KnifeStyles of the Rich & Famous

Scarlett Olive Fans

2010-09-20T09:05:00.022-05:00

Here are some links and pictures for you followers of The Scarlett Olive. Ready to explore more Old Hollywood glamour?

Click on this link to see the pictures that go with The Scarlett Olive podcast on Hollywood style in the pre-1960s era. Related posts can be found below.

Plastic surgery has defined beauty for today's younger woman, particularly breasts. That's why young girls all want bras with the Victoria's Secret implant look. See Which Breasts Are Best? or Christmas Cleavage or Dish With Lori & Julia for an eyeful.

And it's changes how we see Older Women on TV. The menopausal women we Boomers knew as children have ceased to exist in Hollywood.

Before there was photoshop and surgery, Old Hollywood relied a lot more on lighting, makeup, and special effects. Technicolor in the '50s brought about lots of changes in Does She or Doesn't She hair color. Hair pieces were worn by men and women both. Toss those Tweezers! Eyebrows went through all sorts of fashion trends, starting with the first talkies. And actors and actresses got old (Hollywood's True Nightmare).

Do Hollywood Hunks age the same? Male actors do teeth (Blinded By the White) and hair surgery (Give me a Head of Hair), but some get Frightful Facelifts right along with the rest of Hollywood (A Picture is Worth....).

The death of Kanye West's mother (Fatal Attraction) is an example of all the stars lining up wrong (see Fade to Black for the follow-up). Sometimes, though, it's a matter of not following Nancy Reagan's advice and just saying no, no more! Rhinoplasty is the most demanding of all cosmetic procedures and the least forgiving of excess (Regrettable Rhinoplasties).

And then there are the patient-physician collaborations resulting in just plain Freaky Faces.

Enjoy!

It's Been Lovely, Emma Clarke

2009-02-26T00:37:00.010-06:00

We're off!

To London that is, so you'll have to entertain yourselves with the archived postings. And we're off the air.

If you really miss the sound of our lovely elocution, use the Broadcast Audio feature to the right. It plays all of our past Knifestyles radio broadcasts for your listening pleasure. Just pick the blog post and follow along!

Mind the gap.

Older Women on TV

2009-02-19T01:00:00.034-06:00

Ahhh, the Golden Age of television. We late Boomers were weaned on the first televised appearances of Leonard Bernstein and Arturo Toscanini, high-culture opera (Amahl and the Night Visitors) and ballet (The Nutcracker)!

Mixed in with all that high culture commercial programming was, well, the junk we consumed.

In the '50s & '60s, we children ate off our TV trays a large helping of home-style comedy and there was always sure to be a menopausal woman in there just to keep it real.

This was all before the dawn of rejuvenation surgery. Even Joan Rivers didn't get her first facelift until the mid-1970s (more about her later).

Pre-dawn, menopausal women on TV came in two two flavors: lonely-loony spinsters or old wives whose beleaguered old husbands put up with them. Both asexual.

Is there a Boomer alive who can't sing the theme song for The Beverly Hillbillies? Probably not. Irene Ryan at 60-years-old showed us how delightful aging could be.

Miss Hathaway epitomized the hopeless spinster, thanks to Nancy Kulp who was a mere 42 at the time. Her physical attractiveness was always disguised with scripted self-humiliation and ugly glasses.

Frances Bavier as Aunt Bea kept Opie and Andy in line with home-cooking and housekeeping on The Andy Griffith Show. She was 58 years old when she took the role as Aunt to Andy Griffith's 34-year-old sheriff and 6-year-old Ron Howard.

Childless Gladys Kravitz risked being throttled on a weekly basis, she was such an annoying Bewitched neighbor. However, cancer got her first and chinless Alice Pearce (age 47) was replaced by Sandra Gould (age 48).

Vivian Vance collected the rent on I Love Lucy, playing over-the-hill Ethel Mertz when just 42 years old. When Lucille Ball (40) found middle-age reality conflicting with the storyline, it was rewritten just enough to make baby Desi Arnaz, Jr. plausible in the second season.

Bea Benaderet was 57 when she lost out on playing Granny or Ethel, but starting in 1963 she succeeded in running the Shady Rest Hotel in Petticoat Junction. As Kate Bradley, she mediated the crises of the owners of the three petticoats hanging on the side of the large junction water tank (all of which is so outdated as to mean nothing to someone under 50 today).

Sylvia Field at 58 portrayed Mrs. Wilson, the kindly grandmother-type next door who always had a smile and a plate of cookies ready for little Dennis the Menace. We all recognized the archetype as the next generation of Beaver's mom.

Rose Marie Mazetta and her little black bow provided spinster comedy at age 38 on The Dick Van Dyke Show. The wisecracking comedy writer and designated typist, Sally was always on the lookout for a husband.

Hazel kept Mr. B doing things her way by withholding desert– an interesting application of child rearing pedagogy, given that Shirley Booth (then 63) played the maid to an ostensibly grown man, corporate lawyer George Baxter.

Television will never be the same.

Old ladies on TV? They've all been operated on! Surely this explains why Generation X infotainment journalists don't see it when composing inane online articles titled "Stars in Their 60s Are Sexy!" – yet eight of the nine white women featured have had face work done. Goldie Hawn's (63) abdominoplasty and facelift scars are visible from Hawaii!

At about the same time that tube television sets became obsolete, the true face of menopause began disappearing from our screens.

Solid-state televisions in the '70s ushered into American living rooms a whole new age, pun intended. Fewer shows starred older women characters and when the parts were cast, none of these women actually looked like our grandmothers. The top two such shows from the mid-80s are illustrative.

Angela Lansbury (59) starred as Jessica Fletcher in the Murder She Wrote series from '84-96. It doesn't take much sleuthing to know she had facial surgery in between solving crimes. In this scene, aging becomes a series of clues about what parts of her face have previously had the most surgery.

Bea Arthur (63), Betty White (62), Rue McClanahan (51) and Estelle Getty (62) played the Golden Girls with facelifts from '85-92. Strangely enough, Estelle Getty needed the help of goofy glasses and a wig to portray the mother of Bea Arthur's character. Arthur, of course, was older than Getty. Here are 'the Girls' from June 2008 (Getty suffered from dementia for the past two decades and was not seen in public).

The effects of earlier surgical alterations are even more obvious when their faces are animated: check out the YouTube video concerning Estelle Getty's death this past July.

These are not aging faces found in nature.

According to Joan Rivers' (75) new book, plastic surgery is all about men. Specifically: luring them in with surgically-created beauty and youth so one isn't alone in old age.

She practices what she preaches. In her February 10, 2009 interview on The View, her neck and lips are still stiff with swelling from her latest procedure and Whoopie looks demoralized. Rivers' best work is behind her (at right, March of 2007). Her present look is a stiff caricature of womanhood.

My personal favorite, Margaret Rutherford (1982-1972), looks and acts just as I remember my own grandmother. In her early 70s Dame Rutherford starred in four made-for-tv Agatha Christie mysteries, wearing her own clothes and her own husband (Stringer Davis). I guess she didn't need Joan Rivers' advice.

Join us Thursday @ 10am to hear Anne flesh it all out with Kevyn Burger on-air. Can't make it? Use this link to find the FM107.1 audio archive of Knifestyles broadcasts by date (second hour). Step one: select the date shown on the blog posting; step two: click on Kevyn Burger; step three: click on second hour. Add your comments below!

This Week in the News: Tameka Raymond

2009-02-11T19:57:00.012-06:00

Why would the new bride of R&B singer Usher Raymond (30) go to Brazil to get liposuction? Tameka Raymond né Foster (37) is reported to have suffered suffered cardiac and respiratory arrest last Saturday while being anesthetized for the cosmetic surgery. In plain English, she died and then was revived.

ASA risk grades (physical status scale to predict risk) are used to decide if a patient should have an operation. It will be interesting to know if this could have been predicted à la Kanye West's mother, Donda West.

Cardiac arrests related to anesthesia have an incidence of roughly 1.1/10,000 in the US, Australia, and France. Half of those patients die. The causes are usually anesthetic overdose, hypovolemia (drop in blood volume), or hypoxemia (dop in blood oxygenation ) due to faulty airway mangement. Human error is almost always involved and avoidable.

Some assume Raymond went to Brazil to keep a post-baby tummy tuck and liposuction "mom job" secret/private. The Essence magazine outtake at right is after Usher baby #1 (November 2007) and before baby #2 (December 2008). [Picture removed.]

A neurosurgeon from the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, Dr. Gabriel Hunt, was flown in to monitor her treatment at Sírio-Libanês Hospital in Sao Paulo– not a good sign. If reports of a drug-induced coma are accurate, it's usually to treat intracranial hypertension. One possibility is generalized brain swelling that can occur in ischemic-anoxia states.

Of course the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) has campaigned against medical tourism, though not very convincingly.

Hear Anne flesh it all out with Kevyn Burger on-air. Use this link to find the FM107.1 audio archive of Knifestyles broadcast on 02.11.09. Step one: select the date shown on the blog posting; step two: click on Kevyn Burger; step three: click on first hour.

Add your comments below!

Octo-Mom Revealed

2009-02-06T16:07:00.012-06:00

Well, now we know. Nadya Suleman (33) is clearly and profoundly disturbed. I think it's safe to say she has a narcissistic personality disorder and the self-indulgent factor rides at the top. The obvious facial plastic surgery fits right in with having all the children just because she wants them.

Here's a short closeup of her face during the interview with Ann Curry on NBC.

Her nose is definitely operated and not very tastefully. It's too small for her ethnic face. Her lips have been augmented (and recently) to rival anything in Hollywood. Which is the next clue: her chosen face and family is supposed to remind you of the celebrity she wishes to emulate– in her own twisted fashion– Angelina Jolie (33).

This woman doesn't (and won't) see the disconnect between what she says about raising these children and the reality of what has been going on since the very first birth.

Hear Anne flesh it all out with Kevyn Burger on-air. Use this link to find the FM107.1 audio archive of Knifestyles broadcast on 02.11.09. Step one: select the date shown on the blog posting; step two: click on Kevyn Burger; step three: click on first hour.

Add your comments below!

Baby Love x 8

2009-02-05T01:11:00.009-06:00

Eight? Really? Eight babies. In one uterus.

What's happening?!

We pride ourselves here at Knifestyles on being the "Science Thursday" of the celebrity world, exploring the medical misconceptions showcased in People magazine and the like.

But now a young, six-time mother presents the taxpayers of California and Kaiser Permanente with eight premies.

Twins are the up-to-the-minute fashion accessory in celebrity circles (Angelina Jolie, Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Martin, Lisa Marie Presley, Geena Davis, Marcia Cross, Nancy Grace, Dennis Quaid, P. Diddy, Melissa Etheridge, Diana Krall, Patrick Dempsey – oops, I've run out of room). Has this engendered a public right to likewise 'put in an order' for a multiple pregnancy?

Assisted reproductive technology (ART) has come a long way since Baby Louise who just turned 30 (our first test tube baby works at the post office now).

The case of Nadya Suleman aka Doud (33) does not just raise questions, it shouts them. The only thing we know for sure is that someone's not telling the whole truth.

Q: How did she procreate so many, so often?
High tech fertility à la mode requires a lot of expertise and equipment. This was not a do-it-yourself job. It's possible that a one-time pharmaceutical hyperstimulation of the ovaries (eg, 10 day course of injected pergonal, hMG, or FSH) may have provided enough to stock the freezer. Donor-dad has only one brief performance to make, usually in the clinic restroom with the magazine of his choice. Once stockpiled, these frozen embryos can be thawed sequentially and stored indefinitely.

Q: Doesn't the biological father get a say?
Well, no, if it's done through a reputable sperm bank. But several of the previous birth certificates list the Y chromosome as belonging to "David Soloman." It's a bit queasy knowing this name translates to "Doud Suleman" in Arabic.

Q: How did a single parent of six, attending school and living with her divorced mother, afford repeated IVF pregnancies?
In California it costs about $12,500 per cycle to attempt IVF, slightly lower in areas where insurance plans cover it. Five successful transfers in six years is staying pretty busy; each pregnancy is 40 weeks in gestation plus another few weeks in pharmaceutical preparation. I'm going to hazard a guess that her egg retrieval and first five transfers were covered under her insurance and were done by-the-book. She was probably on a first-name basis in the fertility clinic. She may even have sold eggs to help defray the copays.

Only this last time was different.

Q: Why eight?
Perhaps her parents' financial underwriting was at an end: "this is your last baby and I mean it!" If she hadn't met her goal, she may have reasoned (okay, too strong a word) she could get her way by using up all her remaining frozen embryos in one fell swoop. But– eight out of eight embryos all take in one transfer? It is statistically improbable.

Q: Why would a doctor go along this?
He or she wouldn't. It's unbelievably risky for mother, babies, and physicians. The serious and sometimes lethal complications of high-order multiples are enough of a medico-legal liability to dissuade any physician from transferring so many embryos, but there are also professional guidelines .

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) and the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) both call for no more than one or two embryos for a generally healthy woman under 35. Reproductive endocrinology is a small club and its members are aghast. "Anyone who transfers eight embryos should be arrested for malpractice" says bioethicist Dr. Arthur Caplan.

All of which leads me to suspect we'll find out that this last IVF was without physician involvement. Perhaps Suleman and a highly-trained technician pal made use of an employer's facility to thaw and transfer the remaining baker's dozen on their own time. I'm taking bets on it.

Q: But what about the Chukwu octuplets in Texas?
The only other live-birth octuplets in the US were delivered in 1998, the result poorly monitored fertility drug use, not IVF. The smallest died within a week and the other seven needed about $250,000 of NICU apiece just to get them healthy enough to go home.

Q: Who's going to pay for this?
Kaiser Permanente, the largest not-for-profit managed healthcare plan in the US, will likely pass along their costs to their 8.6 million members. The average price tag for just one cesearean birth is about $25,000 in California; this one took 46 doctors and nurses to deliver. NICU care is in the range of about $2,000/day/baby. The bill will be well over $2M.

Dr. Charles Sophy, medical director of Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, says studies estimate the providing the bare necessities to raise a child to adulthood is $2.5 million. Or roughly $35 million for 14. The cost of services for the babies with on-going health problems and disabilities, the ones short-changed in that crowded uterus, increases that amount exponentially.

A family living on $61,742 and owing creditors $984,426 as of a year ago, is unlikely to be able to meet even a fraction of these crushing expenses. The cost will most likely fall to the state of California.

Q: Can any of this possibly be in the best interests of the children?
A single parent with fourteen children under the age of eight, eight of whom are going to mature simultaneously, is quite outside the laws of human nature. I wish we could rewrite the ending of this fairytale.

Join us Thursday @ 10am to hear Anne flesh it all out with Kevyn Burger on-air. Can't make it? Use this link to find the FM107.1 audio archive of Knifestyles broadcasts by date (second hour). Step one: select the date shown on the blog posting; step two: click on Kevyn Burger; step three: click on second hour. Add your comments below.

