People Magazine’s Most Beautiful (White?) Person

In April, People magazine named its Most Beautiful Person of 2017. It was Julia Roberts. Again. For the fifth time.

Roberts was 23 when she was first crowned in the World’s Most Beautiful issue in 1991, just one year after she had skyrocketed to overwhelming fame with “Pretty Woman.” In 2016, the year before she clinched her record fifth Most Beautiful title, Roberts starred in “Mother’s Day,” a film that has a lowly 7% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Rotten Tomatoes’ critics consensus for the movie reads: “Arguably well-intended yet thoroughly misguided, “Mother’s Day” is the cinematic equivalent of a last-minute gift that only underscores its embarrassing lack of effort.” Peter Bradshaw, who reviewed the movie for The Guardian, was less kind: he awarded the film one star out of a possible five and called it “as feel-good and life-affirming as a fire in an asbestos factory neighboring a children’s hospital.” Ouch. Julia Roberts’ other movie last year was “Money Monster,” a Jodie Foster-directed thriller that co-starred George Clooney, which fared only somewhat better. So suffice it to say that People did not re-crown her Most Beautiful because of her most recent movie roles.

Now, with all the other really serious crap that’s going on in the country these days, you may think that no one paid particular attention to the smiling face of a decades-long household celebrity plastered on the cover of a top-selling celebrity magazine with some hyperbolic praise thrown in for good measure (this time it was “Julia! How She Stays Forever Young”). But not so fast. Plenty of people were pretty upset about this.

The reason? Since People‘s first Most Beautiful issue in 1990, there have been only four non-white women to grace the cover of the issue: Halle Berry in 2003, Jennifer Lopez in 2011, Beyoncé in 2012, and Lupita Nyong’o in 2014. Meanwhile, in addition to five-time winner Julia Roberts, Michelle Pfeiffer and Jennifer Aniston are also multiple title-winners. No wonder this has a few people annoyed.

Why should we care about this? At the end of the day, this is an entirely shallow and superficial title selected on the basis of arbitrary rules. And an award titled Most Beautiful is automatically somewhat problematic because it will ultimately always conform to some impossible unattainable standard of beauty, even if it’s a little more diverse and representative. Most of us don’t look like Julia Roberts or Angelina Jolie, but we are also just as equally never going to look like Halle Berry or Beyoncé either.

People’s selection of Julia Roberts (and many past selections over the last several years) is still problematic. Here’s why:

• People’s mission is to sell fluff, not hard news or deep thoughts. So it’s always going to market some version of the Most Beautiful issue. It may as well be diverse and inclusive.

• People – which had the second highest magazine reach in the US (of more than 78 million people) as of March 2017 – is very invested in its special editions (i.e., the World’s Most Beautiful and The Sexiest Man Alive). For instance, in 2006, the magazine doubled the size of the World’s Most Beautiful edition and went from listing the 50 Most Beautiful people to the 100 Most Beautiful (the #1 spot gets to grace the cover). That’s because these issues sell – the Sexiest Man Alive issue alone contributes roughly 3 percent of People’s total magazine revenue (or $30 million), and has a guaranteed circulation and audience reach that is higher than regular People editions. The same is almost certainly true for the Most Beautiful edition. Because the Most Beautiful edition gets plenty of publicity and eyeballs – in the media, on social media and in supermarket aisles – it reinforces stereotypical notions of beauty.

• Hollywood already has a pretty serious race and diversity problem. So even if People tried really hard to be diverse, it would find more famous white celebrities in Hollywood than similarly-positioned non-white celebrities. It’s fairly gratuitous to make that problem even worse by recycling white celebrities who are now famous only because they used to be famous (fame can be stubborn that way).

• Beauty is an entirely subjective concept. Even though it is possible for certain groups of people to arrive at some kind of consensus about who they find to be superlatively beautiful, standards of beauty vary significantly across different cultures. They also evolve over time. People doesn’t seem to realize that, and should be called out for it. (Not to be too exacting, but People should rename its title Most Beautiful (Mostly White Mostly Female) Person in the US. Pretty catchy, don’t you think? Aside from a few exceptions, People’s selections are overwhelmingly American. That’s fine, because they are marketing to an American audience. But then just call it that).

So we did some research and made our own list. Below, we offer three alternative picks for each of the past 10 years in which a white woman was selected for the Most Beautiful title. The list is by no means comprehensive and is mostly based on TV/movies/music awards and nominations – an exercise that itself comes with numerous caveats. Award-granting in the entertainment industry has notable diversity problems, the 2016 #OscarsSoWhite controversy being only one example. And as mentioned above and as will become clear based on the list below, it seems like the staff at People often do not seem particularly concerned even with recent artistic accomplishments when making their picks. What the limited list below does show, however, is that even if you limit your options to major award winners or nominees in the entertainment business, you’d still have plenty of options to pick a woman of color for an annual Most Beautiful winner (we focus on women because People‘s picks are predominately female).

2008 People’s Pick – Kate Hudson, who starred in the movies “You, Me and Dupree” in 2006 and “Fools Gold” and “My Best Friend’s Girl” in 2008.

Several alternative picks for that year:

• America Ferrera, who won an Emmy for her role in “Ugly Betty” in the fall of 2007.

• Queen Latifah,who received a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award in 2008 for her role in “Life Support.”

• Ziyi Zhang, who won the 2008 award for Outstanding Contribution to Chinese Cinema at the Shanghai International Film Festival. Zhang also starred in the movie “Mei Lanfang” that year and won three awards and three nominations for that role in a number of award shows in 2009. She first became famous in the US in 2000 for her role in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” and was nominated for multiple awards (Golden Globes, SAG and BAFTA) for a subsequent role in 2005’s “Memoirs of a Geisha.“

2009 People’s Pick – Christina Applegate, who received a 2008 Emmy nomination for her role in “Samantha Who?” and starred in the movie “The Rocker” in 2008.

