Ouch, Madge! Like me, you've passed the nip-and-tuck tipping point: It's when that rejuvenating 'work' starts to turn you into a waxwork. As Liz Jones knows all too well...
By Liz Jones
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We cannot change the world,’ Madonna said at this weekend’s Sound Of Change concert, a gig sponsored by Gucci, with the aim of raising empowerment among young women (a contradiction, surely, given the Italian brand once advertised its wares by shaving a model’s pubic hair in the shape of its logo).
But I agree with Madonna. You cannot change the world...but you can sure as hell can change your face.
Her 54-year-old visage now looks like something Paul Hollywood would dust with flour before poking with a digit to test whether the dent springs back into shape, letting him know his work is done.
MADONNA: Note the hair, dyed blonde with brown roots, to give the lie that her natural colour is still luxuriant brunette. It's likely she had her own fat injected into her face, resulting in a transformation to puffball mushroom.
By the look of Madonna’s face on stage on Saturday night, it seems clear to me that her surgeon’s work is never done.
Indeed, she now appears to have passed the crucial nip/tuck tipping point, where a face that previously looked rejuvenated by a little cosmetic help suddenly makes onlookers exclaim: ‘Is it Donatella Versace? Nicole Kidman? Or, God Forbid, the Bride of Wildenstein?’
Her large eyes now tilt upwards at the edges, with no crow’s feet to speak of, which leads me to imagine she has had plenty of Botox in these crucial areas. The distance between her eye socket and brow is now as large as France, most probably thanks to an upper face lift.
And the fat pads in her cheeks, which in her sixth decade should have started to migrate south, are as full and milky as udders.
MELANIE GRIFFITH: The star doesn't resemble herself anymore, but rather popstar Rihanna: the over-generous mouth, the very high smooth forehead. Like Madonna, she has her roots dyed, so it looks as though her regrowth is brown, not silver
Her forehead is so shiny it could be used to flash distress signals, which in a way is exactly what Madonna’s face is doing: it’s telling us not that this woman is young, just that she is desperate not to be old.
But how does it happen, this tipping point into the absurd, the cartoonish, the grotesque?
Surely such women have mirrors,
partners, children who can act as a restraining force? Do surgeons not
have to sign some sort of Hippocratic oath by aesthetics?
I’m not going to condemn Madonna for her decision to blot out evidence of what, by any measure, has been an incredible life, because I’ve done it, too.
NICOLE KIDMAN: She is proof, it it were needed, of Helen Mirren's view: 'Women who have work done don't look young, they just look odd.' It seems Nicole has turned herself into a Stepford Wife version of her former self.
And if I tell you why I’ve done it, why I’ve passed my plastic surgery tipping point, and have been unable to know quite when to stop, then perhaps it will encourage women who are never going to appear onstage, or have their picture in the paper, to think twice before allowing a scalpel anywhere near them.
Surely such women have mirrors,
partners, children who can act as a restraining force? Do surgeons not
have to sign some sort of Hippocratic oath by aesthetics?
I’m not going to condemn Madonna for her decision to blot out evidence of what, by any measure, has been an incredible life, because I’ve done it, too.
FAYE DUNAWAY: When I bumped into her at a post-Oscars party a few years ago, I thought she was Donatella Versace. That the most beautiful woman in the world should do this to herself only demonstrates that we can never be satisfied.
But I was to get an even bigger shock. He made me look at my face, straight on, in a mirror, something I never do. I looked not like Clement Freud, but his dog. ‘Is there anything you can do with facials, expensive creams, microdermabrasion?’ I asked the surgeon.
‘No. The only thing that will help is a face lift. And blepharoplasty — eyebag surgery.’
I did not have puffiness; rather,
half-moon crevices that loomed beneath each eye, craters that spoke of
decades of hard work, disappointment and loneliness. He told me the dark
circles and darker years would be eradicated overnight. Part of the
appeal of cosmetic surgery, you see, is you believe you will get not
just a fresh face, but a fresh start.
So, the face lift was performed. I woke to blood seeping from both ears (where incisions are made these days, to avoid scarring), and a pink face the shape of a balloon. I reacted badly to the anaesthetic, and was bilious for days.
Unable to open my mouth, I survived on pineapple juice. I had to wear a face sling, take antibiotics, promise not to fall over, or fly in a plane. I was told to wear factor 50 sunblock, for life. I was so unrecognisable, my dogs barked at me.
ANNE ROBINSON: The TV presenter looks incredible if somewhat immobile. And the maintenance - spa visits, designers clothes, immaculate hair do - must be terribly exhausting in your 60s.
I couldn’t go out, or speak. I exercised my new lower lids by gently stretching them with my fingertips to avoid a Michael Jackson droop.
I thought I’d made a huge mistake. But then, after six months, like childbirth, the pain became a distant memory. I took my new face out on the town. ‘Wow! You look amazing,’ people said. And I half believed them.
I went back to the surgeon. After all, what I now needed was maintenance: filler, in the crevices from nose to mouth. Botox, in the forehead, around the eyes, and by the side of the mouth to lift it, so I couldn’t look sad even when I was paying his astronomical bill.
At this point, you think you are now ready for your new life, but you discover nothing else has changed. It isn’t just that your neck and hands no longer match your face, but your old life somehow doesn’t match your new expectations.
And so I tinkered a bit more. I found the men in white coats and the posters on the wall of the surgeon’s office reassuring, after all. With just a few more tweaks — and I’m thinking my lips now need plumping, to avoid having tortoise mouth — I will be happy.
PRISCILLA PRESLEY: The formerly beautiful Priscilla Presley now looks like a burns victim. Which, in a way, is exactly what she is: burned by fame, too much money - and a consuming desire to resemble her daughter, Lisa Marie.
It’s all too easy to lose sight of who
you once were. The only time you see your true reflection is in the
surprised eyes of friends who haven’t seen you for ages. ‘My God,’ said
one the other day, taking my hands, recently plumped with fat from my
thighs. ‘Have you got arthritis? They look so painful and swollen!’
I’ve had laser eye surgery. I’ve had teeth veneers, and a treatment to stop my gums receding, afraid a boyfriend might look in my mouth, for all the world as if buying a horse. One thing always leads to another.
One recent story has made me ashamed to have been so self-destructive, even more than the sight of Madonna last weekend.
I had a double mastectomy aged 29 because I wanted to be as flat-chested as model Yasmin Le Bon. Imagine my self-loathing when I read Angelina Jolie had done the same thing because she wanted to stay alive for her children.
As I know all too well, plastic surgery is not an addiction, it’s an illness. Not a serious one, like a defective gene that will give you cancer. Rather, it’s an infection caught from a society that places female beauty and youth above all else.
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still looks like a fire damaged trout Liz
- davefrosh , Bogatar, Japan, 04/6/2013 15:19
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