In the News: Swayze, Jobs, Jett Travolta, First Dog

2009-01-20T19:06:00.029-06:00

This week, we go over the medical news: Steve Jobs and Patrick Swayze share hospital beds, Jett Travolta and epilepsy, and the Obama's quest for an allergen-free White House pet.

Strange bedfellows, those two. Patrick Swayze (55) and Steve Jobs (54) were both laid low last week with complications of pancreatic cancer. Both have remained in the public eye, but with markedly differing attitudes.

The pancreas is a large gland that lies horizontally behind the stomach and supplies the body with insulin and digestive enzymes. Ninety-five percent of pancreatic tumors are adenocarcinoma. One of the most aggressive and difficult-to-treat of all cancers, fully 75% of patients die within first year after diagnosis. Famed tenor Luciano Pavarotti succumbed to it, as did actors Michael Landon, Fred Gwynne (aka Herman Munster and Harvard grad), Jack Benny, Rex Harrison, Donna Reed, Fernando Lamas, and Joan Crawford. All of Jimmy Carter's three brothers and his father died of it.

In mid-2004 the legendary head of Apple underwent treatment (most likely a Whipple procedure) for an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor– a different and very rare pancreatic cancer responsive to treatment. Approximately half recur, often spreading to liver.

Defiantly private, Jobs' increasingly cachectic appearance and failure to appear at Macworld trade show led to a sharp drop in Apple shares ($5.5 billion). Always a force to be contended with, on January 5th Jobs testily proclaimed it nothing more than a "hormonal imbalance" and shares went up. Just a week later nearly $10 billion in shareholders' market value was wiped out when the "more complex" test results came back, requiring a five month medical leave.

If Jobs' has had a recurrence of his cancer, shareholder lawsuits will likely result. A CEO's personal health is a private matter until it affects the operation of a publicly-held company. Misleading statements about such lie within the realm of securities fraud.

Voted People's sexiest man alive in 1991, Patrick Swayze is terminally ill with Stage IV pancreatic cancer and he knows it. In an extended interview with Barbara Walters (79) January 7th, Joffrey-trained Swayze credited his wife of 33 years, Lisa (51), with helping him get through "this journey....as elegantly as I have."

This from a guy who went one-on-one with Chris Farley in SNL's Chippendale's tryout skit.

Both of the women in the interview have had full facelifts, browlifts, volume added, and probably some eye work. Swayze himself has undergone some endoscopic face work, sometime early in the decade. Check out Keeping Mum (2005, a lovely film)– it's not the same face that made Baby do Dirty Dancing (1987).

The untimely death of Jett Travolta (16) on January 3rd has raised questions about how a closely supervised teenager could die of an epileptic seizure.

Seizures are often a side effect of other illnesses (eg, Sen. Ted Kennedy's event at the inaugural luncheon), but not often the cause of death. The 1% of Americans with convulsive seizure disorder have the same life expectancy as others. There is, however, a poorly understood syndrome called sudden unexpected death in epilepsy patients, or Sudep, which occurs in 10 to 15 of 10,000 patients with poorly controlled seizures.

Officially speaking for the family, lawyers Michael Ossi and Michael McDermott have added to the confusion by offering medically nonsensical statement. An exclusive interview was given to TMZ.com, the celebrity gossip site underwritten by Warner Brothers & AOL and known for a mix of salacious content and speedy posting.

The 16-year-old suffered from uncontrolled grand mal seizures after being taken off Depakote (valproate semisodium), the most prescribed anti-epileptic drug worldwide. The Travoltas, after consulting neurosurgeons, stopped administering it because they felt it had lost its effectiveness.

Scientology believes in medical intervention for physical illnesses, but does not recognize those involving the mind as such, eg, autism or psychiatric disorder, nor the use of psychotropic drugs. Based on precepts laid down by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard (d. 1986), its adherents view mental illness as psychosomatic and to be treated via its proprietary brand of spiritual healing, not with conventional therapies. Only when a physical (organic) cause for a "mental" disorder is proven, does it move from the field of psychiatry to the field of medicine.

The Obamas' dog dilemma?

That an easy one. There is no such thing as a hypoallergenic dog. The major allergen in canines is a protein that dogs excrete in sweat and shed from their skin. There are no skinless dogs!

If anything, factors related to individual dogs seem to influence the allergenicity more than breed or gender.

So here's the deal, Malia. You can have a dog on trial. The dog stays out of your bedroom, since you spend a lot of time in there. Wash your hands after you pet it. And make sure those staff keep the White House clean. But (there always is one, you know), if you have to visit the ER for asthma or you need significantly more medication, the dog has to go.

Tune in @ 10am to Anne flesh it all out with Kevyn Burger on-air. Can't make it? Use this link to find the FM107.1 audio archive of Knifestyles broadcasts by date (second hour). Step one: select the date shown on the blog posting; step two: click on Kevyn Burger; step three: click on second hour. Enjoy!

Does This Make Me Look Operated?

2008-12-11T06:50:00.006-06:00

What do Sharon Osbourne (56), Vanessa Williams (45), Jennie Garth (36), Daisy Fuentes (42), Brooke Shields (43), Simon Crowell (49), David Hasselhof (56), Linda Evangelista (43), Janice Dickinson (53), Lisa Rinna (45), Lori Loughlin (44), and Courtney Cox (44) all have in common?

Fewer wrinkles!

It's not a coincidence that there has been a slew of Botox "confessions" from Hollywood celebrities in the last few months. It coincides with Allergan's (the manufacturer of Botox® Cosmetic aka Botulinum Toxin Type A) marketing push launched in 2007 and formatted as a hybrid public service/infomercial/giveaway featuring well-known personalities.
Olympians Mark Spitz (58) and Nadia Comaneci (47) both gave lecture tours on “Your Personal Best” this fall. Virginia Madsen (44) hawked Botox with her mother in "Freedom of Expression."

By her own admission, Madsen got the job by a slip of the tongue in an interview shortly after the surprise success of her Oscar-nominated film role in Sideways (2004).

But it is really just stating the obvious: Aging Hollywood faces have help from knives and needles.

Short of the kind of admissions currently being featured in magazines, how do you know who's telling the whole truth?

It's all in the ears.

Rhytidectomies do the heavy lifting and offer the most clues. In a traditional facelift, an incision is made in front of the ear extending up into the hairline and down around the bottom of the ear and then up behind it, usually ending in the hairline. (For an excellent pictorial tutorial of the actual surgery, go here.)

Shall we play I Spy? I spy with my little eye....operated auricles.

A pixied earlobe is the distorted result when the reattached lobule is pulled down and forward onto the cheek. A fine example is Micky Rourke's (56) left ear; both are shown. A competent facial plastic surgeon will preserve the shape of the lobe you with which you were born. Otherwise, a big earring is the answer.

Poor scar placement and poor incision planning can be covered up with hairstyling– less so if you are David Gest (55). Over time, John Cleese's (69) aging facelift has relaxed into something appearing fairly natural, but his misplaced post-auricular scar in probably still very visible. (Check out the big kiss scene in Fierce Creatures, 1997).

The pre- and post-auricular skin of the ear is specialized: it is thin and nonhair-bearing. In some (especially men) the facial skin does not match identically with the ear skin. Removing this patch of pliable, hairless skin can have unnatural results....like shaving your ear.

Perhaps more subtle is temporal hair loss or the sacrifice of the tuft of hair at the upper junction of the ear and face. As with Sophia Loren's (74) right ear, it can give a man or woman the appearance of wearing a wig.

The incision can go behind the tragus, that little cartilaginous bump in front of the ear hole, or in front of it. Female stars like Joan Rivers (75) usually opted for behind, in order to camouflage the scar. Poorly handled, the natural definition/indentation in that area is lost, blunting of the facial-ear junction.

Sometimes the tragus itself is distorted and pulled forward by the tension of the lift and/or the thickness of the redraped skin (this settles out over time as it has for Madonna, 50).

And whose operated ears do I Spy here?

After a traditional facelift, some of these stars may appear wonderful in photos, but as soon as they try to move their faces they look a bit Frankenface. The old-school operated look is something smooth and taut, but not young. The new look is all about volume, not subtraction. Volume is the very essence of facial youth and next-generation surgery is all about adding it.

New Feature FM107.1 on Demand - audio archive
http://www.fm1071.com/ondemand/

Did you miss hearing Anne flesh it all out with Kevyn Burger on-air? Use this link to find the FM107.1 audio archive of Knifestyles broadcasts by date (second hour). Step one: select the date shown on the blog posting; step two: click on Kevyn Burger; step three: click on second hour. Enjoy!

I Spy answers:

Coming Up Next!

2008-11-20T06:10:00.004-06:00

We're having a short holiday respite, but will be back on air Thursday, December 11th. We plan to explore something very festive. In the meantime, you can access past broadcasts by using this link to find the FM107.1 audio archive of Knifestyles broadcasts by date (second hour).

Hear Anne flesh it all out with Kevyn Burger. Step one: select the date shown on the blog posting. Step two: click on Kevyn Burger. Step three: click on second hour. Enjoy!

Bond Girls! Then and Now

2008-11-13T05:21:00.007-06:00

"Careful with this one, Mr. Bond. She won't go to bed with you unless you give her something she really wants."

And he doesn't. They are not in love, there is no sex, and only a short kiss. That's the buzz on the upcoming 007 flick, Quantum of Solace, due out November 14th.

For the first time, the perennial playboy (Daniel Craig) doesn't bag the Bond Girl. Unknown Ukrainian model-turned-actress Olga Kurylenko plays a hard-as-nails chica Latina agent from Bolivia (confusing, no?) with her own private vendetta. (Even St. Petersburg seems confused: the Communist Party says Kurylenko has betrayed her roots.)

The modern Bond Grrrls are more forceful, stronger women who no longer giggle in their bikinis. But they still ooze sex, the kind that gets you into trouble. And the accents are still fake, the breasts still real.

Which got us to wondering....in what ways has the Bond Girl evolved?

In the '60s Bond was about swinging in the Cold War, a spy who combated the evil forces while making love to lots of beautiful women. It was the kind of film your parents wouldn't let you see.

Ursula Andress (72) first walked out of the ocean and into male America's fantasies as Honey Ryder in Dr. No (1962). She's had a facelift sometime in the past and only in the last few years has begun to lose her looks. Fluent in four languages, her accented english was dubbed over.

Honor Blackman (81) played Pussy Galore in Goldfinger (1964), probably the first to flex her brains and brawn on screen. Shown here in faux brusing to publicize a British campaign working to end domestic violence against women.

Diana Rigg (70) played Italian Tracy diVicenzo, On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), an British actress cast as a lovelorn Mafia heiress. To date she's the only Bond Girl to score a wedding ring. She confesses to a blepharoplasty at 44 and 20 cigarettes a day. Smoking is not a Bond Girl's best friend.

In the '70s the Bond franchise brought several women to the big screen and then took them off again.

Brit Jane Seymour (57 ) appeared in Live and Let Die and Swede Britt Ekland (66) in The Man With the Golden Gun. Neither performance was memorable – but that's quite the facelift (and browlift, and lip filler).

Jill St. John's (68) IQ of 162 was definitely higher than that of her character Tiffany Case in Diamonds Are Forever (1971), a voluptuous lady running around a burning oil rig in a technicolor bikini. St. John had a rhinoplasty at age 16, at the urging of her mother, but she didn't stop there; this is not the face of a sexagenarian.

Barbara Bach (62) was Anya Amasova in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), an American actress playing a Russian KGB agent, the Bond Girl incarnation of women's liberation as 007's first modern co-worker. Ringo has gifted her some lovely surgical work.

The '80s were pretty dry.

Most memorable was the French actress Carole Bouquet (50) playing Melina Havelock, a half British-half Greek in For Your Eyes Only (1981). The face of Chanel, she went on to captivate Gérard Depardieu, have her phone bugged by François Mitterand, and (allegedly) enjoy an affair with President Sarkozy.

In came the '90s. It just wasn't going to be a good decade, either, for Bond Girls.

Teri Hatcher (44 ), remember her? She played Paris Carver in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997). Okay, you don't remember it, only Desperate Housewives. Her real breakout role was uncredited in Star Trek: Next Generation in 1988. Some ongoing use of Botox (which she denies) seems indicated in this recent candid photo. Her periocular (crowsfeet) and glabellar (between the eyebrows) areas appear frozen.

Turn of the century?

But never say die – or in this case, Die Another Day (2002). Halle Berry (42) playing Giacinta 'Jinx' Johnson rises out of the sea, resurrecting the Bond franchise for the next century.

Did you miss hearing Anne flesh it all out today with Kevyn Burger on-air? Use this link to find the FM107.1 audio archive of Knifestyles broadcasts by date (second hour). Step one: select the date shown on the blog posting; step two: click on Kevyn Burger; step three: click on second hour. Enjoy!

By Popular Request: Palin

2008-10-31T15:29:00.006-05:00

Okay, okay, okay. Just for you and just for Halloween. Here, by your request, are my favorite photoshopped Palin photos. Enjoy.

Hollywood's True Nightmare (Aging)

2008-10-30T05:47:00.015-05:00

What photoshop taketh away, it can also giveth. Today we'd like to bring our friends in Hollywood closer to God.

Every bit as much as cosmetic surgery, Photoshop® and digital technology have forever altered the meaning of the close-up and the celebrity photograph.

Even in the golden era of Hollywood, studios manipulated every publicity photo via meticulous styling, lighting, and retouching in the darkroom of artists like the photographer George Hurrell. Today's top pixel pushers are stars in their own right. The world's most sought-after professional photo retoucher, Pascal Dangin, was profiled in The New Yorker.

But, as the Good Book says:

....Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.
Job 1:21

It just so happens that these self-same digital wizards, the ones who reimage our celebrity universe into something beautiful and good and unblemished, in the darkness of their tiny home offices they sometimes use their power for – evil.

Just for Halloween, we're going to peek into an alternative reality through the miracle of Adobe® Photoshop® CS4 software. About 500,000 photoshop artists like to electronically hang out together and misuse their free time to mess with us. Here are some of the results of their creative play - click on any image for a closer look.

In the hands of these dedicated digital jockeys, several prominent actors get to reprise roles made famous by other Hollywood colleagues, as above. Some of the artists, though, go for more realism with their celebrity heroes.

Others just want to have fun (or not) with the stars.

Then there are those Mike-the-Mechanic types that just want the world to know that these famous faces are just plain folks like you and me! It's enough to melt McCain's heart. Mega-stars from the Midwest include some of our favorites - who knew??

Just for fun we're going to have you name their heartland occupations:

Jennifer Aniston _______________ .

Sharon Stone _______________ .

Ashley Simpson _______________ .

Tara Reid _______________ .

Britney Spears _______________ .

