Showing posts with label plastic surgery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label plastic surgery. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Why fuck up your face?




It's not just Renee Zellweger.

Actors do this to themselves, which for some reason is supposed to make it OK, or at least "more OK": "well, MEN do it too, you know!" "Oh. Yeah." End of discussion.

For, you see, if men do it too, it is now OKAY to mutilate your face. It has been justified. Go home now.

This bizarre beforeandafter belongs to Mickey Rourke, an actor I never much liked anyway, but he must have gone to Acapulco for his surgery. It just looks bad. He has that bizarre OMG look, that instant recognition that something awful has been done to his face. He does not look "young"; he merely looks weird.




This one is really sad. I've never been a Kenny Rogers fan (except for that "know when to hold them, know when to fold them" thing - who doesn't like that?), but this was just desperate, and shocking. He really pulled a Zellweger here, and went from a rugged silver-fox-type cow-dude to a sort of mincing hairdresser with a Bugs Bunny smile, a brow-lift and a weave. He doesn't look like ANYBODY, let alone Kenny Rogers. Renee at least looks - well, if not attractive, then at least doll-like in her new guise. She looks kind of like Renee Zellweger's distant cousin (who has had a lot of work done).  As for Kenny, I wonder how he sees out of those things?. Maybe he can start a new career as a Kenny Rogers impersonator. That is, if anyone believes him.




Ah, um, her, uh, ugh. Barry Manilow.




Burt Reynolds, who no longer needs to buy a Halloween costume. He can go as Burt Reynolds and scare little children. Note how he never shows up in movies any more: I guess directors want their actors to look like they're alive.




It's slitty-eyes syndrome again. Women's eyes are pulled up slantwise (which is funny, because meanwhile Asian women are busy erasing every trace of their heritage from their faces), but for some reasons dudes' eyes are pulled sideways so aggressively that they can barely see. In this case, it looks as if his eyelids were simply removed.




Is there a "worst case" in this macabre house of wax? Yes, there is, and you're looking at it. Even on the left, he's had significant work done, especially around the eyes. But that wasn't enough. These guys never leave well enough alone, do they? They always go back for more. His eyes are now closer together than the Royal Family's, and have that disturbingly sunken look that makes me wonder if men aren't supposed to have eyes after a certain age. Cheek implants, chin implants, God knows what sort of other implants. When this monstrous freak walks out onto the stage in Vegas, the crowds scream with recognition, even though they don't have a clue who he is. But they've paid for Wayne Newton, so this must BE Wayne Newton.




But soft! What light from yonder window breaks? What former Shakespearian actor is this, what good Canadian boy, what Governer-General-Award recipient? This is the man who made a deal with the devil not to age. It has little or nothing to do with his face. He looks like a person. His face does not look messed-with at all. He has gained weight, but carries it so well it makes YOU want to gain weight too (well, not quite). He still sits a horse remarkably well at - Jesus, he's 83! He is 83 goddamn years old, and this past summer he was the Grand Marshall at the Calgary Stampede. The white hat looked pretty swell on him, too.






You don't look at Shatner's face and think. "Work done." You don't look at Shatner's face and think, "Ewwww." You don't look at Shatner's face and think, "83". You think "65-ish, ruddy, virtually unlined, outdoorsman, in good shape. Healthy." His voice, his energy, his endless new projects (always a few going on at the same time) are so astonishing that we don't even see them any more.

Shatner went through several phases: his young manhood, which makes me want to kvell:






(and I don't know why exactly, but I want to jump on top of this young god with the 100% self-assurance)




. . . his Star-Trekkian phase, in which he was older and more conventionally handsome;




. . . his little-bit-obvious-hairpiece stage, soon to be replaced by transplants or something else more natural. . .



