WHY? WHY? WHY?
Former supermodel Janice Dickinson (right) gets breast implants that are too large for her body, too high on her chest and too close together.
Actress Lara Flynn Boyle (below) has her lips pumped up so they look like something crawled onto her face.
Country singer Kenny Rogers (bottom photo) gets his face lifted so high that he always looks surprised.
I could go on, but I don’t need to. You can think of many other examples, including Michael Jackson, of course.
But what’s the reason this happens so often, and has for years? Why do celebrities, with all their money and Hollywood connections, end up visiting cosmetic doctors who turn them into parodies of themselves?
It’s a question I discussed with plastic surgeon Dr. Michael Sundine in Wednesday’s regular online “In Your Face CHAT.”
Part of the reason we’re so aware of celebrities’ bad plastic surgery is simply celebrities’ prominence. We notice and remember their mistakes. The wind-tunnel face of Mary Tyler Moore is much more memorable than the weirdly post-surgical face of a woman who passes us in the mall.
We also have intense mental images of what Hollywood stars look like — actually, of what Hollywood stars used to look like in their most memorable films.
By contrast, whenever we encounter family, friends or colleagues in our daily lives, we subconsciously make minute adjustments to our mental images of them as they age. We do the same for our own self-image when we see ourselves in the mirror.
Not so with our mental images of stars. They’re fixed in movie frames and in our minds. Over time we rarely adjust that image, although new movies might add new images to old ones.
As a result, at the supermarket checkout counter we’re shocked by the difference between our fixed mental picture and the tabloid reality of a movie star who has aged, put on weight or had plastic surgery.
The stars themselves not only see the tabloids, but also see their faces and bodies in excruciating detail on 20-foot silver screens. That must do a number on a star’s self-image, creating a strong enticement to fix flaws and amplify good features, even if that’s a risky proposition.
If the movie projector makes your lips appear six feet wide, what’s the harm with a little injection that plumps them out a fraction of an inch? After all, you’re surrounded by fans and toadies who’d never tell you that your lips have started to look like slugs. And you would like to look more like Angelina Jolie, wouldn’t you?
Mother Nature’s gifts are the foundation of celebrities’ appeal, which stars amplify by becoming experts at presenting themselves in the best light. What Mother Nature giveth, Mother Nature taketh away, but stars have a hard time admitting it.
For many normal people, aging is just one more thing to come to terms with.
For stars, aging can threaten their career and destroy an exquisite self-image they’ve enjoyed since childhood. No wonder they take risks to try to preserve what can’t be preserved.
Would Kenny Rogers be happier if he were more wrinkly? He doesn’t say that, even though he admits that he hated the results of plastic surgery. But he adds, “As that stuff settles in it looks better and better. If I don’t die soon it’ll look great,” he said.
Breasts and doctors are other factors that lead celebrities to bad plastic surgery.
“If you look at bad celebrity photos, the breasts are almost always overdone,” Sundine said. “This is the biggest problem.”
Dickinson, for example, runs a modeling agency and was a supermodel, so she should know what looks good. But Sundine sees a series of mistakes.
“These breast implants are way too large,” he said of her. They’re also “extremely high, and too close to the mid-line.”
Dickinson may not have chosen the placement of her implants, but she did choose the size. She knew what she was doing, even though it strikes many people as a botched job. She knows about the appeal of breasts.
Subtly or overtly, men encourage women to opt for large breasts if they’re considering implants.
In an unscientific survey of readers of the O.C. Register’s “In Your Face” blog, 85 percent of women said men are attracted to women whose breasts have been enlarged with implants.
But men aren’t the only breast fans. Cosmopolitan magazine uses cleavage to attract female buyers.
I’ve often heard from plastic surgeons that their patients’ most frequent regret is getting implants that are too small.
The proper size for implants isn’t just a woman’s whim, but also a medical determination based on the size of the patient’s chest and breasts, Sundine said.
Yet “sometimes the surgeon might listen to the patient’s desires too much without looking at the limitations of the surgery,” he said. “Bigger isn’t always better.
“Frequently with oversized implants, patients don’t understand,” he said, that “over time the weight of the implants will pull the breast down.”
A doctor confronted with a celebrity might have a tougher time saying no than with a non-celebrity patient, but I still consider celebrities to be responsible for their own blunders.
Sundine, though, places more blame on cosmetic doctors.
“They don’t say no,” he said. “That is the problem.”
Photo of Janice Dickinson courtesy of Dr. Michael Sundine. Photos of Lara Flynn Boyle courtesy of FamousPlastic.com. Photo of Kenny Rogers from AP.
Related links:
Slide shows:
‘Stars’ botched plastic surgery’ slide show
CAN YOU SPOT PLASTIC SURGERY?