But what truly terrorizes Tinseltown, the Nightmare on Hollywood Boulevard, the boogey man that stalks the stars.... is aging. Bwwwwaaaaaa-ha!

What will our leading lovelies look like as time moves on, but without plastic surgery? Here are some of the very best of the projections by the same masters of the mouse, using age progression techniques that are realistic.

Jessica Simpson's image shows the characteristic change in skin elasticity in the décolletage and upper arm triceps. Her breast tissue is less firm. The skin on her hands, forearms, shoulders and face display the pigment clumping that comes with over exposure to the sun. The facial wrinkling is exactly as nature intended. The vertical bands of the platysmal muscle in the neck become more prominent and the subcutaneous fat thins on the back of her hands.

Sheryl Crow's image shows early peri-menopausal aging: the loss of the epicanthal fold (the skin of the upper eyelid) that evolves as the brow drops; the deepening of "smile" wrinkles; and loss of hair pigment.

Jennifer Love Hewitt is going to make someone a very nice grandma. As the facial tissues head south to form crepey jowls it completely changes the shape of her face. This kind of skin relaxation usually comes from excessive sun exposure to thin skin. Note the widening part that comes from thinning hair.

Lindsay Lohan is going this way, if she cleans up her act. It's accurate for a post menopausal age except perhaps for the eyelids...

Don't let this innocent smile fool you into thinking Kirsten Dunst is just about warm hugs in her dotage. She's still got a lot going on.

Party girl Paris Hilton is sure to be wearing pink at a ripe old age and having lots of fun.

And Gwen Steffani? Party-hearty, that girl is never going to quit!

Sadly, the same probably can't be said for Nicole Kidman.

Want to try it yourself? Here's a tutorial.

Happy Halloween everyone!

New Feature FM107.1 on Demand - audio archive
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Did you miss hearing Anne flesh it all out today with Kevyn Burger on-air? Use this link to find the FM107.1 audio archive of Knifestyles broadcasts by date (second hour). Step one: select the date shown on the blog posting; step two: click on Kevyn Burger; step three: click on second hour. Enjoy!

Freaky Faces (Bad Cosmetic Surgery)

2008-10-16T07:24:00.013-05:00

In the mood for some fun-size candy? In Hollywood it's Halloween year-round. Let's go trick-or-treating with some of our favorite stars from the KnifeStyles' archives! (To find out more about how you can get any of these looks at home, just click on his/her/its name under Labels.)

Leading the party is birthday boy Michael Jackson. He celebrated his 50th this year with a new and improved wig. And bringing the party balloons and matching face is big sister LaToya (52).

How did they come up with this look?

I'll tell you how: they ripped it off! In 1952 Hasbro came out with Mr. Potato Head. The original package included plastic eyes, nose, mouth, ears along with a styrofoam head for kids to practice making wacky expressions. Featured in the first TV toy commercial ever, it earned $4 million in sales in just the first few months.

The competition in Hollywood has been fierce ever since.

The Scary Clown face took off with the Batman film series. Mickey Rourke (52) can't smile anymore without conjuring up images of a demonic Joker. Not to be outdone, Donatella Versace (55) is going as Mrs. Joker.

Then there are those older kids who go in for the classic fairy tale genre: the Big Bad Wolf my-teeth-will-eat-you-up. Both Faye Dunaway (67) and Gary Busey (64) have aggressive, man made choppers perfect for the part.

Also light and playful are Clown Lips, often paired with great big rubber breasts that go beep-beep. Just showing up as the first supermodel would so '80s. Or so Janice Dickinson (53) thinks.

On the more on the risqué side of the room is Man-as-Phallus, Sylvester Stallone (60). This look can be obtained by combining surgery with lots of injected testosterone and hGH. Not sure how much candy you'll get with this one....

Not to be outdone, Madonna's (52) new face shares a lot in common another x-rated marionette: Madame. Too tight, too thin, all cheeks and chin! Lil' Kim (31) tried the same same idea, but she's got a few years to go before she can really pull it off.

Victoria Principal (62) just wants to be thought of as hip and techno-savvy, so she's going as an emoticon, the Happy Face.

Imitation can be a source of flattery – or not. We could ask Rowan Atkinson if his Mr. Bean Brows are proprietary and whether Melanie Griffith (51) has paid.

Of course, the easy cop-out is just to put on a mask. Are you listening, Ms. Presley (63)? It's much more fun when you put some effort into it. Take, for instance, Julie Newmar (75): a deft hand with the make-up can really liven up your Death Mask.

Then there's the crowd that believes that trick-or-treating should be a creative expression of one's worth. Why trick out your ride when you can Pimp Your Face? Mike Tyson (42) is outspoken on the topic.

Or just forget about plastic surgery and Just Do Drugs for a really scary look.

PS:
Oh, those fun FM 107.1 listeners, one of whom submitted this photo to give Donatella a run for her wax lips. Who says 40 can't be fabulous?

New Feature FM107.1 on Demand - audio archive
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Did you miss hearing Anne flesh it all out with Kevyn Burger on-air? Use this link to find the FM107.1 audio archive of Knifestyles broadcasts by date (second hour). Step one: select the date shown on the blog posting; step two: click on Kevyn Burger; step three: click on second hour. Enjoy!

FREE Botox

2008-10-13T14:31:00.003-05:00

No, I'm not kidding, either:

At the October 14, 2008 Freedom of Expression event in Minneapolis, Allergan promises that attendees will receive a voucher for a complimentary Botox treatment at the Botox provider of their choice. Actress Virginia Madsen is hosting the event in partnership with the League of Women Voters, which will be held at the Pantages Theater downtown.

Ms. Madsen has hosted similar events and appeared on behalf of Allergan in many other cities this year. Allergan promises to provide an evening of "education, self expression, film and refreshments as we discuss the importance of choice and conviction in our lives."

It's happening THIS Tuesday Oct. 14th from 4-6 PM @ Pantages Theatre in downtown Minneapolis.

You must RSVP first if you wish to attend: 212-462-8702 (it's a v/m). Now don't say I never did anything for you.

New Feature FM107.1 on Demand - audio archive
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Did you miss hearing Anne flesh it all out with Kevyn Burger on-air? Use this link to find the FM107.1 audio archive of Knifestyles broadcasts by date (second hour). Step one: select the date shown on the blog posting; step two: click on Kevyn Burger; step three: click on second hour. Enjoy!

Frightful Facelifts

2008-10-02T07:52:00.013-05:00

And now as promised, an early Halloween special! Let's start with the frankly frightful – results that make children cry and dogs bark.

Jocelyn Wildenstein (62) is pretty scary with shocking surgically-enhanced features (reportedly inspired by a love of exotic wild cats). The ex-wife of a billionaire art dealer, she has undergone about seven surgical sessions including not only a facelift, but drastic eye reconstruction surgery and custom SUV-sized implants to her lips, cheeks, chin, and brow as well. Here she is in her latest incarnation.

Who else might we see trick-or-treating?

You can count on Joan Rivers (75) to show up. Her face has been around the block several times. Her last facelift is perhaps the most deforming; check out her Loose Women appearance on YouTube. The cheek and lip implants have left her face stiff and her speech a bit slurred.

She's got company. Several aging stars have opted for the Madame puppet look: too tight, too thin, all cheeks and chin.

Dolly Parton (62) sleeps in her makeup when staying metropolitan high-rise hotels – just in case of emergency evacuation. Her wig is at the ready on the lamp shade.

Faye Dunaway (67), once among the most beautiful in Hollywood, also has an affinity with Madame after a recent touch-up to her cheeks.

There are those celebrity women whose decorative efforts merely accentuate the horrific. Jackie Stallone (71) needn't say "boo!" Her makeup does it for her.

Thinking about a Halloween video? Forget Nightmare on Elm Street. Rent The Boynton Beach Club and be ready to swear off geriatric sex after viewing Loretta Swit (70) and Dyan Cannon (71) animate their masks.

But women don't have the worst of it. Off-camera, tell-tale facelift results can't be camouflaged as readily with hair and makeup if you're a guy.

But men – they're just so uninhibited!

Pre-auricular incisions like Michael Douglas's (63) are placed in front of the tragus to avoid repositioning beard inside and behind the ears.

It's very tricky to preserve the characteristically male pre-auricular bare skin and sideburn; obliterate both and you get David Gest's (55) look. He's shaving right into his ears! His tragus is pulled foward by placing the incision behind it and the scar resurfaces in what's left of his sideburn.

But my favorite male mask belongs to Burt Reynolds (72). Even his toupee can't hide his pixied earlobes and the pulled, unnatural vectors.

Another popular male choice is to dress up as an alien. How else do you explain Mickey Rourke's (56) chosen look? Or his fellow extraterrestrial, Scott Thompson (43), aka Carrot Top?

The Brits love Tarts and Vicars fancy dress parties and changing sex is a popular theme on this side of the pond as well! I think we'll be sticking with just the costume part of it for our own Halloween this year....

New Feature FM107.1 on Demand - audio archive
http://www.fm1071.com/ondemand/

Did you miss hearing Anne flesh it all out with Kevyn Burger on-air? Use this link to find the FM107.1 audio archive of Knifestyles broadcasts by date (second hour). Step one: select the date shown on the blog posting; step two: click on Kevyn Burger; step three: click on second hour. Enjoy!

Regrettable Rhinoplasties

2008-09-18T09:07:00.012-05:00

Does seem as if young Hollywood starlets all share a common gene pool? The ubiquity of the narrow bridge, defined tip, straight dorsum– something distinctly American and that you won't find on screen in foreign films– isn't due to the great melting pot, it's the surgeon's knife.

Like diamonds, rhinoplasties are forever. Once you've purchased it, you'll be wearing it for the rest of your life.

The nose doesn't grow back or stretch with time. The very best of the rhinoplastic surgeons (and there are fewer of them than you think) can improve on a bad result, but revision surgery will never restore your original nose to your face.

As they say in the business: "you want to hit a home run the first time you're up to bat."

So what makes for a poor result?

First, an anatomical primer. Surgeons identify the supporting structure under the nasal skin by its anatomical parts:

From the apex or nasal tip, the columella projects inferoposteriorly toward the center of the superior lip, adjacent on either side to the nares. Encompassing the border of the nares are the alae of the nose superiorly and laterally, and the floor of the nose inferiorly. At the posterior aspect of the base of the nose is the piriform aperture, bordered superiorly and laterally by the frontal processes of the maxilla and the nasal bones. The inferior portion of the cartilaginous nose, otherwise considered the base of the nose, includes the lobule, which consists of the lower lateral cartilages, the tip, the alae, and the columella. In the midline, the posterior aspect of the medial crura of the lower lateral cartilages articulates with the caudal membranous septum. Anteriorly, the medial crura are enclosed within the columella. The lateral crura of the lower lateral cartilages project superiorly to overlap the inferior aspect of the upper lateral cartilages in the midline. Laterally, these crura loosely attach to the piriform aperture....

And now to illustrate. Double-click on any of these images to get a close-up. Take a good look.

The nose falls apart over time, ie, the underlying architecture of the nose is so compromised that the look (and function) can't be maintained. Repeated surgeries become necessary. Michael Jackson (50) is the poster child for what is termed a 'crucified nose.'

Alternately, the surgical result may stay put but it's a look that doesn't appear in nature ala LaToya Jackson (51). Closely related to this phenonmenon is the 'operated look,' a nose that is plausible but clearly the result of surgery, distracting even to the untrained eye. Calista Flockhart (43) has just such a rhinoplasty. Her skin is thin and her resected greater alar cartilage on one side almost pokes through the tip, like a knuckle.

Scarring and overly aggressive resection of the cartilage causes a 'pinched tip' (thinning of lateral cura) and/or 'notched nostrils' (lateral crus). That girl, Marlo Thomas (70) has both.

Her first cosmetic surgery was way back in 1965. Joan Rivers (73) was actually much prettier than she ever thought she was and her initial surgeries made her only slightly less so. But her nose has been, for some time now, the classic example of too much, too often. The net result is a 'putty nose,' one which looks as if it was fashioned out of silly putty and stuck on her face.

Now you see it, now you don't. Onlay grafts to build up the dorsum are always tricky. Alloplastic grafts (eg, silicone, gortex) tend to become infected and extrude; allografts (eg, cadaver donor tissue) reabsorb over time. Only autogenous ones (eg, the patient's own septal/ear cartilage, rib, iliac bone) tend to last. Just ask Lil' Kimberly Jones (33).

Polly want a cracker? No. The pollybeak deformity is a disproportionate fullness in the supratip which evolves postsurgically. It can be cartilagenous or soft tissue in nature and is often the result of a misjudgment on the surgeon's part. Furthermost left is a 1983 preoperative photo of Meg Ryan (46); the next two date from '01 and '08.

Excessive 'columella show' can cause the operated nose to have the appearance of a long, drooping tip. And seeing inside someone's nostril can provide fodder for embarrassing rumors about what's up inside there. Here are three postoperative views of Paris Hilton (27).

Correction of the twisted nose poses one of the greatest challenges in septorhinoplasty. "My face is full of imperfections and it is what it is." Easy to say when you're Dr. McDreamy and have landed gigs as the face of both Versace and Avon campaigns this year. Patrick Dempsey's (41) rhinoplasty took place sometime around 1991-1994. Symmetry is defined by an imaginary line drawn equidistance between the medial canthus (inner corners of the eye) through the middle space of the two front teeth/cupid's bow.

Perhaps the most incongruous mistake is when a perfectly natural-looking result simply doesn't suit the wearer. Jennifer Grey's (48) new nose so disoriented her fans that her career faltered. Twenty years postoperatively, it still hasn't recovered.

To hear more, tune in to hear Anne discuss it all with Kevyn Burger on FM107.1 at 10am Thursday.

Political Faces

2008-09-04T07:20:00.010-05:00

Warren Harding swept to the 1920 Republican nomination largely because an Ohio promoter thought "He looked like a President." He won by an unprecedented landslide, 60% of the popular vote.

Are we still voting by appearances? Anything worth chattering about?

On the Democratic presidential ticket the first Black First Lady in-waiting, Michelle Obama (44) has guts and glamour, indisputable professional credentials, and is incredibly smart. There's an unflattering high school photo in her past and she chemically straightens her hair. And they put her in flats so her 5'11" frame doesn't tower over Jill Biden (57). But that's about it.

Dr. Biden, also a very handsome woman, appears to be aging without any knifestyling. Her skin is weathered from outdoor running and she dyes her hair. But that's about it. Yawn.

If they both weren't such fabulous examples of vibrant womanhood, it'd be almost boring.

Obama (47) himself is remarkable for being within the 35% of adult Americans who are at a healthy weight. His ears stick out and he has a gleaming smile. Cartoonists and dentists across the land are celebrating.

Now Joe Biden (64) is a different matter.

