Green-eyed Afghan girl.....

I posted this in another thread but wanted to start a new one with her pic. Just because I love looking at her picture.

They found her a year or so ago, for real.

and she doesn't look like that any more, believe me.

A quarter of a century of war and hardship takes its toll on a person. I can't remember what the article said exactly, but she's had a hard life.

But the eyes are the same. Haunted. War and hardship will do that to a person.

within the last year. They went back and found her. She was extraordinarily aged and looked to have lived a very hard life. I am not sure of her actual age, but she looked to be 50.

She was one of the world's most famous faces, yet no one knew who she was. Her image appeared on the front of magazines and books, posters, lapel pins, and even rugs, but she didn't know it. Now, after searching for 17 years, National Geographic has once again found the Afghan girl with the haunting green eyes.

The mysterious Afghan girl whose direct gaze has intrigued the West for so long is Sharbat Gula. She lives in a remote region of Afghanistan with her husband and three daughters.

----More-----
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/03/0311_020312_sharbat.html

that she was 27. Not sure of the exact age, but it was definitely in her 20s. And you are right she looked 40-50, at least.

More: http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/afghangirl/
And npr: http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2002/mar/girl/

On edit: Ages 12 and 30 (whoa!)....

now that she is a middle aged woman.

She is a very handsome woman

I'd have to go back and look at the follow-up issue they did a couple years ago after McCurry found her.

So the Nat'l Geo. set up a fund for some cause over there, I'm forgetting which, I've already passed the magazine on to someone else.

I think we're being a bit patronizing to assume that every woman who can't buy Alpha Glycolic face cream has had an impossible life and is a beggar in need of money. I don't think she looks "incredibly aged" or "around 50." I just think we're so used to looking at celebrities who can afford every kind of surgery that we don't know what 50 looks like in the real world.

By the way, it IS not accepted practice to pay subjects for editorial photographs. We don't want to walk down that road. We have a hard enough time getting real news photographs published. Why create a world where only the biggest media could afford to publish photos -- they would just concentrate on stars and other publicity seekers who would pose for little or nothing and we'd see even less of reality than we do now.