Lily Cole was recently interviewed by the Guardian, while promoting The Last Days of Troy, a new London production in which Cole plays Helen of Troy.
Here are our highlights from her interview.
Our concept of beauty is so restrictive. We treat it like it’s got an eternal truth to it when it hasn’t. It’s relative to the country we’re in and time period. And the media reiterate that idea again and again through visual culture and that becomes «beautiful», and women aspire to that image as opposed to realising that how we are naturally is very beautiful.
Was that one of the interesting things about studying history of art at Cambridge: seeing how visual culture and ideas of beauty have shifted so much over time?
Totally, also just seeing the depiction of women for hundreds and hundreds of years. Many more women have been depicted than men, so even the fact that a woman is seen as a beautiful thing to paint [was interesting]. There aren’t that many images of Helen of Troy but it’s interesting to see how different painters have interpreted her over the years.
You were spotted by a modelling scout at the age of 14. Looking back at it now though, does the fact that you were so young trouble you? The fact that the fashion industry uses underage models to show off their clothes, sometimes in a sexualised way?
It doesn’t trouble me too much from my experience. I didn’t do very sexualised imagery until I was a bit older. There were some publications such as Vogue, for example, that don’t use girls under 16. The way we present images in general bothers me. So the way that beauty is understood often as being largely Caucasian and largely young is inherently problematic. And the idea of what is fashionable, of what is hot or not, and that being applied to young girls is also hugely difficult. I know how I was when I was a teenager and how insecure most teenagers are.
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