Back when the West was won, hair transplants looked like they were accomplished with a pop riveter - the so-called 'doll's hair' look. Until the late 1980s, the best method of hair transplantation involved 'plugs' that each contained 15 to 30 hairs.

Sen. Biden's early career foray into arms and hair control has become a little less obvious over time, thanks to revision with updated transplant techniques and greying hair. Nor was he alone: plugged-in along with him were the late senators William Proxmire and Strom Thurmond.

The right-leaning blogosphere is roundly condemning the Vice Presidential candidate's "poor judgment" for undergoing "expensive cosmetic surgery" and deems it indicative of a character flaw, akin to dishonesty (which already plagues Biden): "a blatant sign of vanity above substance."

Would they feel the same way if it came out that Obama's white sparklers were veneers? After all, the ivories are all capped in Hollywood. (And tinsel town has it's share of balding beaus battling back, too. Rob Schneider, Ben Affleck, Matthew McConaughey, Brendan Fraser, and Tom Hanks have all been rumored to have had hair transplants.)

But now for the Republican half of the ticket. Ladies first.

Cindy McCain (54) has had a little thing for stolen prescription opioids, but is more widely criticized for being "plastic." You'll never find a photo of her with crowsfeet or wrinkled brow. But is it deeper than too much bleach and Botox? Her ears show no obvious signs of a traditional cut-and-pull facelift, but her face is tight, the neck is remarkably taut, and her jaw is free of jowling....something you just don't find in nature. Her face work is as carefully done as Hillary Clinton's. This photo shows those pearls are real.

Pro-life, pro-gun, pro-drilling, abstinence-only creationist, the undeniably beautiful Sarah Palin (44) has received a lot of attention for producing her fifth child virtually undetected. Scott Sloan appears to have the only footage from February showing the Alaskan governor just 8 weeks before she delivered a 6 lbs, 2 oz baby.

Here is her daughter attending the RNC this week in St. Paul, at 5 months pregnant. The photo-op was deliberate, as both John McCain and Sarah Palin greeted the couple-to-be at the MSP airport.

Medically, the timing is curious. Bristol Palin (17) conceived as a 16-year-old junior. Was it in defiance of her parents' prior decision to yank her from her boyfriend's high school midyear and take her home for some eight months? Or was it to finish something she started? There is one menstrual cycle gap between the two pregnancies.

The real significance of this for the Elephant and the presidential contest is thoughtfully discussed here. I predict conservative Christian voters will love this fertile family fable, for the same reasons they voted to sit down and have a beer with recovering alcoholic GWB.

"First Dude" Todd Palin is a good 'ol boy with nothing knifestyle-worthy. At most, his elopement with the someday VP candidate coincided with the conception of his first born, Track (can't tell for sure since the Bristol and Track's birthdates have been scrubbed.)

Presidential nominee John McCain's (72) war injuries and torture have left him with limited range of motion in his arms. (According to fellow POW cellmate Colonel Bud Day, McCain had 3 fractures in his right arm, a fractured right knee, dislocated left arm, bayoneted left leg– before his captors starved him and hung him by his arms). That and a loose zipper seem to be his main contribution to today's subject.

To hear more, tune in to hear Anne explore it all with Kevyn Burger on FM107.1 at 10am Thursday.

Freaks & the Fair (Sideshow Anomalies)

2008-08-21T07:37:00.007-05:00

As long as there have been circuses, carnivals, and fairs, there have probably been human oddities exhibited for public voyeurism: the freak show. It's not at all PC any more, but there it is.

As science advanced in the 20th century, the once mysterious anomalies were explained as genetic mutations or diseases, and pity rather than fear or disdain became the norm. But deep under the socialized response still lurks a morbid curiosity, a disturbing fascination with nature gone awry.

The real shift has been in venue: off the Midway and onto the internet.

A distinction is made between "born freaks" and self-made freaks. The latter is the most common today (if you don't believe me, check out the tattooed Puff the Magic Dragon). In the late 19th century the fascination with abnormalities surged, partly due to the publication of Darwin's theories of evolution in 1859. During it's heyday, the outright fakes were "gaffed freaks" but medical conditions accounted for most of the authentic "oddities."

The majority of these human marvels displayed themselves for their own reasons and quite often reaped large financial and personal rewards for doing so. Some performers, those not of legal age or mentally handicapped, were exploited against their will.

For most, it was a way to make a living.

Joseph Merrick is familiar to many because of the the 1980 movie The Elephant Man starring John Hurt. Merrick had a disease only identified 100 years after his death. It was not elephantiasis or neurofibromatosis, but an extremely rare hereditary disorder: Proteus syndrome, named after the Greek god who could change his shape.

Some of the conditions were skin-deep: albinos and "piebalds," the latter having the same disease Michael Jackson suffers from, vitiligo.

Excessive hair in the wrong places could earn a gig as the "Bearded Lady" or "Dog Boy." Female beard growth is the result of a hormonal imbalance (usually androgen excess); wolfman hair arises from a rare genetic disorder known as hypertrichosis.

The pituitary gone amuck resulted in exploitable height differentials (before basketball or Mike Myers's movies were employment options). Today there's even a blog devoted to it. But back in the mid-19th century, a woman like Anna Swan had limited career opportunities at 7' 5.5" tall.

At one time "the human skeleton" and "the fat lady" were sideshow draws; today emaciation and morbid obesity are on display for free.

"The Rubber Man," or if female "The Elastic Lady" were contortionists who had Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, an inherited disorder affecting the production of collagen, a connective tissue found throughout the body. In some it allows the skin to be pulled away from the body as if elastic (skin extensibility), in others joint hypermobility.

Congenital anomalies were highly prized.

The archetype is perhaps conjoined twins, the most well known being the 19th century "Siamese twin" brothers Chang and Eng. Today their joined sternum and livers would be surgically separated with ease within the first months of life.

Grady "lobster boy" Stiles was a big draw in this century. His hereditary deformity was ectrodactyly, where the fingers and toes are fused together to form claw-like extremities. The word literally translates as "monstrous fingers."

(Our own Minnesotan Bree Walker was born with ectrodactyly and worked as a TV news anchor as well as roles such as the "Sabina, the Scorpion Lady" in the HBO series Carnivale).

Intersex performers, individuals with both male and female secondary sex characteristics, have had their fans since before the time of Christ. At left is a famous 1st-century BC sculpture: "Reclining Hermaphrodite."

In 1932, Tod Browning used his experience as a former member of a traveling circus to direct and produce Freaks. This horror film about sideshow performers was based on Tod Robbins' short story Spurs. Browning cast real people with deformities rather than using costumes and makeup– unheard of at the time.

Today's performers are for the most part "made freaks." Witness the rise in the puppet look first popularized by that hand sock drag queen Madame. Chin and cheek-submalar implants on skinny women with tight facelifts look like this. Madame should sue!

Best Breast Forward (A-Cup)

2008-08-07T07:57:00.016-05:00

Who's flat and happy? A sizable portion of the young Hollywood A-list is also an A-cup. Here's just a sampling of those born to be boyish and not about to change it (we think).

(Go ahead, guess which breasts go with which celebrity; scroll for hints*.)

A lot of fuss was recently kicked up when Keira Knightley (23) recently refused to have her mammaries digitally enhanced in publicity stills for her upcoming film "The Duchess."

But Knightley plays both sides. For the 2004 film promotion of "King Arthur" she was unaltered as the leather-clad Guinevere – but only in Great Britain. For the U.S. audience the studio supersized her natural A-cup chest to a boomy C-cup (the actual film must have been a twin disappointment.)

Knightley has previously spoken out in defense of photoshopping celebrities into an altered state by rationalizing that actresses are in the fiction business – and just as movies are all about fiction, so are posters and magazine pictures. "Films particularly deal with fantasy," she said.

The trend to be thin and bone in Hollywood dictates that most young starlets will have very little breast tissue – unless they undergo surgical augmentation. No amount of tape will make cleavage out of 32-AA. A tight corset and "bosom makeup" will hint at it, though.

There are very practical up-sides to being less well-endowed. Diane Keaton was able to appear attractively nude at 57 (albeit with a LOT of body makeup) in the 2003 "Something's Gotta Give." At the same age the lovely Scarlett Johansson's body is going to look like Kathy Bates in "About Schmidt." Only the slight (and childless) age gracefully.

Of course if one gets pregnant or eats, things get bigger: breast tissue is mostly fat. Ask Renee Zellweger.

But the truth is, flat-chested women are easier to dress than their DD sisters as any designer will confirm. There's a reason the catwalk models are rail thin adolescents. A very busty woman will end up looking heavy in anything that isn't skin-tight. Just try putting Pamela Anderson into a double- breasted jacket or high neckline!

There is probably never going to be a celebrity who will trade on a AA size bust the way Dolly Parton and Anderson have built a career on their twin peaks. But there is definitely room in Hollywood for big talent with small breasts.

Music from the show:

My Boobs Are Ok-Lene Alexandra

My Humps-Black Eyed Peas

*and about those breasts....

Read the Archives

2008-07-03T08:32:00.001-05:00

On va-ca-tion! Really, until August. Enjoy!

Plasticonomics & F. Scott Fitzgerald

2008-06-24T07:47:00.023-05:00

Today we discuss the latest plastic surgery scandal: our credit is maxed!

A NYTimes reporter "using a script, made identical anonymous calls to the offices of 48 prominent plastic surgeons" this month, mystery-shopping all the A-list offices across the US, and found...business is down. The article dubed it "plasticonomics: the new economic reality of vanity."

About 90 percent of the doctors' offices offered consultation appointments in three weeks or less; about 94 percent offered surgery dates in June or July. Granted, plastic surgeons exaggerate much in the same way men do in locker rooms ("I'm bigger and I get more") – but this kind of accessibility means top flight knife wielders are seeing business drop off pretty dramatically.

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote that the very rich "are different from you and me."* The Grey Lady thinks F. Scott got it wrong. The article cites a recent downturn in sales by retailers like Coach, Polo Ralph Lauren, and Tiffany's – but that's not where the very rich plunk down their Centurion Card; that's where the middle class shoppers ape the rich. It's the disposable income of the upper and middle-class that is disappearing. There's not much belt-tightening going on at Hermès, Chanel Haute Couture, and Van Cleef & Arpels.

If you're struggling to make the house payment the same week you've filled the gas tank, then yes, you're going to think twice about plunking down $7,000 for a browlift. You might opt for $500 worth of botox instead. As the economy has headed down, the number of non-surgical procedures has risen. But the number of cosmetic surgeries performed has never recovered to pre-9/11 levels. Data from the last six months of economic turn-down isn't yet available.

And that's why we love Hollywood. They are rich and they are different from you and me.

Two movies opened this week at the box office: "The Love Guru" and "Get Smart."

"Get Smart" has as it's premise that our aging Agent 99 has undergone extreme plastic surgery to reinvent herself as a 20-something ("and prettier, too"), all in the name of espionage. Casting Anne Hathaway (26) isn't much of a stretch. Steve Carell (45) is meant to be her peer.

I wonder why anyone in the screenwriters' guild thought that was fiction?

Well, perhaps they just couldn't find any 45 year-old actress who'd undergone surgery to look 20 years younger to play the part.

The 1960s originals were not an option. Don Adams (82) died in 2005 just four years short of his agent number. Barbara Feldon (76) is still kicking.

While Adams clearly had some unpleasant visits to the dermatologist in his later years, Feldon appears to have stayed out of the sun. Prior to promoting her 2002 "Living Alone and Loving It" she spent her book advance on a facelift and browlift with nice results. The teeth are a little much. She's continued to have work done but is beginning to look less like herself these days.

And the competition on screen number two? So far, Mike Meyer's rubber nose in "The Love Guru" is not making him any richer at the box office.

The rumor about Le Coq smuggling a schnauzer in his speedo? Not true– that's just careful positioning of Justin Timberlake's junk in a too small box. And co-star Jessica Alba (27) has not spent her vanity dollars on a pair of flotation devices, either. Come to think of it, Romany Malco may not look much like a hockey player, but what a swimmer's body!

Okay, I digress.

Back to economically-challenged you and me. What's a middle class girl to do? Pay off your credit cards! No, wait, I understand. To make your vanity dollars stretch the farthest consider the following economies:

Don't buy OTC anti-aging products– shop the high-strength brands available only through physicians' offices and ask about satisfaction guarantees.
Try Botox before surgery– in the right hands a modest investment will give you a chemical browlift and open up your eyes for 4-6 months.
Buy packaged services, like lipodissolve for spot reduction or laser treatments for veins– you know exactly what you are spending and the results are great.

*from The Rich Boy, published 1926: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft, where we are hard, cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand."

Yeeow-ouch

2008-05-22T08:33:00.001-05:00

Sad to say, even the best of us can be laid low by....sciatica. And me, too. Not the least bit glamorous, but there it is. Next broadcast and posting in June! Send your topic requests in now and take my mind off this horrible nerve pain.

Tanorexic Teens in the Booth

2008-05-15T13:24:00.005-05:00

Must we repeat ourselves? It seems we must. The Indoor Tanning Association (ITA), industry mouthpiece for the tanning bed merchants, has launched the oxymoronic "heathy tan."

The ITA exists for the purpose of "promoting responsible sun care and sun burn prevention" in the same way Altria (aka Phillip Morris) promotes public health in third-world countries. It "represents thousands of indoor tanning manufacturers, distributors, facility owners and members from other support industries" employing "more than 160,000 people and...more than $5 billion annually..."

If you go by the ITA press release page, the "sunshine vitamin" D is a cure-all for cancer and scientists are just one short step away from endorsing indoor tanning beds as a drug delivery device. The campaign is aimed at those least likely to be deficient in vitamin D: young, caucasian female teenagers.

This week's Newsweek provides an article summarizing the ITA's fallacious assertions. The average amount of sun required by said caucasian teenagers is 5 minutes 3x week of unprotected midday (10am - 4pm) sun exposure. Just think about trying to avoid that amount of sunlight. Researchers have found the highest incident of vitamin D deficiency in otherwise health women of the Middle East: those covered head-t0-fingertip in burkas. I'm not kidding.

A Picture is Worth... (Before & Afters)

2008-05-08T06:38:00.011-05:00

... A thousand disclaimers to the contrary. After all, a celebrity is more likely to admit to having herpes than cosmetic surgery. A recent NYTimes article featuring an MSNBC article featuring the opinions of a celebrity blogging surgeon (how's that for sourcing?) purported to reveal all in pictures.

The running commentary of the star-studded slide show was meant to expose the not-so-pretty results of rejuvenation surgery. To really have an eye for the faces you need to be both predisposed to gossip and have had a lot of time holding the knife, so to speak. A general plastic surgeon who is young, relatively inexperienced (in surgeon years), and not terribly savvy about facial plastics is going to miss quite a lot.

Let's have a little look-see.

Here are some of the then-and-now photos and quotes from the MSNBC pictorial, along with some tips from moi. Just double click on any photo or link for a closer look.