. . . but NEVER did he go through a  "monster" stage like Kenny and Wayne and Mickey and all those other poor sods who were so afraid of the monstrosity of ageing that they ruined their faces.
He won't because "something" happened, he found the secret, the way to slow ageing down so much that it is barely perceptible. A deal with the devil? I've written about this before. The older he gets, the more ruddy-faced, the more of those Priceline ads he does, the more I love the guy. I love him because he is 83. I love him because he is fucking fantastic. I love him because he is the real deal.
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
    It took me years to write, will you take a look


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Just walk away, Renee: Ms. Zellweger's radical transformation




Now comes all the commentary, the kerfuffle, and if she needed to call attention to herself, this did it. Strangely, she will not admit to plastic surgery but claims she's just taking better care of herself and is more "relaxed".




What's really sad is the need to deny you've had any "work" done. It's all due to a "healthier lifestyle". But the healthiest lifestyle in the world wouldn't change you into a different person.




These strenuous denials are a veil over desperation, and this is not something Renee created herself. She wants to work, but paradoxically, I don't think her "new look" is going to land her parts. No one is going to know who the hell she is.

Nobody else has said this, because everyone is so busy saying, "Duhhh. . . does she look different?" There are screams and squawks from all over the planet because this is a "trending" story that has knocked terrorism out of the ballpark.. Half of them are horrified exclamations along the lines of "What has she done to herself?"; the other half are more like, "She looks fabulous! I like her so much better now. Leave the girl alone! She can do what she wants with her face." I've also heard "She looks different? Not to me she doesn't. It's just her makeup. She looks exactly the same."




Just so. But this just isn't Renee. What would it be like, I wonder, if every time you looked in the mirror you saw a different person? It's like those old film noir movies where the gangster has plastic surgery to change his identity. One scene always involves the doctor cutting the bandage and winding it around, and around, and around (showing the hood's vision gradually getting brighter and brighter) until, voici et voila, the new face.




Plastic surgery existed back then, because John Dillinger had it done in a vain attempt to disguise his identity from the police. I don't see how they could have botched it any worse than they do now. In fact, though this is an issue I won't get into now, there is a TV show called Botched that deals with remedial boob/nose/cheek/jowl jobs, in which the doctors have to make do with what is left of normal tissue. Usually the results are still artificial, but somewhat less Frankensteinian than before that fatal "holiday" to Mexico or the Phillipines.




Just in time for Halloween. . . the Invisible Man. I can't help but think of the old Renee, mischievous as always, crouching down and  hiding behind the new one. But still invisible.




Whole movies have been made on this theme, such as Ash Wednesday, in which the stunning Liz Taylor pretends to be (gasp, shock, horror) old, or at least old-looking. In the movie, she's maybe 40. Most of the sexpots we see around now, such as Sofia Vergara, are about that age. 

I was going to make a few gifs of her movie transformation, but was so gobsmacked by the YouTube video that I posted it whole. It's 14 minutes long and if you can get through the whole thing, you're a better man than I am. Gunga Din.




We used to ask ourselves: what reputable plastic surgeon would ever surgically alter someone so much that they didn't even look like themselves? That was back when there were standards, and "would never" still held together as a stand-in for integrity. Now people transform themselves into Barbies and Kens, Michael Jacksons, Angelinas, etc. (remember that Octomom character? Whatever happened to her, anyway?) Pay up front, and you'll have any "look" you want. Slicing and dicing seems particularly popular, especially if you resort to Third World procedures. And a lot of people do. Then again, lots of people go to Thailand to have sex with little children, and no one stands in their way.


 
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
    It took me years to write, will you take a look


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Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Renee Zellweger: The Incredible Disappearing Woman





I never thought it would have happened to Miss "You Had Me At Hello": a bizarre miracle of transformation that has rendered her almost unrecognizable to her fans.




We all know what she looked like "before", though sometimes it was evident there was a little brow-lifting and Botox-ing going on. She wasn't a ravishing beauty, but then, she wasn't supposed to be! She was Bridget Jones! She was the chick in Jerry Maguire! She was Rene Zellweger, everybody's girl friend, with the pouty lips and the great cheekbones and the Icelandic heritage that lent her a tinge of exoticism.




Not any more. This is what she looks like now.




