Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Women are vilified first for getting older. And then for getting plastic surgery...

There’s a meme going around social media featuring quotes and footage of supermodel Carmen Dell’Orefice, who turned 85 this summer. The meme (not created by Dell’Orefice herself) proclaims that the white-haired senior proves beauty is ageless. The comments, not so much. Beneath the film are hundreds of sneers from people criticising Dell’Orefice for having had plastic surgery (which she has always very happily admitted to), with the implication that, in intervening with the natural ageing process, she’s somehow a fraud and letting the side down.

Meanwhile, Friends actress Courteney Cox has redeemed herself in the eyes of the public and media. She admitted last week on Bear Grylls’ US TV show that she regrets some of her surgical and non-surgical procedures. “Sometimes you find yourself trying [to slow the ageing process], and then you look at a picture of yourself and you go, ‘Oh God.’ Like, you look horrible … I have done things that I regret and luckily they’re things that dissolve and go away,” she admitted. Where tabloid and broadsheet commenters once ridiculed Cox for her obvious nips and tucks, now they applaud her for effectively apologising for her own face.

I see this a lot – the open disdain for women who’ve seemingly engaged in cosmetic intervention (and, yes, men in increasing numbers go under the knife – I just don’t recall George Clooney being slated for his rumoured eye-lift surgery, oddly enough). “Ageing is a sign of character, of a life well lived and sooooo beautiful,” say people who are almost invariably under 30, with apparently no idea of how patronising they sound (come back to me in 15 years when you’ve plucked your first chin hair, is my suggestion). Certainly, wrinkles can be very beautiful and people look creepy without any at all. But to not particularly fancy embracing all them, or to seek to remove the hoods over one’s eyes, or to add back in a little mouth fullness lost to time, is apparently to declare oneself monstrously vain, in denial and tragically under the cosh of the patriarchy. Full story...

Related posts:
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  2. Brazilian plastic surgery: Beauty on a budget...
  3. Stunning photos show why S. Korea is the plastic surgery capital of the world...
  4. In South Korea, plastic surgery to create a permanent smile...
  5. 'Eiffel Tower' nosejob: Chinese students turn to plastic surgery to beat...
  6. Meet the woman who says she hasn't smiled for FORTY YEARS... so she...
  7. Singapore: Demand for jabs to 'create bags under eyes'
  8. Labiaplasty, deforming the vagina... (Graphic)

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