Nicole Kidman (40) is not showing "classic botox brow" here in this side-by-side; what it does show is a lot of grey and hair extensions. This is what botox brow looks like. Kidman is currently off the juice due to her pregnancy and has the brow movement to prove it. (PS: red lipstick was not a good look in 1997.)

It's more than just "possible" Kenny Rogers (69) has had a necklift; there's plenty of evidence of his facelift(s) as well in the side-by-side photos. Compare the two necklines from 1985 (far left) and 2007 (middle). That turkey gobbler didn't go away on its own! Note as well the post-facelift choice of a goatee; most likely the surgeon hid the facelift scar behind the tragus and the natural beard line is now in there as well. Just a little image googling shows Rogers had a previous blepharoplasty and facelift prior to this; his 9/2006 ear (near left) shows obvious signs of a lift, but the neck skin is much more lax than what he's sporting in 2007.

The ear can potentially give you a lot of information about anyone's facelift. Just as in tailoring, the seam has got to go somewhere. In men the facelift incision is most often placed in the preauricular position, in women it's looped around behind the tragus. Care must be taken to avoid loss of temporal hair/sideburn elevation, tragus elimination, earlobe dislocation/distortion, and visible scars in front of the ear– all too common mistakes.

Who's next? Susan Sarandon (61) looks like she's "aging gracefully" in MSNBC's side-by-side, but sometimes you just need the right picture. Once again, google is your friend. There's plenty of evidence under her chin of a facelift in this 5/2008 candid (far right). Now look again at the MSNBC photos: her crowsfeet swing upward with the onset of aging...or a temporal lift.

Madonna (49)? Excuse me?!? Is the Pope Catholic? Yes, she's had a facelift. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Sylvester Stallone (61) does not look "more and more like his mother." He looks like an engorged p _ _ _ _. I can't say it, even in print. He has the classic signs of testosterone replacement in addition to his hGH use.
That raw meat look comes from over-doing the hormone supplements. Not only has he had an upper blepharoplasty, he's had lips, browlift(s), and full facelift. Check out the incision scars; there's no "maybe" about it.

And the NYTimes covergirl, Priscilla Presley (62)? That's a 40 year gap between images, but her nasolabial folds disappeared and her pucker got poutier. But what's the most obvious thing that jumps out at you? Her facelift! Check out those ears, no before photo needed! This is not merely "Botox injections, Restylane injections, chemical peels and laser treatments...fat grafting...long-acting filler like Radiesse." It's a facelift, boys and girls. Now, class dismissed.

Does She or Doesn't She? (Hair Coloring)

2008-04-24T06:17:00.007-05:00

Well, I think we know. They ALL do. Seventy-five percent of adult American women color their hair. We brush it, blow it, cut it, curl it, shampoo it, treat it, perm it, straighten it...but most of all we dye it.

Hair worship has been a part of Hollywood since film began. Technicolor became more affordable in the '50s and when Clairol simultaneously introduced the first one-step lightener and tint, dye jobs became a hit with just plain folks. "Does She or Doesn't She?" ads convinced fashion-conscious homemakers for the first time that it was alright to color their hair.

Very few of those technicolor queens wore their real color on screen. The most famous of the natural redheads were Katharine Hepburn, the first freckle-faced, red-haired actress to become a major star, and Maureen O'Hara (87). (Lucille Ball self-described her natural color as "mousy brown." Ann-Margret (66) came into the world a brunette, ditto Rita Hayworth.) The first redhead was actually a genetic error originating 20,000 to 40,000 years ago. Red hair appears in people with two copies of a recessive gene on chromosome 16, causing a mutated MC1R protein. It's the rarest natural hair color in humans.

Today's stars regularly go from light to dark and back again. It's nearly impossible to name one film actress who has maintained her natural hair color. Or even to name her natural hair color.

Male actors like Brad Pitt (44) change hair color frequently, but always ostensibly for a role. Richard Gere (58) and George Clooney (46) opt for greying naturally.

Let's pick on Nicole Kidman (40). Naturally ginger, she went really deep red with her Moulin Rouge hair, then auburn, then the blond Bewitched stage, and now strawberry blond (usually). Kidman's gone grey, hence the chemical blonde-ing of her natural red. Look at the temple area where the grey takes the hair dye poorly. Being overly thin is a disadvantage: the hair falls out and gets dull (pregnancy hormones will temporarily help). She almost always appears on-screen and at galas with hair helpers in place (look for the bangs that often disguise the lace-front wig hairline).

And remember when "Highlights" used to be a magazine for kids? The NYTimes recently meant something entirely different in A Girl's Life, With Highlights. Lest you think the article celebrated intellectual or emotional empowerment in some way, let's be clear: it was enumerating hair. That's right, highlights as in hair. For the pre-teen crowd. Today's on-screen "tween" role models like Hanna Montana or Miley Cyrus aren't the least bit girlish about their hair (or scripted sexual histrionics).

Young celebrities change their hair color as often as their shoes.

Most of my generation grew up with pink or blue-haired grandmothers. Our own mothers dabbled in color, but took to their grey with menopause. Less than 60 years ago only 7 percent of American women dyed to hide their gray. But for a middle aged woman today? Grey? Almost anachronistic!

What do we think when we see a man in a salon chair, his hair up in foils? Narcissistic? Gay? Or the aging Lothario covering his grey, ala The Donald? Why does it strike our eye as so odd (and desperate) for an aging man, but normal for a middle-aged woman? Men can go grey and be cool. But when was the last time you saw a sexy grey-haired woman in a movie?

Now, if you'll excuse me I'm off to get my hair colored.

Miracle Babies (IVF)

2008-03-26T07:41:00.022-05:00

We've just passed our de-paganized egg celebration and all sorts of cute and fuzzy Hollywood coverbabies are on display. That's J-Lo (38) and her $6 million dollar fraternal twins on the front of this month's People magazine.

And Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon (41) has posed with her fraternal twins for JET magazine.

Dennis Quaid and his wife Kimberly (36) were recently in the news when their fraternal twins were mistakenly overdosed in the hospital shortly after birth.

Lisa Marie Presley (40) has just announced on her MySpace page that she is expecting (rumored to be twins just like papa Elvis).

Previous seasons' lineups also featured a lot of multiples. Julia Roberts led the way with premature fraternal twins in 2004 at the age of 36. The stork brought fraternal twins for Beverly D'Angelo (49), Angela Bassett (47), Geena Davis (48), Holly Hunter (47), Jane Seymour (45), and Marcia Cross (44) as well.

Hmmm. Noticing a trend here? Older mothers? Twins anyone?

And then there's the current batch of singletons. Nicole Kidman (40) is 5 months pregnant and to make sure everyone knows, she donned a hideous see-through Prada dress back in February.

Minnie Driver (38) has announced her pregnancy, but the sperm donor is unannounced.

Cate Blanchett (38) is having her third child this April.

Gwen Stefani (38) is about to pop number two.

Julianna Margulies (41) just gave birth to a boy.

Helena Bonham Carter (41) delivered with Tim Burton just in time for the release of their other collaboration, Sweeny Todd.

Halle Berry (41) gave birth to her first, Nahla Ariela, last week. (Nahla is Arabic for 'drink of water,' Ariela is related to the Hebrew for 'lion of god.') Was it easy to conceive? "...[T]here was a lot of staying home and doing what you do. Like, all the time, around the clock," she said on Oprah. "Did you know that they call this a geriatric pregnancy? I cringe when I hear that. I'm like, 'Take that off my chart!' "

So how is it that these famous "elderly" mamas are defying the laws of nature? God loves them more? Well....maybe. In the old Testament, Jacob has two wives, Leah and Rachel, who dealt with menopausal infertility by giving him their respective hand maidens. Infertility specialists are the modern version.

Let's start with a few definitions to wipe that vaseline coating off the camera lens.
MIRACLE: something that appears inexplicable by the laws of nature and so is held to be supernatural in origin or an act of God.
ELDERLY PRIMIGRAVIDA: a woman older than 35 years who is pregnant for the first time.
FERTILE: pregnant within one year of non-protected intercourse.

Everyone has a story about someone's perimenopausal baby miracle - but scientifically that's pretty much what such a pregnancy is: a miracle.

Statistically, a sexually active 40-year-old woman has a 5% chance of conceiving in any given month. A 30-year-0ld has a 20% chance. At age 42, 90% of a woman's remaining eggs are abnormal. These eggs come with an expiration date.

These late-in-life Hollywood babies create false perceptions about fertility that can devastate women planning midlife pregnancies, particularly those of modest financial means.

In vitro fertilization (IVF) is just part of the picture. In vitro is Latin for "in glass," ie, outside the living organism (or Hollywood womb if you prefer). IVF is the technique in which egg cells are fertilized by sperm in the petri dish. The fertilized egg (zygote) is then squirted into the uterus. To improve the odds, more than one zygote is transferred at one time, which leads to the rising incidence of multiple births.

The second piece of the picture is the egg itself. Egg quality is the primary barrier to pregnancy in older women. The live birthrate for IVF using a woman's own eggs is 25% for 30-year-olds, 16% at age 40, 9% at 42, 5% at 43, 2% thereafter. And retrieval of those eggs from hyperstimulated ovaries is no picnic either.

However, IVF pregnancy rates soar when the egg is donated by a younger woman and implanted into the hormonally-enhanced elderly uterus. It's safe to assume that the celebrity women pregnant in their mid-40s are using donor eggs. Some admit to it, most do not.

For a good primer on egg donation and gestational surrogacy (the borrowed uterus), Wikipedia is your friend.

The Flesh Trade (Prostitution)

2008-03-13T06:35:00.009-05:00

Rumor has it that Wall Street traders now believe in God.

Today we talk about the flesh trade practices of the rich and famous.

Well, perhaps $80,000 less rich over an unspecified period of time. Soon-to-be-former Governor Spitzer paid $4,300 for his pre-valentine's day date and there was a "credit" left over for future sessions. It's hard to imagine what came up.

We now know that the hourly rate for high-end prostitution beats most day jobs. The Emperors' top (and questionable) fee of $31,000 per day was more than even Britain's wealthiest man was willing to pop for: the "dull and demanding" Duke of Westminster topped out at the $1,000/hour services. Supposedly, the Emperors Club set its fees according to the “individual education, sophistication and and ambiance created by each of our models.” But maybe that's not what famous men want when they visit prostitutes.

Prostitution is defined as sexual activity in exchange for remuneration. On screen it's simulated but the transaction still takes place: it's sex for money. Off-screen at the Emperors Club VIP it's the real thing.

Just how many degrees of separation are there between the high priced hookers at the Emperors Club and the Hollywood actresses who use their sexuality to achieve a similarly exalted paycheck?

There are, of course, the stars who consent to play hookers on screen. So many, in fact, that prostitute roles (and all the euphemistic variations) are cliche. And then there are the hookers who service the stars out on the street (hello Hugh, hello Divine). And there are even the hookers turned screenwriters who win Oscars for their work (you didn't think she was born with the name Diablo Cody, did you?).

But the real money is in pandering to the movie-going John. It's the fans that buy the simulated sex on the screen. Showing bare breast in a Hollywood movie is de rigueur for actresses high and low. Why? Because it sells.

At it's most crass is Lindsay Lohan ripping off Marilyn Monroe with photographer Bert Stern's help. (Both the breasts and sun damaged skin are real.)

There are websites devoted to cataloguing every instance of "breasts, bush, buns" on film. Maintained by a crack cadre of skinterns, these movie reviewers are the unsung trainspotters of titillation. One celebrity nude database allows you to search on any actress's (or actor's) name and find out which pieces of flesh appeared in which film. For instance, Nicole Kidman has done her typical role, frosty and naked, in 15 mainstream films to date. Go ahead, try to find a prominent actress who hasn't flashed on-screen.

There are some striking gender differences. Despite films to the contrary (in The Wedding Date Debra Messing rents escort Dermot Mulroney for $6,000 plus first-class trans-Atlantic airfare), very few women are interested in paying thousands of dollars for hired sex. We pay in other ways.

Maybe that's why very, very few Hollywood films feature male genitalia on screen. Or even a naked rear end. In Somethings Gotta Give (2003) we get three opportunities for a leisurely study of Jack Nicholson's prosthetic buttocks, but it was was Diane Keaton who gave a full frontal. (Faithful readers, not one image could I find online.)

In Eastern Promises (2007), Viggo Mortensen sports nothing but his tattoos in probably the most violent four-minute screen fight to date. But it is one of the very rare instances in mainstream film where a major male character is shown fully nude.

Boyish actor Emile Hirsch floats naked Into the Wild (2007) as Chris McCandless. Briefly. In the distance.

None of the above film portrayals of male genital gee-whiz involve any sexual simulation stimulation. The closest we get may be Brokeback Mountain (2005). And you still had to use your imagination to visualize the naughty bits.

An explicit male nude scene is invariably hailed as evidence of an actor's "serious commitment to the role." When an actress takes her clothes off, everyone knows that line is a joke.

Women disrobe on-screen with a thousand-fold greater frequency because they're selling. They're selling to the movie industry to get the role and ultimately to the movie-going John. Men just don't have to put out to make it in Hollywood.

Hollywood Hunks - Aging or Not?

2008-02-27T09:28:00.045-06:00

The life-cycle of the leading man used to be predictable: the bigger the film star, the more you could bank on the four phases. Every 10-12 years these male actors would metamorphose, thereby holding old fans and gaining new ones as they aged. Think of Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, James Stewart and Henry Fonda. The changes wrought by aging were embraced, or at least capitalized on.

The NYTimes cites the 1959 classic western Rio Bravo as a freeze frame of the "Four Ages of the Movie Star:"

"[f]irst comes the rebellious young adult (Ricky Nelson, as a cocky gunfighter) who evolves into the conflicted middle-aged professional (Dean Martin, as the deputy with a drinking problem), who turn into the trustworthy elder statesman (John Wayne, as the self-sufficient sheriff), who eventually gives way to the lovable old coot (Walter Brennan as, well, the lovable old coot)."

Interestingly, RioBravo is a film in which the plot is simply a token and it is the nuanced characters which are essential.

Contrast this with today's aging action figures: nothing slows them down. They capitalize on the franchise, no older, no wiser. The biggest stars of yesterday didn't resist the transition to sagging jowls and character-etched visages. Today's stars make use of every trick that drugs, surgery, and the camera can offer in order to appear trapped in a time warp.

Sylvester Stallone (61) notoriously did it with hGH, gym time, and lots of plastic surgery. Before filming the comedy Oscar (1991) he had his first surgery, a unilateral direct browlift to correct a birth injury brought on by high forceps. Since then Rocky has had his nose broken, more brow work, belpharoplasty, and a facelift (2006). And probably botox and facial fillers.

