 The face
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- LOS ANGELES (Reuters)
- A rare courtroom appearance by "King of Pop" Michael Jackson
in a breach-of-contract lawsuit this week has the whole country rendering
a judgment on his looks -- especially on whether he went through one nose-job
too many.
- And as far as plastic surgeons are concerned, the public
might be right.
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- "His nose is more collapsed than it ever was. That's
also consistent with the fact he's been walking around wearing surgical
masks in recent times," Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Dr. Richard
Fleming said on Friday.
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- "I would never go back and do work on Michael Jackson's
nose ... it is just too risky," he added.
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- Fleming said that with each nose job, the blood circulation
to the area decreases and the risks of scarring and infection increase.
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- "I think he has accepted it (the nose). He is almost
a fantasy figure or a cartoon character," said Dr Edward Domanskis,
a Newport Beach, Calif., plastic surgeon.
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- "At the age of 40, people don't act or look that
way," he added. Domanskis said it looked like Jackson had at least
five nose jobs and "There had to be some complications along the way."
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- Jackson returned on Friday to a courthouse in Santa Maria
-- the central California town nearest to his Neverland Valley ranch --
for a third day of testimony in a $21 million lawsuit which accuses him
of pulling out of two millennium concerts.
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- The entertainer's testimony has been overshadowed by
his bizarre off-stage appearance, captured in media photographs on Wednesday.
The close-up photographs, which caused an Internet stir, depicted an eyeliner-and-lipstick-wearing
Jackson with a stubbly goatee, a clear, Band-Aid-type plaster on his scarred
nose and a wild mane of black, silky hair.
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- News photographers snapped the photos in court, after
Superior Court Judge Zel Canter told Jackson to remove the surgical mask
he was wearing. His appearance prompted gasps from the courtroom audience,
which included media and about 30 fans who won a seating lottery.
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- The next day, Jackson showed up for court four hours
late and appeared drowsy. The nose plaster had either been removed, or
was covered by heavy make-up.
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- "He's got kind of a shrunken skin, but it is impossible
to speculate on how it happened," said Chicago plastic surgeon Dr.
Laurie Casas, chairwoman of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic
Surgery's communications commission.
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- She said Jackson could be suffering from a rare psychiatric
condition, called body dysmorphic disorder, in which patients are dissatisfied
with surgical results, regardless of any objective improvement in their
appearance.
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- "You have to wonder how someone has gotten into
a situation where they look very abnormal," Casas said, emphasizing
that the vast majority of plastic surgery candidates have much more realistic
expectations.
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- She also said Jackson's apparent goal of honing his once
broad, flat African-American nose into a perkier nose is out of step with
current fashion.
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- "In the 50s, 60s and 70s everyone got a cookie-cutter
nose, but now people don't want to change their ethnicity. They just want
a nose that fits their face," the plastic surgeon said.
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- "What he's done is to go from a Negroid or black
nose, which is round and broad and flat, to a Caucasian nose that's narrow
and projecting," Dr. Harvey Zarem, a former chief of plastic surgery
at the University of California at Los Angeles, told the Los Angeles Times.
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- "To do that, you have to put cartilage or silicone
or bone in the nose like a tent stake to make the nose stick out. But when
you do that enough, the cartilage or silicone or bone pokes through."
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- Beverly Hills surgeon Fleming said much of the work on
Jackson's nose appears to have been done by a single doctor.
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- "I do see people who want repeated surgeries, but
you can't operate on them. If Roseanne Barr comes in wanting to look like
J-Lo, I can't help her," he said.
- http://wwwi.reuters.com/images/2002-11-14T002158Z_01_GALAXY-
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