NYO - The Transom

In This Week’s Transom:

Under the Knife with Alex K and Pals

Zani and Fabiola, Ready For Love!

58th Street Goes Gay Again

Zach Braff, Horny, Weepy

Who’s Had Work?

Alex Kuczynski had a book party on Thursday. Her book is about plastic surgery.

The Transom thought it would be funny to go up to random blondes and say, “Alex, it’s a pleasure to meet you, loved the book.” (Get it? Like she was unrecognizable from the knife?) But the first two both said, “What? I didn’t write the book.” Har har. Anyway, Ms. Kuczynski’s hair is now her “natural” brown.

And then there she was: Ms. Kuczynski’s cosmetic surgeon, Dr. Michelle Copeland.

“She did my eyes, my posterior and my Botox,” brayed Ms. Kuczynski, directing an affectionate almond-shaped gaze downward onto the diminutive doctor. The leggy author wore a red and black dress, black tights and heels that put her in line for tallest-person-in-the-room status.

“Everybody should have such a wonderful subject,” said Ms. Copeland. “Alex is a delight. It’s easy to make her look good.”

“You’re so cute,” responded her 38-year-old subject, her upper lip remaining remarkably stiff. Ms. Kuczynski, who writes the “Critical Shopper” column for The Times and is somehow the First Daughter of Peru, then turned a critical eye on The Transom.

“Have you had any work done?” she asked.

She suggested Preparation H for the eyes. “That’s what models use.”

On that note, Ms. Copeland, what was more challenging—fixing Ms. Kuczynski’s eyes, or her ass?

“Eyes are more difficult,” said the doctor, “because first of all there’s one on each side, so you have to make them symmetrical. And they’re so visible—they’re right there, up front and center, so you wanna make it look natural.”

Ms. Kuczynski later explained that while her eye issue made her look like the “cartoon character Bill the Cat”—one was prone to sagging half-shut—the issue with her posterior was less severe. Thbbbt!

“There were two teeny-tiny teaspoon-size wiggling portions in what, in the industry, is called the saddle-bag region,” she said. Despite a year of training for the New York Marathon, the “junk in the trunk” persisted. So she had Ms. Copeland liposuction it out. That was five years ago, and “the wiggly portion is generally still gone.”

Indeed, Ms. Kuczynski said, the twin themes of her book Beauty Junkies are: “It’s O.K. to be you, and watch out who does your ass.” And that “people really need to understand who is an actual plastic surgeon, and who is a dermatologist who just took a weekend seminar.”

“A few years ago,” she said, “I was on the brink of just doing every new thing, and I’m really glad I pulled back.”

She said that Senator Hillary Clinton’s Republican challenger, John Spencer, is an “intolerant asshole” for his recent charges that Mrs. Clinton was “ugly” before having “million of dollars” of plastic surgery.

Most of female guests at the party at the “21” Club were on board with her “scalpel in moderation” thesis.

“It’s not the Holy Grail. It’s more like fur—it should be done sparingly,” said Candace Bushnell.

“If I had the balls to get it done, I would—but I’m terrified of needles,” said Daily News editrix Orla Healy. “But Candace is so sweet. She’s given me the names of some good Botox people.”

P.R. princess Peggy Siegal had just arrived from the New York Antiques Show. “There’s nothing worse than bad plastic surgery, and there’s nothing better than great plastic surgery,” she offered.

Speaking from experience?

“I’ve never had any bad plastic surgery, so you can fill in the cracks or the lines or whatever,” she said, adding that the “work” around the room looked pretty good. Particularly compared to that at the Antiques Show.

“People who are confident tend to do better and have better luck than people who don’t feel good about themselves,” said Ms. Kuczynski’s mega-investor husband, Charles Stevenson. “So I think cosmetic surgery has a positive contribution to make.”

Does he ever worry about his wife’s willingness to go under the knife?

“There is a risk in every surgery,” he said. “But I try to be supportive, as every husband should.”

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This column ran on page 3 in the 10/30/2006 edition of The New York Observer.

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