Harrison Ford (65) went in for reputedly once went in for hair transplants & coloring in the 1980s and now a very young wife. But even without plastic surgery, his upcoming appearance in the upcoming 4th installment of Indiana Jones seems to confirm what's changed about today's leading macho man roles. Nothing.

Ford plays the same archeologist adventurer over a 20 year span doing the same stunts. The script may joke about aging, but essentially he doesn't age. Ditto for Bruce Willis (52) who is dying hard for the fourth time in 20 years. Hollywood uses every digitalized sleight of hand to make them appear unchanged.

Perhaps the exception to the pre-video cinema time machine was Cary Grant, the epitome of the seductive man – sauve, sophisticated, marvelously dressed. He never looked really young even in the 1930s when he landed on-screen and he never looked really old when he left the screen at age 62.

George Clooney (46) is heir to the Grant's bespoke shoes. Male actors can command a long life as romantic leads, just as they do in real life. The standards for masculine sex appeal are broad and encompass some aging, unlike the standards for action hero virility which requires that time stop.

Will Clooney make it to 62 without resorting to surgery? If he continues to emulate Cary Grant, it will be by making no attempt to hide his true age. So far, he hasn't.

According to the NYTimes, "[t]he stars who emerged in the 1960s and early ’70s — before cable television, home video and the Internet began to divide the audience into discrete demographic groups — will likely be the last generation to make it into coothood with their popularity more or less intact: Clint Eastwood (77), Jack Nicholson (70), Al Pacino (67)."

Stars like these have moved on with the times and chosen roles reflective of their age, despite modest plastic surgery. Jack Nicholson had a direct browlift after his first film success Five Easy Pieces. Robert Redford (70) had a blepharoplasty many years ago. Eastwood (despite misleading pictures) has not. Robert Duvall (77) has not. Warren Beatty (70) has perhaps had an upper blepharoplasty years ago, but nothing obvious.

Their behaviors and mates may not be age-appropriate, but their looks are.

But for stars who arrived in the late seventies, after movies moved out of the theatre, the options are very different. They are a generation of young actors aging on the small and large screen, their films out of chronological order. It includes the likes of Tom Cruise (45), Leonardo DiCaprio (33), Brad Pitt (44), Matt Damon (37) and Will Smith (39). Will they do without plastic surgery?

It's unlikely today's fans will tolerate their favorite stars getting any older. Tell us what you think.

Like the songs you heard on-air?

Roses are Red, Violets are Violet

2008-02-14T08:56:00.022-06:00

Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
I get so turned on
Just by thinking of him...um, no wait, I mean you, YOU.

So who will be your FBFF or FGFF this year? What, you haven't picked out your Hollywood Valentine yet? Let's get that done!

You can say it with an e-card, if you like. My personal favorites reside here. But how do the rich and famous usually meet up? Not online at Match.com surely (or is that why those men don't post their photos??). No, no, no, they do it the old fashioned way – via work!

Sarah Jessica Parker did not have to resort to any of the obsessively sleezy tactics used in "Sex and the City." Future hubby Matthew Broderick was directing her brother in a play production and got an introduction that way. Julia Roberts met her cameraman husband on a set. Jessica Simpson met Nick Lachey at the Hollywood Christmas Parade. Will Smith auditioned Jada Pinkett for his hit show and hired her as a bride instead. Rita Wilson first met Tom Hanks on the set of "Bosom Buddies." Ditto for Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas. And on and on.

Alright, so maybe you won't be having that chance meeting Brad Pitt over movie scripts. But you never know! Get that special dispensation from your current spouse/lover/FB to indulge with the Hollywood star of your choice – should the opportunity arise.

So, you've picked him/her? Good.

Now, let's say you do meet George Clooney shopping in the local produce aisle. He thinks you're hotter than the tomatoes. You take him back to your candle-lit love pad (the better to camouflage the school science project that overtook the family room). You want to seduce him. Now, what mood-music do you put on to make your Hollywood hottie feel a bit squidgy down there? It's going to take something kind of unconventional, don't you think? Here are some suggestions.

Is your celebrity FGFF/FBFF:

money-hungry? F-Me Pumps
recently dumped? Last Request
May-December sex? Baby Love
party-hardy? Tainted Love
serial dater? Oops I Did it Again
narcissistic wonder? Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You
what, another narcissistic? To Know Him Is To Love Him
another? I'm Too Sexy

Or maybe you just want to BE your Hollywood celebrity. Why resist?

I want Angelina Jolie's lips....
There are hundreds of OTC topicals that promise to make our lips look fuller. They irritate the skin and cause inflammation, temporarily making the lips rosier and plumper. It's quick, it's cheap, it's soon gone.

But the Angelina Jolie look? We're talking lip fillers here, mondo amounts, to even approximate what nature gave Jolie. The injections are painful and the result is a little unpredictable – so plan ahead.

Never, never agree to let someone stick needles in your lips without a dental block first. Remember the homunculus man? There are more sensory nerve endings in your lips than in your genitals! Of the various brands on the market, most fillers need topping up every four to six months. You may bruise and puckering is temporarily inhibited, so go two weeks before that hot date for best results.

I want Beyonce's bootie....
If you're looking for a quick bootylicious fix, you can create the illusion with padded lingerie. Check out the "butt bra" modeled after the coveted Brazillian derrière. Or you can go for buttock augmentation surgery ("Brazilian butt lift") using silicone implants or fat grafting and transfer from other areas of the body.

The long-term plan? Go for "skater's butt": anything requiring lots of squats and hip extensions will maximize the gluteus maximus.

I want Nicole Kidman's wicked eyebrows....
You can have them, as you can see she isn't using them just now, whilst gestating. Yes, her forehead lives again!

Just a small amount of Botox will give you a more natural result – if malevolent isn't the Valentine vibe you're going for. Schedule the first session at least two weeks ahead so more can be added if needed. The FDA is looking into a dose effect phenomenon; there has never been a death reported with cosmetic use of Botox. The wrinkle reduction dosage in the face can be 20 to 25-units, a fraction of the 600-unit dosage that may be used to treat a muscle spasticity in children with cerebral palsy.

I want Scarlett Johansson's cleavage....
This could be a bit of a problem if you're less than a DD-cup. But surgical breast augmentation is always an option, and the price has come way down (market demand, you know).

But something in time for Valentine va-voom? Let's try a colorful push-up bra. Don't go cheap, either, since you want to both have it look and feel good (so to speak). Enhance it with a strategic application of eye shadow and Eau de parfum. Then, don your gown and go for it. It's casual? Perhaps then something sleeveless that buttons down the front: men really go for the accidental peek-a-boo gap or escaping bra strap.

Me? I've got on my Chanel Rouge Allure lipstick – in the shade "Brilliant," thank you. I'm ready.

No SAGging Allowed Awards

2008-01-28T07:03:00.003-06:00

Now that the Golden Globes has been reduced to a press conference and who knows what will happen to the Oscars, Sunday's Screen Actors Guild Awards had to provide a boost to a Hollywood pulled down by the writers' strike. The writers' union granted a waiver in support of their actor pals for 14th annual SAG Awards. Not that there was any sagging to be found amongst all those strapless dresses.

It might interest you to know that, unlike any other awards show, at this one the stars have to eat on camera. The executive chef said "We want it to be tasty and clean — no linguine, no meatballs." Just like the present Queen of England, one should never eat garlic, long pasta, or messy tomato sauces in public. However, I suspect her namesake did, on occasion, eat with her hands.

Female Actor in Leading Role

Of the five nominees here, our two favorites Cate Blanchett (37) and Julie Christie (66) are both (relatively) unoperated – and their three-dimensional roles show it. Can you imagine a facelifted Christie trying to convince us that she has Alzheimer's? Or Blanchett playing Dylan with a bobbed nose? Blanchett has long been outspoken about women (and most recently teens) and plastic surgery. Christie admits to a tightening of her jawline in the 1990s: "I'm tempted every time I look in the mirror. You want to get your familiar face back when you see all the lines around your chin, neck, eyes, mouth, arms and everything else." She is a perfect example of judicious, excellent work, most likely an endoscopic lower facelift.

Marion Cotillard (32) is French, so it almost goes without saying that her face is her own; look under her eyes. For her role as Edith Piaf "her hair was shaved back to create Piaf's high forehead. Her eyebrows were shaved off and redrawn as fake lines. Make-up for the older Piaf - she died at 47 but looked 30 years older - took between three and six hours."

Angelina Jolie's (32) lips are her own. All you have to do is look at her teenage photos. It's her nose – her nose! that was done. As for her supposed pregnancy with twins? Check out this photo gallery: can't see it in her breasts yet.

Male Actor in Leading Role

Alright! Finally an all-silicone actor is nominated...no wait, you mean Ryan Gosling got the nod, not Bianca?? Oh well. Good thing he brought his sister, instead. He wore the Hollywood version of a black arm band in memory of poor Heath Ledger: a black lapel ribbon. Winner Daniel Day Lewis memorialized him as well.

And about George Clooney (46) supposedly "admitting" that he'd had eye surgery during an interview with Julia Roberts a year ago – it was a joke, friends, a joke.

Female Actor in TV

Winner Queen Latifah (37) has been very open about her post-weight loss breast reduction surgery in 2003, but laments being made only a DD! Maybe that's why she didn't show up.

Vanessa Redgrave (71) has played the facelift role in Nip/Tuck, but she also appears to have done it in real life about a decade ago. Click on the photo and compare her tragus (the cartilage in front of the ear opening) with that of Peter O'Toole's (75) from the film Venus. She's had a lift; he has not. But he has had other work done – on his nose and eyes.

Ellen Burstyn (75), another nominee, looks to have had a a very nice facelift done a few years ago.

Male Actor in TV

No fun here. Winner Kevin Kline didn't show up, either.

Okay, okay....on to the really important stuff. My favorite dress? The beautiful Korean-inspired gown of Sandra Oh.

Fade to Black (Suicide)

2008-01-17T00:48:00.003-06:00

Dorothy Parker had it about right:

Razors pain you;
rivers are damp;
acids stain you;
and drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
nooses give;
gas smells awful;
you might as well live.

'Tis the season to not be jolly, for some people. The holidays are difficult for the emotionally vulnerable and Hollywood inhabitants are no exception.

Witness our suicide watch for Britney Spears after her latest debacle. Our troubled queen of tabloid trainwrecks has her visitation rights suspended after a non-exchange of the children, is whisked away by ambulance, discharges herself AMA after refusing psychiatric treatment, flies off to Mexico with her new boyfriend for a 24-hour liquid cure at the bar, and then shows up three hours late for a court hearing which she doesn't attend.

Ooops, she did it again.

And she's not the only one. Kate Hudson announced in this month's Vogue that she wishes Owen Wilson "beautiful things — health and everything that he desires in life” after his suicide attempt last August (wrist slashing and pills).

There's a long tradition of suicide attempts, near-misses, and bullseyes in Tinsel Town.

It's almost expected in the music industry. Typically, the singers make it stick: Judy Garland (and Auntie Em, too), Dorothy Dandridge, Kurt Cobain....The Singing Nun (she and her lesbian lover took an overdose of barbiturates and alcohol).

My money is on poor Amy Winehouse.

Then there are those Hollywood stars who have tried and failed. Many iconic names pop up: Maxene Andrews, Brigitte Bardot, Sammy Davis, Jr., Patty Duke, Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Young. More recently, Halle Berry, distraught over a failed marriage, tried to end her life by carbon monoxide poisoning. Drew Barrymore got it out of the way early when she tried to kill herself after leaving drug rehab in 1989 at the age of 14.

Sometimes it runs in the family. Margaux Hemingway, the actress/model granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway, died via a phenobarbital overdose. Papa Hemingway also took an early exit, as did his father, Clarence Hemingway, and his two siblings Ursula and Leicester.

And the most famous one of them all? No, Marilyn Monroe's death was probably not a suicide. Donald Spoto's 2001 biography makes a very convincing case that her death was essentially a tragic medical mistake.

The suicide rate rose by about 20% between 1999 and 2004 among middle-aged Americans, its highest point in 25 years according to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control). While four times as many men suicide, women are more likely to attempt. The 45-54 age group is led by women; men wait until retirement. What is most predictive of completed suicide is a history of serious attempts – alcohol and drugs up that risk enormously. An expression of hopelessness is a particularly ominous sign, and someone who admits to a plan is at maximum risk.

It doesn't exactly sneak up on those close to the suicide.

What to do? Ask him or her. Then ask again. For a very thoughtful further exploration of this topic, link here to read an excerpt from authors Gayle Rosellini and Mark Worden's book Here Comes the Sun.

PS:
As promised, here is the verdict on Donda West's post-surgical death last November. The autopsy report released last week states she died of "...coronary artery disease and multiple postoperative factors..." While recuperating at home the next evening after her surgery, she was left unattended long enough to vomit up old blood, aspirate it, and have a heart attack.

Remember Dr. Andre Aboolian? He's the board certified plastic surgeon who asked for a preoperative exam from an internist: "I always insist on a medical clearance for women over 40, and in this instance, it was particularly important because of a condition she had I felt could have led to a heart attack."

Kanye West's mother had a family history of heart disease and hypertension. Her sister had died of a heart attack. She, herself, had been treated in the past for hypertension. She was obese (188 lbs.) and wanted a lengthy 5 and a half-hour surgery: a bilateral mammaplasty (breast lift with 325 ml implants) and circumferential abdominoplasty (belt lipectomy, liposuction). On autopsy, her right coronary artery was found to be 50-70% occluded and she had an abnormal hemoglobin variant.

The Los Angeles coroner did not determine the manner of death, but here's how he thinks it played out. The tight postop bandages around her torso constricted her breathing, along with the pain medications which can depress the respiratory centers of the brain. If her blood was somewhat diluted with all the intra-operative fluids she received over the long surgery, it would exacerbate the drug-induced hypotension (low blood pressure). When she aspirated her vomit this further decreased the oxygen supply to the lungs. The drop in oxygenation and low blood pressure was too much for her compromised heart and she went into asystolic cardiac arrest, dying before anyone noticed.

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Coming Up Next!

2008-01-15T01:33:00.001-06:00

Listeners and readers, we'll be back next Thursday, January 22nd with more fun. In the meantime, enjoy the archives!

– Anne

PS: happy birthday, Major Darling

Christmas Cleavage

2007-12-18T13:58:00.002-06:00

What festive cleavage are you wearing this holiday season? Next to finishing up the gift shopping, I'm sure the first thing on your mind is how to dress up your breasts. At the cocktail party I attended last weekend, I was accused of a Madame X look, a reference to John Singer Sargent's infamous 1884 portrait of the American-born Paris socialite, Judith Gautreau. Her arsenic white décolleté and scandalous slipped shoulder strap drove Sargent (and the painting) out of town.

Think times have changed? Last July, when Hillary Clinton displayed even a very modest amount of chest the blogosphere went wild.

