Andie MacDowell Was Once Called "Too Matronly" By a Famous Photographer

Andie MacDowell has always been a totally empowering icon. From proudly sporting her naturally gray hair to walking the runway at Paris Fashion Week in leather pants and a bra, she never fails to subtly challenge the toxic misogyny in Hollywood. Now, she's speaking up about it, too.

In a recent interview with Glamour, the Four Weddings and a Funeral actress opened up about her experiences of misogyny in the industry over the years. "After I had [daughter] Rainey [Qualley], I was with working with photographer Irving Penn, and my milk had come in and my tits were gigantic," MacDowell recalled. "Irving would shoot in the morning, send the photographs out, get them back, and then look to decide which direction they would like. [But one day] he took me into his office and told me I looked matronly."

MacDowell went on to describe how Penn refused to take her photos that day. At the time, she decided she had to lose weight. MacDowell also recalled how "someone important" told her she looked "matronly" after she let her hair go gray. However, by this point, she had stopped caring what other people in the industry thought.

"At this point, I was so much more mature in who I was that I really didn’t care what they thought, because I liked my hair and I thought I looked fabulous," she said.

MacDowell went on to explain that she had finally decided to embrace and reclaim the word. "But why do we have this distaste for women and the word matronly? Why can’t it be like demure?" she said. "I’m matronly. That is what I am. Why can’t I be matronly in a gorgeous, powerful, respectful, glamorous way? Why does it always have to be about being weak in order to be beautiful: demure, soft, coquette? Why does it always have to be that? Because that’s not the male gaze. Right? And it’s not saying that I don’t want to also have moments when I’m perceived as sexy, because I do."

MacDowell's comments about reclaiming "matronly" as a badge of honor come amid a wider reckoning in Hollywood that has seen many women "of a certain age" speaking up about the misogyny and typecasting they faced early in their careers. Ironically enough, this reckoning has come alongside a slew of meaty parts for older actresses about the very same problems. As Demi Moore noted when she received her first Golden Globe at 62, she had always been dismissed as a "popcorn actress". "In those moments when we don't think we're smart enough or pretty enough or skinny enough or successful enough or basically just not enough, I had a woman say to me, 'Just know, you will never be enough, but you can know the value of your worth if you just put down the measuring stick,'" she said.

Like Moore, MacDowell is clearly sick of being valued only if she looks young. In fact, most women are. And as MacDowell went on to explain in her recent interview, it's time Hollywood caught up.

"Don’t do cliché older people. That’s all I really care about," she begged of the industry. "Give me something interesting to do. I’m around a lot of women. There are a lot of older women down here, and they’re doing fantastic things with their lives. They’re working on conservation. They’re making things happen. They have so much wisdom and knowledge."

In recent years, MacDowell has consistently spoken out against the outdated pressures on women in Hollywood. In November, for instance, she revealed that she decided not to wear a tight dress to an event. As she put it, she was "too old" to starve herself to squeeze into the dress. “That's Hollywood,” MacDowell said to People. “It's this expectation, like you see in The Substance, [starring Demi Moore and MacDowell's daughter, Margaret Qualley] to be something that you can no longer be and that was easier at a certain time in your life, but I can't. I'm too old to starve myself for 5 lbs nonstop. I just can't do it anymore.”

Read the original article on InStyle