Uh, maybe like Candace Bergen's younger sister? There's still something Nordic going on, but - hey, who the hell IS this anyway? The weird black line drawn around her jaw and chin had me thinking, just for a minute, that the glue on her mask was still wet and it was being held on with a string.




Uh. . . Liv Ullman's younger sister, maybe?   One wonders who she was trying to model her face on. Not on herself, obviously.




What bugs me however is how she has lost her personality along with her old face. Renee was always sort of neurotic, sort of apologetic, sort of tearful. She fretted, she brooded, and sometimes she girlishly giggled and turned cartwheels of joy. It was just the kind of character she was good at playing. Now she's - 




. . . extremely thin. Gone are the extra 20 pounds of puppy fat she gained to play Bridget Jones. She's thin as a stick, so that it looks like she's somehow attained a new body, too. I guess it goes with the blandly Barbie-ish face.

I've written about plastic surgery before, and I'm tired and weary to be writing about it again. An actress shouldn't erase herself like this. Though she may believe she'll get more parts now because she looks so "great", so "young", so "beautiful," etc.,  no casting director in the world will want her now because she is not recognizably herself. If you want Renee Zellweger, you want Renee Zellweger, someone who has a huge fan base and has been familiar to audiences for 20 years. If she shows up looking like this, with Renee's slightly nasal, slightly squeaky voice coming out of Barbie's mouth (unless she has also somehow erased her voice too), people will be more than slightly confused.




I have to reluctantly admit that, given Hollywood's dread and hatred of the ageing process, most actresses feel compelled to have some repair work done as time grinds them down. Susan Sarandon doesn't seem to have fallen victim yet, Helen Mirren has the best bone structure in human history, and Judi Dench can play anyone from age 40 to age 80, rearranging her face at will. But the rest of them - perhaps it's forgiveable, though a couple of years ago I was pretty horrified to see Helen Hunt with a completely paralyzed forehead. Her eyebrows never moved, removing half the expression from her face and clashing most awfully with her more age-appropriate 40-year-old throat.




For Renee, however, I predict this won't be a good move. She'll have to change her name or something, start all over again. If Tom Cruise showed up on a set looking like - God, like who? Like Shia Lebeouf or whatever-his-name-is - ? The point is, if Tom Cruise suddenly looked like a male mannequin approximately 30 years of age, he might have problems being cast in anything. Nobody would know who he was.

This is the most eerie example I've ever seen of a human being erasing herself. It could not possibly have been done as an act of self-love. (Narcissism, perhaps, but that's self-obsession.) I remember writing a post about Renee's public drunkenness at the Oscars in 2013 (which everyone seems to have forgotten). Though excuses were quickly invented that she had taken a Valium to calm down, her slurring and inability to read three words off a card that night created a lot of buzz. 







I guess it's no stretch to say this isn't a happy woman, but what bothers me most of all is that she'll probably never work again. You can't start all over again and just be someone else (though in a sense, that's what the picture business is all about). In a very sad way, given Hollywood's obsession with appearance, Renee Zellweger no longer exists. There is no longer any brand recognition. She has erased it permanently. Her "old"  self has been shoved away in an attic somewhere, like the picture of Dorian Grey.

It's been good to know you, Renee. I'm sad we'll never see you again.


 


Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
    It took me years to write, will you take a look


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Friday, October 3, 2014

A horrible transformation




One of the rare intriguing things I've seen on Facebook lately. As usual, there was no credit given anywhere for who did the animation. I've looked all over the place. It's creepy and fascinating and all too true what happens to this pink little figure, ruthlessly mauled by calipers and scalpels and pliers and suction hoses. I just did a post on how "neurotic" women (women who are "reserved", worry about things, get angry, anxious, etc.) are more likely to get Alzheimer's. For some creepy reason, this feels like part of the same thing. Now, girls. Don't have a body like THAT. Have a body like THIS, and maybe your rate of acceptability will fall into line. It's all a way of containing us, because if we're not contained we turn into madwomen. We run amok.

