog. But even more attention is paid to the wonderful house of Barbra in California.

However, Barbra still remembers with sadness the days of her early youth, when she, still unknown to anyone, lived with her ex-husband (actor Elliott Gould) in the attic, where “suddenly you had to wake up and grab a broom at night to drive out the rats.”
Now Barbra has to fight not from rats, but from annoying reporters. “The press does not give me a break,” she complains. “Every sneeze at once becomes the subject of gossip.”

The moral of this post is that it is necessary to believe in yourself, develop your talents, be self-sufficient. Love yourself, and the world will love you noticing the radiance of pure beauty, the one about which the poet Nikolai Zabolotsky wrote:
And if this is so, then what is beauty
And why is it deified by people?
The vessel is it, in which there is emptiness,
Or the fire that shimmers in the vessel?

Barbra Streisand breaking beauty stereotypes

Sources:
Actors of foreign cinema, 1980
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