Several alternative picks for that year:

• Freida Pinto, who starred in Slumdog Millionaire – the movie that won an Academy Award for Best Picture in 2009 (among numerous other awards). Pinto herself was nominated for a BAFTA Award and won the Screen Actors Guild Award with her fellow cast members in the movie for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.

• Sandra Oh, who was nominated for an Emmy for her role in “Grey’s Anatomy” in each year between 2005 and 2009.

• Taraji P. Henson, who had an Oscar nomination for her role in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” in 2009.

2010 People’s Pick – Julia Roberts, who starred in “Duplicity” in 2009, “Valentine’s Day” in 2010 and “Eat, Pray, Love,” also in 2010; she was also nominated for a Golden Globe for her role in “Duplicity.“ This was Roberts’ fourth selection as Most Beautiful.

Several alternative picks for that year:

• Jenna Ushkowitz, who won a Screen Actors Guild Award with her fellow cast-members from Glee in 2010.

• Mo’Nique, who won an Oscar in 2010 for her role in “Precious.”

• Rihanna, who won two Grammy awards that year and had four different songs on the Billboard Hot 100 chart of the year.

2013 People’s Pick – Gwyneth Paltrow, who starred in “The Avengers,” “Thanks for Sharing” and “The New Normal” in 2012, and “Iron Man 3” in 2013.

Several alternative picks for that year:

• Kerry Washington, who starred in the Academy Award Winning “Django Unchained” in 2012, received an Emmy nomination for her role in “Scandal” in 2013 and won two BET awards for Best Actress for her roles in “Django Unchained” and “Scandal,” also in 2013.

• Mindy Kaling, who was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award with her fellow cast members from “The Office” in 2013 and published a second book in two years (“Questions I Ask When I Want to Talk About Myself: 50 Topics to Share with Friends”).

• Sofia Vergara, who in 2013 was nominated for a Golden Globe for a third year in a row, an Emmy for a fourth year in a row and a Screen Actors Guild Award for a third year in a row for her role in “Modern Family,” and won a Screen Actors Guild Award with her fellow cast-members for the same show.

2015 People’s Pick – Sandra Bullock, who starred in “Minions” and “Our Brand Is Crisis” (also its executive producer) in 2015, and was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for her role in “Gravity” in 2014.

Several alternative picks for that year:

• Gina Rodriguez, who won a Golden Globe for her role in “Jane the Virgin” in 2015.

• Constance Wu, who starred in the hit TV show “Fresh off the Boat,” nominated for a Critics’ Choice TV Award, Television Critics Association Award, and Gold Derby TV Award for her role on the show in 2015.

• Nicki Minaj, who won BET’s award for best female hip-hop artist in each year between 2010 and 2016 and whose song “Anaconda” reached #2 on the Billboard charts the previous September, and #3 on Spin Magazine’s list of 101 best songs of 2014 (Spin also called the song “a cultural movement”).

2016 People’s Pick – Jennifer Aniston, who starred in “Mother’s Day,” “Storks” and “Office Christmas Party” in 2016; was nominated for a Golden Globe for her role in “Cake” in 2015. This was Aniston’s second Most Beautiful cover.

Several alternative picks for that year:

• Priyanka Chopra, who won a People’s Choice Award in 2016 for her role in “Quantico.” Chopra is a superstar in her native India and won a 2016 Filmfare Award (Bollywood’s Oscar) and Screen Weekly Award for her role in “Bajirao Mastani.”

• Diane Guerrero, who won a Screen Actors Guild Award with her fellow cast members from “Orange is the New Black” in both 2015 and 2016, and starred in the hit TV show “Jane the Virgin.” In 2016, she also published her book “In the Country We Love: My Family Divided,”  which tells the story of her parents’ deportation to Colombia when she was a teenager. Guerrero has also become an activist on immigration issues.

• Laverne Cox, who won a 2015 Daytime Emmy with her fellow co-producers of the documentary “The T Word” and a 2015 and 2016 Screen Actors Guild Award with her fellow cast members from “Orange is the New Black.” Cox is also received an honorary degree from The New School for her social activism, most notably in the sphere of transgender rights.

2017 People’s Pick – Julia Roberts, starred in “Money Monster” and “Mother’s Day”

Several alternative picks for that year:

• Lucy Liu, who was nominated for a People’s Choice Award for her role in “Elementary” for a third year in a row this year. Liu has been a popular and familiar face in the US since the late 1990s, and was nominated for multiple awards for her role in the TV show “Ally McBeal.” She also starred as one of three “Charlie’s Angels” in 2000, and played a show-stopping role in Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” in 2003 as the terrifying assassin O-Ren Ishii.

• Viola Davis, who won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for her role in “Fences” this year and who also scored an Emmy nomination in 2016 and an Emmy win in 2015 for her role in “How to Get Away with Murder.”

• Tracee Ellis Ross, who won a Golden Globe this year and was nominated for an Emmy last fall for her role in “Blackish.”

So there you go – just a very short list of diverse, beautiful, well-known and talented alternatives for People’s cover. We used fairly strict criteria to come up with this list (i.e., we limited our selections to only three celebrities per year and selected from among celebrities who recently received recognition from one or more entertainment awards). But if you used People‘s own arbitrary criteria for selecting its cover stars – which certainly does not consistently include recent popular or critical acclaim – the possibilities are endless.

(This post was jointly written with Antara).