Let's go, then.



 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
    It took me years to write, will you take a look


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Sunday, January 12, 2014

Stop the clock (short fiction)




“Marcie! Hey it’s good to see you!”

“Hi, Julie.”

Julie looked her up and down. Up and down, then smiled brightly, her eyes glistening like wet caramels. Then came the single syllable.

“Wow.”

It wasn’t a “wow” like “wow, is that your new car?”. It was a “wow” like, “What happened to your new car?” It had a tiny backlilt, an inflection that was just a little bit “off”.

Marcie knew it wasn’t a good “wow”. It was almost a disappointed “wow”, but strained through a sort of Facebook screen so she could never be pinned down or held responsible.




“Wow yourself.”

“Yeah.!” The “yeah” started off as a high squeal, then sailed down to a whisper.

Julie looked away for just a second with a sort of reflexive hair-flip, like something you’d do in junior high. Marcie half-expected her to start chewing on the end of her braid. Then she brighted herself again.

“So what are you, y’knowwww – “

“Oh, same old thing.”

“Did you ever get – “

“No.”

“So are you self-publishing now? Whatever happened to that novel? You know, the one about the cruise ship and the - ”

“That was quite a while ago.”

“I can see that.” (See what? “That”.)

She hair-flipped again. “So what do you do now exactly, you know? I mean.”

“The same thing you do, Julie.”

“Oh, of course!” She kept looking Marcie up and down, her eyes flipping from head to mid-thigh, though pretending she wasn’t doing it.




“You know, it’s been an awfully long time since we’ve seen each other, Julie.”

“Tell me about it!”, with a well-practiced “oh, yeah!” eye-roll.

It was then that she noticed something funny about Julie. Or at least, she thought it was funny. She had a sort of glaze over her, like something you’d pour over cinnamon buns, or maybe a shell of amber. Glossy. Her smile was glossy too.

Had she done something to herself?

Marcie believed that, as you aged, your face decided to go one way or the other. It either went Captain Kirk or Mr. Spock. William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy looked almost the same in the ‘60s, well, at least both of them had normal faces, and now Shatner was round as a pumpkin and Nimoy looked like a burnt-out old matchstick.

 Skinny faces got fat, fat faces got skinny. Gaunt-looking people rounded out and softened, as if their inner selves were working their way out. The healthy-looking ones housing gaunt souls ultimately lost the battle of looking like someone else.

But there was a third possibility, and that was to stop. Stop time, stop the clock ticking. Marcie always thought there was another word for that: “death”, but apparently not, because everywhere she looked these days, she saw people who had decided to stop the clock

Except that there was a cost.




As Julie pretended not to look at Marcie’s burgeoning weight, the little dewlappy thing that hung below her rounded chin, the lizard skin on her arms, Marcie pretended not to look at Julie’s House of Wax immobility, the shellacked quality which was now considered highly desirable, even as she heard the creepy murmur of Vincent Price in the background.

Some even turned the clock back. Ageing backwards, which was really some trick. If they kept on going, they’d be fetal in a few years, or disappearing altogether, their molecules just coming apart: poof!

“So, I guess you have a pretty big one coming up pretty soon.”

“A pretty big one?” For some insane reason Marcie thought “bowel movement”.

“Birthday!” She almost sang it, lilting high on the first syllable.

“Oh, Julie, how did you ever remember that?”

“I did your horoscope, silly, don’t you remember? Look at that.” She plucked a hair off the shoulder of Marcie’s blouse and looked at it.

“It’s a hair.”

“Yes, I know, but it’s - “

“Didn’t your hair used to be -  wait, now what color was it, I mean before?”

“Before what?” Julie was starting to sound defensive. She could dish it out, but she definitely couldn’t take it.

“Before the Jurassic Period,” Marcie wanted to say, but she didn’t. All the nasty things she left unsaid were going to kill her, one of these days, like a great landslide falling down on her.




“You’re still slim,” she said instead. “How do you do it?”