Cleavage is simply the cleft created by the partial exposure of a woman's breasts in a low-cut neckline. Or, if you're a surgeon, it's the intermammary sulcus (fun people, aren't they?). So what gives it the power to shake the world, century after century? Context, context, context. That and men are irrational over it.

Breast cleavage has been a modern, clothed phenomenon; it didn't exist in the Garden of Eden. Any tight, well-structured bodice can lift the breasts upwards and inwards (that was the wonderful in Wonderbra – as opposed to Maidenform lift and separate promise).

Prior to the advent of implants, a large busted woman's breasts merged together under pressure; cleavage became a crevice. Think Bette Midler. A really well engineered bodice can cantilever the breasts in such a way that this is minimized. Think Isaac Mizrahi observations about Scarlett Johansson's Golden Globes dress.

But when it comes to breast implants, the width of the sulcus area (cleavage) is determined by the attachments of the skin to the peri-osteal tissue covering sternum (breast bone) and by the medial attachments of the pectoralis major muscle when implants are in the sub-muscular position.

If those natural attachments are lost a host of uncorrectable deformities distort the cleavage including synmastia, the "uniboob" deformity. This can result from over aggressive dissection towards the midline, particularly in a subglandular (over the muscle) placement. Very large implants, repeated over time can have similar results. Think Pamela Anderson.

Some women have very little fatty tissue overlying the sternum so there's nothing to soften the contour transition from breasts to sternum. This causes the space between the breasts to appear wide. Since the implants must be centered behind the nipples, it's very hard to camouflage, particularly with a subglandular placement. Think Victoria Beckham. (This is something she previously denied until court papers were released in 2005 proving she had undergone augmentation surgery; it's rumored she had revision surgery prior to touring this month. Looks like it to me.)

One woman has written a tome on doing it right. Elisabeth Squires, author of Boobs: A Guide to Your Girls, thinks even older women can attractively show off cleavage, as Helen Mirren (61) does at every awards show. But beware: "If a woman of a certain age squeezes her girls together, she'll get the wrinkled, crepelike look. That's not good." Mirren's plunging bodices carefully avoid that.

Now back to the festive part. Here we have our Christmas party Goofus and Gallant example. For the office holiday party, author Squires's advice is: "[i]f cleavage isn't in your job description, don't put it in." Sorry, Britney. But the adults-only cocktail party? You've got it, Paris. Shake their world: tasteful cleavage and heels are the way to go (but put on the other stocking, puh-leeze).

Be sure and tune in FM107.1 to hear an expanded exploration of celebratory cleavage with Colleen Kruse this Thursday at 10:00am CST, subbing in for Kevyn Burger.

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Doing Due Diligence (Certification)

2007-12-06T07:51:00.004-06:00

Just how does one perform due diligence when selecting a cosmetic surgeon? Being an informed consumer seems more difficult than ever, given the bewildering display of high-profile disasters.

Michael Jackson, at the peak of his earning power and fame, repeatedly received very poor value for his surgical dollar. (And no, boys and girls, that's not a prosthesis; it's surgical tape on the tip of his nose.) If having more than enough money and unlimited access doesn't ensure a good outcome, what does?

The common online sentiment casts the ethical cosmetic surgeon as paternalistic gatekeeper. Most of the public expects these and all physicians to at a minimum abide by primum non nocere (not actually part of the Hippocratic Oath). It's safest to stick with caveat emptor: "let the buyer beware."

The most often hyped consumer advice is to choose a board certified surgeon. This is what Kanye West's dead mother did not do, having apparently evaluated her surgeon's credentials based an Oprah appearance.

For the prospective patient, board certification is the most readily accessible confirmation of a surgeon's training and experience. This is different than state licensure, ie, is the doctor behaving, which is confirmed here.

The vast majority of safe elective cosmetic surgery is performed by board certified plastic surgeons and otolaryngologist–head and neck surgeons. There is plenty of bad territorial ju-ju between the two specialties arising from intense competition for cash. It colors and distorts most of what is published about how-to-pick-a-surgeon. What makes these two kinds of cosmetic surgeons different from one another? There are two divergent training and certification pathways.

Here, along with the alphabet soup, is a set of cliff notes and links so you can be an informed consumer.

All physicians with M.D. after their name complete the basic 8 years post-high school education of undergraduate and medical school.

Cosmetic plastic surgeons go on to an additional 7+ years of training and certification in:

General Surgery Residency - 5 years
Plastic Surgery Residency - 2 years (some combined programs are 3 years of each)
ABPS board written and oral examination in Plastic Surgery

If passed, the surgeon (and about 6,600 others) now has a ABPS-recognized specialty certificate in plastic surgery and joins the member society ASPS.

optional Fellowship - 1 year
ABPS board subspecialty examination (Plastic Surgery Within the Head and Neck)

This surgeon will continue to identify him/herself as a plastic surgeon or cosmetic plastic surgeon. More societies will be joined: ASAPS. These specialty societies are the sources of the yearly continuing education of the surgeon.

Cosmetic otolaryngologist–head and neck surgeons go this direction for 5+ years:

General Surgery residency - 1 year
Otolaryngology - Head & Neck residency - 4 years
ABOto board written and oral examination in Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery

If passed, the surgeon (and about 12,000 others) now has a ABOto-recognized specialty certificate in Otolaryngology and joins the member society AAO-HNS for continuing education in the field.

optional Fellowship - 1 year
ABOto board subspecialty examination (Plastic Surgery Within the Head and Neck) or the ABFPRS subspecialty exam

This fellowship-trained surgeon will now refer to him/herself as a facial plastic surgeon. More societies will be joined: AAFPRS. More continuing education.

The American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) is the major examining organization whose Member Boards (of which the ABPS and ABOto are two) certify physicians in more than 130 specialties and subspecialties. For a chart listing the current certificates offered by ABMS Member Boards, go here. (There are other, overlapping certification organizations as well.)

These board certification exams are probably the most difficult, stressful part of the not-so-young physicians training experience. The written boards are all-day specialty-specific computer-based examinations (completing the more general knowledge exams taken at the end of the first residency year). If passed, an excruciating oral examination takes place where senior physician examiners interrogate the candidate and pass judgment on the ethical and technical aspects of his/her practice.

Subspecialty certification is not required in order to practice cosmetic surgery. It's important to physicians preparing to practice because it is a recognition of exceptional expertise and experience specifically in that field.

What's important for the consumer is that board certification under the ABMS umbrella brings with it an requirement for continuing education and re-testing every 10 years. That makes these surgeons a safer bet for you and me.

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Fatal Attraction (Death)

2007-11-15T08:48:00.003-06:00

When and why does cosmetic surgery prove fatal? Rapper Kanye West's mother arrived in the emergency room DOA Saturday night, subsequent to undergoing an outpatient abdominoplasty (tummy tuck) and breast reduction on Friday. Of course the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) has immediately issued press releases to say how rare this is– they don't actually keep statistics on all who die during or as a result of undergoing elective aesthetic surgery– but who wants to die?

Is it always the doctor's fault? Yes and no. Many variables are outside the control of the surgeon– from anesthesia to the vagaries of healing to patient non-compliance. In general, though, there is one personal variable that has tripped up the established, credentialed plastic surgeon more than any other. That liability is his own ego. Operating on a patient who shouldn't be operated on, deluding oneself about one's surgical omnipotence, can lead to disaster. Sometimes this is compounded by poor judgment and/or skill set.

That may indeed be the case with this death.

The surgeon, Dr. Jan Adams (53), has two previous malpractice suits under his surgical scrubs and three more in gestation (one of which also involves a co-morbidity: diabetes). Shown here in his booking photo, his most recent convictions for DUI in March and April of 2006 led the California Medical Board to consider suspending his license (it's pending with the State). Of the 60 ASPS board certified plastic surgeons listing Beverly Hills as their venue, Adams isn't one of them. When it comes to checking out a physician, Google is your friend.

Dr. Jan Adams considers himself a top plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, despite his lack of board credentials. He authored Everything Women of Color Should Know About Cosmetic Surgery. He hosted Discovery Health's Plastic Surgery: Before and After show and has been featured pretty much everywhere on the talk circuit. Check out the OprahAftertheShow chat. He's a showman. Is he the most articulate spokesman for plastic surgery? Nope. Was his handiwork on display lovely? Nope. But he is a rare commodity: a black surgeon marketing to women of color.

Donda West (58) also consulted with another Beverly Hills surgeon, Dr. Andre Aboolian. This board certified plastic surgeon insisted on a preoperative clearance from an internist because of an underlying condition. "I always insist on a medical clearance for women over 40, and in this instance, it was particularly important because of a condition she had I felt could have led to a heart attack."

The operating surgeon's response? Adams claims that he did nothing wrong and shared his opinion of his colleague Dr. Aboolian: “[h]e is sleazy and manipulating the truth to elevate his own importance.” That's not generally anything a reputable plastic surgeon would publicly say.

Using a board-certified surgeon at an accredited facility and operating on a healthy person with medical clearance is the prudent route. It isn't possible eliminate all risks in elective aesthetic surgery, but it can really reduce them by not doing too many procedures at one time and by screening for medical conditions beforehand.

Dr. Aboolian didn't specify the underlying morbidity due to patient confidentiality, but the autopsy results will be out in 6-8 weeks. It could very well be that Donda West had an abnormal heartbeat. Arrhythmias (irregular heart rhythms) can result from coronary artery disease, but also occur in normal, healthy hearts particularly as we age. Many don't require any treatment at all, but do pose an additional risk when having surgery. Electrolyte imbalances in the blood (such as low sodium or potassium) brought on by excessive postoperative vomiting can precipitate a heart attack.

Is it safe? The real question to ask is how to make it safer, relative to the risks of any surgery. Once you, the prospective patient, have done your due diligence and selected a physician, here is what you can and should do to protect yourself:

• Don't lie to your surgeon. Devulge everything, everything, truthfully: the smoking, the drugs, the OTC, the supplements, that "baby heart attack" you had 10 years ago....it really does make a difference.

• Involve the primary care physician who knows you top to bottom by getting him/her to medically clear you for surgery. Elective aesthetic surgery should carry the same standard of clinical medicine as any other surgery: it's not fluffy spa medicine.

• Stick with 6 hours or less of anesthesia; you can always come back for more.

• And last, but not least, know how to reach your surgeon that first night. You want– and s/he will give you– all the secret numbers, so you can phone about anything untoward. Before you crash, call your surgeon. Really. Wake them up! Your surgeon wants you to live.

Toss Those Tweezers! (Eyebrows)

2007-11-08T06:47:00.003-06:00

Ah, the eyebrow. The window frame to the soul. They get plucked, penciled, and pierced; tinted, trimmed, and threaded; shaved, stenciled, and waxed. They must be important!

In fact, the eyebrow is the spokesperson for the face - particularly in women. Much of the time we have little control over the tiny muscles governing their spontaneous expression: arching in surprise, knitting together in concern, up and down in anger, irony, and joy. It's a large part of what makes the face, in both men and women, interesting.

From skinny to bushy, the brows tell of culture, fashion, and politics.

Robyn Cosio, author of The Eyebrow, argues that the story of the eyebrow's progress through the 20th century parallels the story of women's independence. The flapper era desexualized the newly liberated woman by taking away her hips, breasts, and eyebrows - penciling them back on thin and clueless through the 30s. Was the heavier, natural brow of the 40s and 50s a redefinition of femininity after the social upheaval of sex roles during the war years? The unkempt, even unruly, eyebrows of the 70s an encapsulation of the women's movement?

The eyebrow of the new millennium is large again. Ladies, toss those tweezers! A whole bevy of Eastern European fashion models— Daris, Natalia, Vlada, Eugenia, Sasha and Snejana are inspiring a return to the bold brow. Last Fall, the NYTimes profiled stylists who declared “[o]n both coasts, everybody wants a thicker brow that reminds you of Elizabeth Taylor and Ava Gardner.” Styles may cycle in and out of favor, but many stars have made their mark with a face anchored by a prominent brow and, often, little else. It's a big statement. Strong eyebrows make one look intelligent and empowered.

Nefertiti was a make-up queen when it came to her brows. She shaved them off and painted on those dramatic, elegant brows. Try to picture Audrey Hepburn without her brows, or Sophia Loren.

Bette Davis wouldn't have made it past her screen test if the cinematographer Karl Freund hadn't convinced the director that she had "lovely eyes" and would be suitable for The Bad Sister (1931).

Stars have completely changed their looks over the years by changing their eyebrows. Joan Crawford's incredibly thin blond brows of the 1920s evolved into her signature thick black brows of the 1950s. Look at how Madonna handles her eyebrows each time she reinvents her look.

Getting the right brow isn't easy. There's actually a catelogue of celebrity browshapes to help you analyze what features appeal to you. Round brow? Julia Roberts. Arched? Think Keira Knightley. Softly angled? Nicole Kidman. Curvy? Kirstie Alley. Flat brows? Brooke Shields.

Too much brow? A unibrow or monobrow, medically known as a synophrys, is fairly common in some ethnic groups. It's a sign of feminine beauty in Caucasus and Iran, where connected eyebrows are a sign of virginity and being unmarried. Salma Hayek has been quoted as saying she misses the days when she had one eyebrow because it would have come in handy for her role as Frida Kahlo, the legendary Mexican artist.

Less painful than tweezing or waxing, threading is a very trendy (and ancient) way of shaping the brow. Threading is widely used in India, the Middle East, China and Turkey on both men and women. (It is a Persian tradition to use threading to remove all of a bride's body hair before her wedding night in Iran.) Brad Pitt have been quoted in praise of eyebrow threading!

Doing without eyebrows is quite altering. In Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d-Urbervilles, the beautiful heroine cuts off her eyebrows to protect herself from the lust of men. It is an effective subterfuge. Charlize Theron bravely shaved her eyebrows to better portray the title role in Monster (2003).

Last month, da Vinci's iconic Mona Lisa was scanned using a high-definition camera. A 240-million pixel image using 13 light spectrums, including ultra-violet and infrared, reveals she probably once had eyelashes and eyebrows.

Putting them back on is possible. Permanent makeup will last a number of years, but eventually the tattooing fades, a bit like disappearing ink. It's said that in the 1700s, English women wore falsies made out of tiny pieces of mouse fur. Today salons specializing in brows enhance very sparse ones by gluing a tiny fiber onto each existing hair, a form of eyebrow extensions. There are also brow prosthetics — little toupees for the hair-impaired — in a multitude of shapes and shades. Surgeons offer hair transplant techniques involving tiny hair grafts.

Gravity & aging cause the forehead tissue to sag downward, dropping the eyebrows from their youthful position to a lower position above the eye. It's generally perceived as an aged appearance– or tired, sad, or mad.

