Sunday, May 22, 2005

I just spent (wasted) several hours looking at the website AwfulPlasticSurgery.com to see what the stars are all doing to their faces. Naturally, all of the expected culprits were there: Tara Reid and her boob job, Farrah Fawcett looking like someone's been beating her about the face regularly for the last 20 years, Melanie Griffith and her horrifying lips. What I found shocking were most of the other people listed there. Sure, breast implants get all the press, but did you know that there is one acceptable nose shape in the entertainment industry -- one with a well-defined but narrow bridge and a tip that protrudes just a bit? And did you know that practically everyone you might see in a movie these days has had surgery to get it? Even stunningly beautiful women like Natalie Portman and Halle Berry have had rhinoplasty. WTF?

Anyhoo, I have concluded that there is one very good, very compelling reason not to have plastic surgery, at least not to one's face in an attempt to stall the aging process. And it's not the old rigmarole about how people should age naturally because natural is beautiful and all that. As I approach my 35th birthday, aging naturally is my plan, though I really don't know how I'll feel 10 or 20 years from now. I would never say never, though at this moment I would say "most likely not." Anyway, really, the most compelling reason I can think of to avoid botox, face lifts, cheek implants, brow lifts (I don't even understand what that is), nose jobs and collagen lips (God no, please!) is that there is a strong possibility that they will make your face look weird. And bad. And unnatural. And not younger, just more plastic. Older people with smooth foreheads and tight skin around the sides of their eyes and overly-defined cheekbones that didn't used to be there? Don't look younger. They look like older people who have had plastic surgery. Occasionally the results are nice, but for the most part, even on the ones who don't end up with an odd, artificial sheen to their skin or that perpetually surprised look that screams "face lift!", the work still doesn't do what it's intended to do, which is to make the person look like they did when they were younger.

Don't get me wrong -- I am not against correcting something you've always hated about your body or face. I myself still consider have lipo on my thighs from time to time, just because no amount of weight loss seems to really get rid of the extra-ass-cheek equivalent I have on each outer thigh. I could also live with the bags under my eyes that I've had since I was a toddler, though I can't imagine risky surgery in that area of my face to correct them. And again, I don't have any moral objection to people trying to delay the aging process -- I just object to what people are doing to their faces in the process. I'm not saying, just accept the aging process because the real thing is inner beauty and your natural face and all that crap -- I merely want to suggest accepting that the state of our current surgical technology is not what it might someday be, and giving some serious thought to whether it's worth it to risk coming out looking like the Joker.

I will state without qualification that collagen injections to the lips need to stop NOW. I'm not kidding. Stop it! Inflamation is not sexy, people. It's just gross.

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