“Oh! I cleanse. Every month. High colonics, they’re awesome! You just purge away all that gunk in your system. All those toxins.”

“I thought you were vegan.”

“Oh, but vegetables have chemicals on them no matter what, because of the water supply.”

“I still eat cows.” She was becoming extremely depressed. How to get rid of her?

“You’re going to kill yourself, Marcie,” Julie murmured, pulling out and using the appropriate facial expression before tucking it away again.

(“Yes, if this conversation goes on any longer.” Another rock in the landslide.)

“My grandmother ate cows.”

“But they were different cows.”

Marcie burst out laughing.  She couldn’t keep the laugh to herself.

“I should say they were.”

“No, you don’t understand, they weren’t GMO cows.” Marcie thought this was something about General Motors or something. Her lack of interest finally must have registered on Julie.




“Listen, sweetie, I have to go now, but I want to give you something" (rummaging in her voluminous shoulder-bag) “- or actually, a few things, they’re freebies from the gym, you know? And the salon and stuff. Take them.” She thrust a wad of things in Marcie’s hands with a tight smile, turned around abruptly and gave a little Liza Minnelli backwards wave over her shoulder before flouncing away.

Marcie stood in the street shuffling through her treasures. A coupon for Turbo-Charge Fat Blaster Weight Loss Supplement, $2.00 off the first 60 capsules. An ad for a 60-ounce mega-capacity twenty-speed macerating Power-Juicer, 90-day trial free of charge! “Look 20 years younger in 20 minutes with Botuline, available NOW from your dentist!” A little packet of shampoo from a trendy salon, something called Blow your Head Off!, to mask “the grey” (grey sounding as ominous as some creepy space alien, and as undesirable). An ad for dental veneers with a woman smiling like a piano, showing every blinding-white tooth in her head.

God, she must think I’m a disgusting mess.

Just plaster things on the outside, and run-run-run. It’ll catch up with you one day. Sooner or later all your molecules will come apart, never to be replaced. When your molecules do come apart, there will literally be nothing left. Is that why you draw back so hard, by trying to minus-out the years you’ve slogged on this earth? Keep hitting the reset button. But what about your mind? Can you erase that too? I suppose you can. It’s done in a slightly different way.




They were friends then, quite good friends, had many excited conversations about this and that, though they often had a barbed quality to them, a putting-down-with-eyeroll. It was necessarily for them to have a mutual enemy or threat in order to really get along. Julie seemed like a super-coper, always on top of every situation, so Marcie was stunned when she suddenly, floridly fell apart. She had always been a little frantic, but this was something else, as if the tiny dancing ballerina on top of the music box had gradually accelerated until it was spinning a million miles an hour. This wasn’t any penny-ante breakdown, it was wholesale craziness, hallucinations, delusions, the works.

That sounds awful, Marcie thought, just heartless! It was pain and suffering, for sure, but it was funny how everyone around Julie seemed to suffer more than she did. And it was her family who decided she needed “shock”, something her sardonic old great-uncle called “Edison’s medicine”.

The shock re-set her for sure, but things weren’t the same after that. It was as if some mute but powerful presence deep in her psyche said: not this way; THAT way, and gave her a huge shove in the direction of artificiality. This was the way to make it. This was survival, solace, and something she could be really good at. As the years passed, her new strategy dovetailed beautifully with what the culture expected of her: the new Julie was popular at last, and because of that, Marcie just faded into the background. Not that Marcie went backwards: Julie just turned and walked away.




Now, it was: Wow. Look at you. All right. I’ve made decisions, more compromises than I ever thought I would have to. I am no prize. For this reason, I have one less friend in the world, though I suspect I lost her a long time ago. Life is inherently lonely, isn’t it? Aren’t the sweet fleeting times the very worst, because of how they always go away?

And why is it that when things are good, I mean, really good – as sweet as they can possibly be - we are always the last ones to know? Better not to recognize such beauty, even in ourselves, lest we cry out to a heedless universe in last-ditch desperation and despair: "Freeze!"






http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm


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