Time for a lift! If Botox chemical fix doesn't do it anymore, then it's time for surgery. In a direct browlift the incision is immediately above the brow in a forehead crease– this raises each brow but not the entire forehead (Sylvester Stallone). A temporal lift places a wedge excision in the hair for a lateral pull. A coronal lift puts the incision behind the hairline, excising a wedge of scalp and hoisting up the entire forehead including the eyebrows (Elizabeth Taylor). The least invasive, most natural look involves an endoscopic lift of the brow by re-suspension of the forehead muscles under the brows.

Interested in this look? Eyebrow extensions can cost between $75 to $250 and takes 45 minutes to two hours for an effect that lasts two weeks. Brow reconstruction with hair transplants by a physician involves 150 to 200 grafts for a complete male eyebrow or 100 to 150 grafts for a complete female eyebrow at $4-10/graft. A facial plastic surgeon might charge $3,900 to $5,900 for an endoscopic browlift.

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Squeek! Squawk! er...

2007-10-25T11:36:00.000-05:00

Laryngitis strikes a blow for world silence. That's right, Anne has no voice and won't be heard from this week. Sigh.

The Mom Job (Postpartum)

2007-10-11T07:24:00.001-05:00

Well, if the NYTimes is asking the question then we should try to answer it: Is the 'Mom Job' Really Necessary?

Apparently, many say "Yes."

The surgery trifecta of tummy tuck/lipo/breast lift with implants is the new post-partum must-have. Forget about designer diaper bags. This surgery is touted as a husband's way of saying "thank you for a job well done," a quick way to lose the excess 30 lbs. and go back to what you were before. Sort of.

The 'Mommy Makeover' is at core a marketing strategy: package together multiple surgeries so that the consumer buys more, not less. It's the same bundling tactic used to up-sell everything from makeup to cars.

Plastic surgeons report these surgeries rose 11% for women ages 20-29 from 2005-2006. There was all sorts of speculation that Britney Spears had a tummy tuck (abdominoplasty) after giving birth to her second child, Jayden James. In fact, she had a cesarean-section (....no, Virginia, surgeons don't perform both at the same time and, no, her recent VMA appearance doesn't show operable post-pregnancy changes).

The concept of a 'Mom Job' is that post-pregnancy changes are deforming and undesirable. For a particularly sickening, slick example see this industry advertisement. Much closer to the truth, according to one of the advocate surgeons featured in the NYTimes, it's really about "feeling self-conscious or resentful about their appearance."

Of course, pregnancy affects every woman differently, with age, genetics, and self-control playing a role in how the body appears afterwards. But most of the involuntary changes are restricted viewing only: just when would one's stretch marks be on display? Are naked breasts and belly a part of a woman's public or private persona?

Perhaps most revealing is a quote from one of the 'mommy' patients: “I don’t think it was an issue for my mother; your husband loved you no matter what.” Is plastic surgery the answer for women who feel less competitive on the sexual marketplace? With marriages recycling every 15 years perhaps marketing to the marital insecurity of child-bearing women is bound to be profitable.

The vulnerability of today's child-bearing generation of women and popularization of body plastic surgery is not a coincidence. Take Heidi Montag, featured on US Magazine's cover last week: Revenge Plastic Surgery. Her impetus to undergo plastic surgery at 21 is characterized as arising from "painful body-image problems." And just who is she revenging herself on? Mean boys? Lauren Conrad? Isn't this what our parents used to call "a stage" and one which would "build character?"

Her boyfriend/manager is "so proud of her" and she professed afterwards: "Right before I went in I was like, 'What if I don't wake up? Oh, this is scary.' Then I thought, 'I don't care.' If I don't wake up, it's worth it. I just wanted it so badly."

Does this sound like a teenager or a mature adult?

So what is the secret to post-partum perkiness? Stretch marks may be faded with laser treatments, but nothing makes them go away short of an abdominoplasty. The separation for the outer-most abdominal muscle (diastasis recti)– formerly your six-pack– can also be surgically stitched together during an abdominoplasty. Barring bad habits, it will heal on its own in about four weeks after a vaginal delivery. The rest is just your mother's advice: don't gain more than 30 lbs. while pregnant, nurse afterwards to slim down, grab sleep when you can, and be good to yourself.

That's the secret.

Want this look? Expect to spend upwards of $12,000 to $15,000 minimum for a plastic surgeon's fees on breast lift/augmentation, abdominoplasty, and liposuction.

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Piercing Images

2007-09-27T06:32:00.000-05:00

It used to be a big deal for a 16-year-old girl to get her parents' permission to pierce her earlobes (one each please). But ever since Janet Jackson's little "wardrobe malfunction" during the Superbowl half-time show, even the elderly Norwegian bachelors in North Dakota know ear piercing is old school. Nipplegate may have been a publicity stunt to pump up Janet's exposure just before the release of her new album– but what it really exposed was how mainstream body piercing has become.

American researcher Anne Velliquette, PhD observed, "[t]oday's social climate welcomes body art to an extent that no other period in modern history can rival." Her thought is that it provides meaning to persons bewildered by the fragmentation and chaos of postmodern society: your body is the one thing you have ultimate control over.

What Janet Jackson was exercising control over with was a nipple shield, a decorative piece of jewelry held in place by a 'normal' piercing rod or barbell placed through the areola. Her 1997 album Velvet Rope featured close-ups of her nipple piercing as part of the album artwork. She no longer wears jewelry in either her septum or tongue piercings, but her ears, navel, and genitalia are still adorned. (It is thought to be a clitoral piercing.)

She has competition from Christina Aguilera. Aguilera has five piercings in her ears and one piercing each in her nose, her lower lip, and right nipple, plus 3 more. She has said these are in a place known only to her doctor and her boyfriends: it's diamond-studded, "really beautiful and expensive" and "in a place that most people wouldn't have the guts to do it."

Like the nipple placement, genital piercings reportedly enhance sexual sensitivity. Piercing sites in men include the penile glans and urethra, foreskin, and scrotum; sites in women include the clitoral prepuce or body, labia minora, labia majora, and perineum.

Britney Spears gained some media attention as she organized a "nipple piercing party" for her staff on Valentine's Day 2004 (her own left nipple is pierced). Singer Pink (Alecia Moore) recently got all dressed up and had her nipple pierced in front of her mom– on videotape. Don't we all? The boys go in for it too, particularly the musicians: Tommy Lee, Axl Rose, Lars Ulrich, and scads of others.

As a matter of fact, the really flamboyant multiple piercings seem to be the domain of male celebrities, but only amongst those that don't make their money on the silver screen: Dennis Rodman, Benji Madden, Dave Draiman are standouts.

Christy Turlington is said to have started the female naval ring fad when she strutted her belly jewel on the modeling runway. After multiple ear piercings, navel rings are by far the most common choice amongst female celebrities and the American women who imitate them. Alyssa Milano, Beyonce, Britney Spears, Gwen Stefani, Jessica Alba, Lindsay Lohan, Madonna, Keira Knightley, Naomi Campbell, Nicole Richie, Paris Hilton, Teri Hatcher all chose this placement.

When Scarlett Johansson gifted herself a bull-style nose ring in 2005, though, you could hear the howls reverberate in cyberspace. On occasion she pops it in when strolling about and it's rediscovered anew by legions of disapproving fans. The actress is currently the face of L'Oreal, and adamant that the nose ring is attractive: "[i]t's all about my creative side and I personally look lovely. So what exactly is the problem with it?" Less controversial was her piercing of the nasal alar rim (the fleshy curve of the nostril). That placement evokes images of dark, exotic Eastern women, while the other conjures up a large, wet nose attached to 500kg of un-neutered beef.

Nose piercings were first recorded about 4000 years ago in the Middle East. Even Genesis 24:22 mentions it: when Abraham requested a wife for his son, Isaac, one of the gifts presented to Rebekah was a golden nose ring. The practice of nose piercing moved on to India during the 16th & 17th centuries with the type of jewel indicating social status. Indian women traditionally pierce the left nostril, thought to be connected with the female reproductive organs, to make childbirth easier and lessen menstrual pain. Nostril piercing came to the West in the late 1960s along spiritual enlightenment from India. Punk rockers and their followers adopted the practice in the 1970s, and it was revived again in the 1990s. Now the likes of Lisa Bonet sport them.

Is there a downside to this? Well, Nicole Richie did set off an alarm at the Reno Airport as she passed through a metal detector with her nipple piercing in situ.

In general, the medical specialty societies frown on it. The American Medical Association (AMA) goes as far as considering some forms of body piercing to be illegal surgery. The major things to keep in mind before you pierce your tongue, eyebrow, belly button, lip, nipple, genitals or navel are long healing, infection, dental damage, and scarring.

Nose piercings like Johansson's are usually are performed in the inferior fleshy part of the septum and not through cartilaginous tissue. Noses, like many cartilage piercings, can be notoriously long in healing because that type of tissue is not well vascularized. The wound heals from the surface, growing a tunnel of new skin inside the hole to form a permanent piercing.

The infection rate for tongue piercings is relatively low, but the tongue & lip studs and rings can lead to chipped and cracked teeth. And then there's the excessive drooling and speech impediment problem, but that's minor.

Even good old-fashioned ear piercing isn't exempt: up to a third of persons with pierced ears had one or more complications (e.g., minor infection, allergic reaction). The most disturbing are keloid formation (exuberant scar formation in dark skinned individuals) and traumatic tearing (bifurcated earlobes aren't stylish). 'High' piercing through the cartilage of the pinna (like Fergie's) is particularly associated with poor healing and more serious infection because of the avascular nature of auricular cartilage.

And then there's the 'stretching' or 'gauging' craze. It's the deliberate expansion of a healed fistula (hole in the skin) for the purpose of wearing big jewelry. It's been around for a while: even Otzi the 5000 year old Iceman mummy found in the Valentina Trujillon glacier had an oversize ear piercing. In Ireland gold artifacts from Bronze Age were identified as ear spools and boxes needing perforations 7+cm diameter.

Most piercings can be stretched far beyond their initial size. 'Blowouts' from over-stretching, especially ones caused by 'dead stretching,' can create scar tissue, which can lead to keloiding or hypertrophic scarring. And stretching too quickly can lead to a buildup of unsightly scar tissue, often described as the 'cat-butt' effect.

Now there's a lovely thought.

Want this look?
Part of the popularity of body piercing is the entry level pricing: it's cheap. Most piercings start at under $100, even the really interesting ones. Make sure you inquire about sterile technique and be prepared to involve your physician is goes wrong.

Where's My Emmy? 2007

2007-09-20T11:01:00.001-05:00

Do you think the Emmys are more interesting if you are sitting there in person? Maybe if you had a frontal view? It does seem rather self-important. Or maybe it's all an elaborate joke: we're only pretending this is important!

So why are we listening to these actors thank people we've never heard of? Shouldn't it be in a heartfelt note on nice stationary? Is it good entertainment? We get lame jokes with wooden teleprompter delivery. These are actors, right? And they did rehearse...can't the presenters memorize 90 seconds of speech?! And the musical Jersey Boys lip-to-lip synced their way through "who loves yooooou, pretty baaaay-bee."

Oh dear. Well, let's get on with it. In a somewhat chronological fashion, here are style thoughts wielded with a knife.

Nearly everyone seemed a bit uncomfortable with the in-the-round set. You could almost imagine the whole 'backside' half of the audience was comprised of those life-size cutout photographs. Those were certainly the cheap seats where they stuck the crews with unrecognizable faces– hence the awkward about-face on camera when a winner thanked the little people.

So what about those fashions? Of course we picked out favorite dresses: the beautiful deep lavendar silk on Helen Mirren and the full, champagne number on Heroes star Hayden Panettiere. The gowns are flattering, timeless, unconventional for the times. Alright, Helen's hair was terrible. But her facelift is aging well, although the neck under the chin looks a tad pulled to me.

Whatever sartorial elegance the others were striving for was completely undone by wearers' graceless bearing. Why can't more of these women learn how to walk in a gown?!! They stagger side-to-side like they're off to a hoe-down. For heaven's sake, they're actresses! Oh, don't get me started. Katherine Heigl in her lovely hair and Zac Posen gown practically throws her skirt over her shoulder to hike up the stage steps without tripping. These are custom made couture gowns worth tens of thousands of dollars. Learn to walk in them like you own them.

Best dressed, overacting male nominee? Lost Terry O'Quinn (55) hands down. The fuschia shirt was a great standout look in the sea of b&w television. He really pulled it off, though I notice he's been a (upper) denture wearer for some time. You can see the bone reabsorption in the shortened maxilla and hear it in how he pronounces a few words. But he has a real (chubby) wife. I forgive him anything!

Ryan Seacrest may fake knowing fashion as he demonstrated by 'guessing' Eva Longoria's Lacroix shoes (about the same height as his own heels, hmmm...), but he doesn't wear it. Seacrest's shiny tux looked like he recycled a yard waste bag and rip-off tie strip is substituting for neckware. And who puts a necktie on a tux, anyway? Over half the male audience, I guess. Well, it is the Emmys.

And didn't it seem absurd for Seacrest not to mention Sally Field's two Oscar wins or her Emmy for Sybil as evidence of her talent? Why bring up Gidget and The Flying Nun?

"At the heart of Nora Walker, she is a mother, so surely this belongs to all the mothers of the world. May they be seen, may their work be valued. . . And to especially the mothers who stand with an open heart and wait, wait for their children to come home, from danger, from harm's way and from war. I am proud to be one of those women," Sally Field said (she plays a character whose youngest son was deployed at the end of the show's last season). "And let's face it: If the mothers ruled the world, there would be no goddamn war in the first place!"

Do you think Rupert Murdoch's Fox Network censored Sally Field for her vocabulary or the content of her political statement? Field's (60) facelift has aged well, although in 2005 she has pledged with Jane Fonda (69) to have no more plastic surgery going forward.

It seemed that the best extemporanous speeches were those given by film actors. Compare Robert Duval's sincerity or Helen Mirren's poise and polish with the television actors babblings and certain conlusions jump to mind.

It didn't win, but the hilarious nomination of Real Time with Bill Mahr for Outstanding Variety, Music, or Comedy Series made hometown Minnesotans proud. Our MSP airport mensroom makes us a 'fly-in' state now! Jon Stewart won anyway, though I could swear he had makeup covering a cold sore. Nope, I'm wrong: just a funny upper lip.

Alec Baldwin obviously decided that with global warming and fall temperatures in the 80s we can wear white after Labor Day. I wonder if they sat him next to Al Gore? And wasn't it gratifying to have our chubby, national father-figure inspire the longest standing ovation of the evening?

Lewis Black should not have had Botox placed in his forehead. He's a raging comedian with pacing issues, he needs his full facial expressions! Watch the lateral side of his brows shoot up while the medial corrugators stay depressed and sprung apart. His fashion choice is a compelling statement why men with fat necks should not wear spread collars– but the Windsor knot on his tie was in place for once.

And my last thought? Actually a plea, really. Tell me, please, what did director Alan Taylor say to his wife Nickie and in what language??

Like the music we played on air?