Life

On Jennifer Aniston, Lea Michele and Dressing Up as Babs

Actress Lea Michele (click to enlarge) Image by Getty Images

By Debra Nussbaum Cohen August 10, 2010

When I saw Elissa Strauss’ Sisterhood post about the photo spread in Harper’s Bazaar, in which Jennifer Aniston is made up and posed to try and look like Barbra Streisand, I could not believe it.

I know she was just trying to look like Streisand, and not pretending she could sound like her, but still. If anyone has the right to model herself after Streisand, it sure isn’t Jennifer Aniston. It’s Lea Michele.

Have you seen her on “Glee”? Or were you lucky enough to catch her performance on Broadway in “Spring Awakening”? (That’s where Boychik and I saw her opposite Jonathan Groff, who also plays her evil love interest on “Glee.”)

Michele — whose father is Jewish, and who plays a Jewish character on “Glee”, by the way — has an incredible voice, and has both the ethnic look (not Aniston’s more classic beauty) and the ingénue-ish charisma to remind you of Streisand’s early work.

Just check out this video of the young actress singing Barbra’s famous song from “Funny Girl.”.

Now, nobody comes close to the desperate longing, the chutzpah and hunger to break out of the circumstances of her birth that Streisand communicates as Fannie Brice in the sumptuous 1968 movie, but please.

Bazaar put Aniston as Streisand in its pages rather than have Aniston dress up as someone else and hold out for Lea Michele?

That’s just bizarre.

Debra Nussbaum Cohen is an award-winning journalist and the author of Celebrating Your New Jewish Daughter: Creating Jewish Ways to Welcome Baby Girls into the Covenant. Follow her on Instagram @debranc or email her at dncnews@icloud.com.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO