Plastic surgery and all that jazz

There's some trashy show on tv right now called Celebrity Surgery: Who's Had What Done and I'm just... not surprised at all.

We all know that famous people have surgery. The clever ones have just enough to improve little imperfections. The fools go a little too far and the kooks end up with their chin up at their eyebrows.

But:

We're not meant to have cheekbones that look like apples. We're not meant to have lips like trout. We're not meant to have noses so pointy everyone can see up our nostrils. Nor are our eyes meant to reach up to our hairline.

It's not beautiful to spend a lot of money to end up looking like a cross between a fish and a cat. It's not beautiful to be pulled to within an inch of our lives. It's certainly not beautiful to have our faces frozen to the point of having no expressions.

People are beautiful, man, for their imperfections and the things that make them different. MGM eventually realised that, after twenty years of making all their women look the same, one of the most beautiful in their stable was the one who refused to have her chin dimple removed (Ava Gardner, of course). People are striking when they're different, and it's not a coincidence that many supermodels are 'unique' rather than actually truly conforming to the current standard of beauty.

I don't want to go down the usual route of blaming Hollywood for our plastic surgery woes. I don't blame Hollywood at all... after all, Hollywood did not exist when the Egyptians first started experimenting with cosmetic surgery, or when an Indian surgeon managed to reconstruct a beautiful girl's face several hundred years ago. I don't blame humanity for striving for perfection...

but I do ask myself what that perfection is. Surely it's not looking like Jocelyn Wildenstein, who is only famous for her horrendous surgery. Surely it's not Mary Tyler Moore or the thousands of women wandering around Los Angeles, New York and London with eyebrows in their hair, cheekbones in their eye sockets and breasts in their armpits.

This is not beauty. Some people are born beautiful, some people grow into it. Some people are not beautiful at first glance, but on second and third glance are beautiful. Some of simply look 'ok'. Some are just happy to look like human beings. Hell, some of us don't really care.

You know, if I looked like Ava Gardner, I'd be happy about that, but I wouldn't go out of my way to achieve it. I mean, it worked for Ava, but who says it would work for me? Who says I'd end up resembling her at all?

More importantly, it's always been about what's behind the beauty. Marilyn Monroe is not a world famous beauty just because of her face. It's because of the humour and life behind the face. It's the vulnerability and the ambition and all those other things. Watching The River Of No Return just the other day, I was struck by how so much more beautiful she looked with the barest hint of make-up than with the thick shovelled-on stuff she's famous for.

There are some days I feel like I could rival Miss Ava herself. There are some days I feel like an absolute troll. Neither feeling particularly bothers me, but that's just me. But you know what, that's how it's meant to be! We're MEANT to have good days and bad days. It's called LIFE. Most of you reading this know this much better than I do, because I've never been well acquainted with reality.

We're not MEANT to look perfect. We're not meant to BE perfect. We're meant to be human beings, people, striving to be better in all ways, striving to be good people.

It's OK to appreciate beauty, to celebrate it. We've been doing it since the dawn of history. But please, can we at least celebrate real beauty? History also tells me that we've done our best to aspire to beauty, to try and be more beautiful. But the Renaissance ladies who plucked their hairlines, the Elizabethans with their lead make up, the 20s flappers who actually gave themselves worms to lose weight, and the centuries-long habit of idiotic corsets did not change a person's beauty. It enhanced (according to your opinion, of course) beauty, but it did not truly change the way a person looked.

Enhanced, not changed.

I know I'm not as beautiful as Ava Gardner, but I also know I look OK. I know I look human. I like the way my eyebrow quirks really high for full sarcastic potential. I like the way my lips can curl up into a wickedly smug smirk. I don't even mind the quite-deep wrinkle on my forehead, because it speaks of ten thousand eyebrow quirks, which speak of ten thousand quips and smartarse remarks. And I do like me a smartarse remark. It also reminds me of twenty thousand sad looks, of a time when I must've permanently worn a look of anguished despair.

Ava Gardner got very vain after a bull gored her cheek. She was terrified she'd lost her looks, terrified that her career was over, terrified that a slight scar in reality would be blown up ten foot wide on a cinema screen. But, I wonder: would she haven given up her bullfighting memories to lose it? I don't think she would have done.

Coco Chanel once said something about a woman having the face she deserves. I don't think it's about the amount of care or money thrown at the face, but the life lived by the soul behind it. Why would anyone want to hide that?

And so I finish my post by saying that the girl in my icon is me. Just me. For better or for worse, that is my face, with it's smirky smirk and quirky eyebrow. God love it, it's the face I deserve.

