Awards season is just as much about "who wore what" as "who won what." We talk about the best dressed just as much as the winners for Best Actor and Actress.
Whether it be huge creations of fabric and tulle or barely covering slips that show some skin, celebrities wear anything to impress and show their glamourousness. It's a special occasion, right? Who knows, maybe you'll walk away with an award. You want to look stunning doing it, don't you?
Not Frances McDormand, who just won her third Oscar for Nomadland, which received Oscar buzz since it premiered. The award show may have been slightly different this year (did you see Glenn Close?), but McDormand was her same old self. She isn't the kind of actress who needs to wear the most extravagant dresses or bling; she can't even be bothered to wear makeup. It's so wholesome, and we love it.
Here's why McDormand won't be caught dead wearing makeup. She's part of the pack but not that pack. Ahh-woooo!
McDormand Is Just As Non-Conforming As Her Characters
Ever since McDormand said, "You Betcha" in Fargo, we knew she was special. Apparently, so did the Academy.
Then all of a sudden, she was playing the equally intimidating and inspiring strictly non-conformist mother, Elaine Miller, in Almost Famous. "Be bold. The mighty forces will come to your aid," Elaine said, quoting Goethe to Russell Hammond, the rockstar who "kidnapped" her son.
We can't help hearing Elaine and all of McDormand's other characters come through in her recent Oscar speech. They are with her because they are not so different from her. She is the poet-quoting, no-nonsense, slipper-wearing, no-make-wearing hippie feminist she portrayed in the film. And we saw that once again at this year's Oscars.
When Renee Zellweger announced her name for Best Actress, her simple black dress, which looked more like a feathered sleeved nightgown, blew in the breeze as she sauntered up to the stage, combing back her unruly hair from her makeup-less face. She quoted Macbeth and said, "I like work," she laughed. "Thank you for knowing that."
If you look at many of McDormand's characters, you'll notice that they aren't the most glamourous. McDormand admits she had a hard time getting away from the male gaze in the business and her looks were an issue, but she's grown past that. "I wasn’t pretty, I wasn’t cute, I wasn’t beautiful, I didn’t have the body," she told Vogue. One producer once wondered if they could fit a boob job for her into the budget for a film.
That doesn't mean we aren't attracted to her face. In roles like Fargo and Linda Litzke, it's hard to miss how McDormand uses her face to show reactions and emotion. She's also really good at talking and not blinking. And her characters never wear a lot of makeup if at all. It's the same in real life.
Like her characters, McDormand doesn't need makeup, glitz, and glam to show off. That's why she'll always be a non-conformist. She didn't just arrive from a photoshoot, and she didn't spend hours in a makeup chair.
Vogue put it perfectly; she likes portraying characters that "represent realness" because that's what she represents in real life.
She Wants To Show Her Real Self
More than anything in the world, McDormand wants to be authentic, just like her characters are. That's why you never see her with a stitch of blush on. She doesn't care about dying her hair and covering up her wrinkles. If she covered those things up, she wouldn't be herself. She doesn't even have a full-length mirror in her house.
Vogue wrote that McDormand "made it a policy not to manipulate her appearance. She does not use Botox to flatten her wrinkles or filler to inflate her cheeks" because she wants to promote aging, not agism.
McDormand told the New York Times that we "are on red alert when it comes to how we are perceiving ourselves as a species" because no one wants to be an adult, even though it's a gift.
"Something happened culturally: No one is supposed to age past 45 — sartorially, cosmetically, attitudinally. Everybody dresses like a teenager. Everybody dyes their hair. Everybody is concerned about a smooth face."
It's very much come-as-you-are or not all for McDormand. "I feel like I need to represent publicly what I've chosen to represent privately — which is a woman who is proud and more powerful than I was when I was younger," she told NPR.
"And I think that I carry that pride and power on my face and in my body. And I want to be a role model for not only younger men and women — and not just in my profession, I'm not talking about my profession. I think that cosmetic enhancements in my profession are just an occupational hazard. But I think, more culturally, I'm interested in starting the conversation about aging gracefully and how, instead of making it a cultural problem, we make it individuals' problems. I think that ageism is a cultural illness; it's not a personal illness."
It's rare for an actress to be cast in anything apart from motherly roles after they turn 40, yet McDormand's done just that; she just got an Oscar well over that age, and she wasn't playing a mother.
"To still be culturally relevant as a 63-year-old female is so deeply, deeply gratifying. It’s something that I could have never expected, given what I was told. And I believe I had something to do with it. I’ve crafted some part of this moment in time. And I’m really f***ing proud," McDormand said.
The mighty forces have come to her aid and have clearly given her the gift of non-conformity within a business that takes vanity to an extreme. McDormand is an inspiration, and we want to put that on a billboard, so the world knows.