Plastic surgery and all that jazz

There's some trashy show on tv right now called Celebrity Surgery: Who's Had What Done and I'm just... not surprised at all.

We all know that famous people have surgery. The clever ones have just enough to improve little imperfections. The fools go a little too far and the kooks end up with their chin up at their eyebrows.

But:

We're not meant to have cheekbones that look like apples. We're not meant to have lips like trout. We're not meant to have noses so pointy everyone can see up our nostrils. Nor are our eyes meant to reach up to our hairline.

It's not beautiful to spend a lot of money to end up looking like a cross between a fish and a cat. It's not beautiful to be pulled to within an inch of our lives. It's certainly not beautiful to have our faces frozen to the point of having no expressions.

People are beautiful, man, for their imperfections and the things that make them different. MGM eventually realised that, after twenty years of making all their women look the same, one of the most beautiful in their stable was the one who refused to have her chin dimple removed (Ava Gardner, of course). People are striking when they're different, and it's not a coincidence that many supermodels are 'unique' rather than actually truly conforming to the current standard of beauty.

I don't want to go down the usual route of blaming Hollywood for our plastic surgery woes. I don't blame Hollywood at all... after all, Hollywood did not exist when the Egyptians first started experimenting with cosmetic surgery, or when an Indian surgeon managed to reconstruct a beautiful girl's face several hundred years ago. I don't blame humanity for striving for perfection...

but I do ask myself what that perfection is. Surely it's not looking like Jocelyn Wildenstein, who is only famous for her horrendous surgery. Surely it's not Mary Tyler Moore or the thousands of women wandering around Los Angeles, New York and London with eyebrows in their hair, cheekbones in their eye sockets and breasts in their armpits.

This is not beauty. Some people are born beautiful, some people grow into it. Some people are not beautiful at first glance, but on second and third glance are beautiful. Some of simply look 'ok'. Some are just happy to look like human beings. Hell, some of us don't really care.

You know, if I looked like Ava Gardner, I'd be happy about that, but I wouldn't go out of my way to achieve it. I mean, it worked for Ava, but who says it would work for me? Who says I'd end up resembling her at all?

More importantly, it's always been about what's behind the beauty. Marilyn Monroe is not a world famous beauty just because of her face. It's because of the humour and life behind the face. It's the vulnerability and the ambition and all those other things. Watching The River Of No Return just the other day, I was struck by how so much more beautiful she looked with the barest hint of make-up than with the thick shovelled-on stuff she's famous for.

There are some days I feel like I could rival Miss Ava herself. There are some days I feel like an absolute troll. Neither feeling particularly bothers me, but that's just me. But you know what, that's how it's meant to be! We're MEANT to have good days and bad days. It's called LIFE. Most of you reading this know this much better than I do, because I've never been well acquainted with reality.

We're not MEANT to look perfect. We're not meant to BE perfect. We're meant to be human beings, people, striving to be better in all ways, striving to be good people.

It's OK to appreciate beauty, to celebrate it. We've been doing it since the dawn of history. But please, can we at least celebrate real beauty? History also tells me that we've done our best to aspire to beauty, to try and be more beautiful. But the Renaissance ladies who plucked their hairlines, the Elizabethans with their lead make up, the 20s flappers who actually gave themselves worms to lose weight, and the centuries-long habit of idiotic corsets did not change a person's beauty. It enhanced (according to your opinion, of course) beauty, but it did not truly change the way a person looked.

Enhanced, not changed.

I know I'm not as beautiful as Ava Gardner, but I also know I look OK. I know I look human. I like the way my eyebrow quirks really high for full sarcastic potential. I like the way my lips can curl up into a wickedly smug smirk. I don't even mind the quite-deep wrinkle on my forehead, because it speaks of ten thousand eyebrow quirks, which speak of ten thousand quips and smartarse remarks. And I do like me a smartarse remark. It also reminds me of twenty thousand sad looks, of a time when I must've permanently worn a look of anguished despair.

Ava Gardner got very vain after a bull gored her cheek. She was terrified she'd lost her looks, terrified that her career was over, terrified that a slight scar in reality would be blown up ten foot wide on a cinema screen. But, I wonder: would she haven given up her bullfighting memories to lose it? I don't think she would have done.

Coco Chanel once said something about a woman having the face she deserves. I don't think it's about the amount of care or money thrown at the face, but the life lived by the soul behind it. Why would anyone want to hide that?

And so I finish my post by saying that the girl in my icon is me. Just me. For better or for worse, that is my face, with it's smirky smirk and quirky eyebrow. God love it, it's the face I deserve.