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Myrl
Jeffcoat myrlj@jps.net 26 mars, 2005 10:27 Beautiful Stranger: By Hope Donahue From the show Hooked on Plastic Surgery at Age
28 Jenny is
only 28 years old and has already had 26 plastic surgeries. Jenny says she
first became a slave to the scalpel after one critical comment from her
then husband. "My ex-husband told me that my nose was too big, that my
boobs were too small, so eventually I got a boob job to stop the
comments," Jenny says. "I just moved from a bad relationship with him to a
bad relationship between me and my reflection. After the divorce, plastic
surgery became an obsession for me." Jenny was
just 25 years old when she had a brow lift. She's also had Botox, cheek
implants, three nose jobs, veneers on her teeth, three lip implants, two
boob jobs, three breast lifts, and liposuction on her arms, stomach, hips,
thighs, and knees. Jenny says that the total cost of her plastic surgeries
is about $80,000. But even
all these surgeries have failed to stop Jenny from scrutinizing her
imagined imperfections. "I still
see a lot of things that are wrong," Jenny says. "I still want other
things done. I'm unhappy with stretch marks left from pregnancy, and I
would like a tummy tuck. I still see imperfections in my nose and wrinkles
around my eyes and all kinds of stuff. I mean, it just depends on the day.
It's been a battle that I've had with my poor self-esteem that started a
long time ago and the continuous need to feel like I should fit in
somehow, and I never can fit in. .I'm obsessed with it, I don't know what
an addict is. I've never been addicted to drugs. I've never been addicted
to alcohol. I've never been an alcoholic. So if this is what addiction is,
then, yes, I'm addicted to it. I think about it all the
time." Lauren is
Jenny's 18-year-old younger sister. Jenny's plastic surgeries have made
Lauren feel insecure about her own looks. "I feel like she's rejected my
looks as well as hers," Lauren says. "I'm self-conscious about the way my
nose looks now and how my eyebrows are too low or my breasts are too small
or my hips are going to become too big." At the same
time, Lauren is disturbed by her sister's radically altered
appearance. "Honestly,
I don't think she looks as good as she would if she had never had plastic
surgery," she says. "I think that she looks plastic. I think fake almost,
and materialistic. When we walk down the street, it's noticeable. It's
almost kind of like a circus clown. I think she cut herself short. She was
beautiful even before she had her surgery. . It hurts to know that my
sister has changed her face so much that we don't look
alike." Dr. Nancy
Etcoff is a psychologist who teaches at Harvard Medical School. She's also
written a book called Survival of the Prettiest, The Science of
Beauty. "We're a
nation obsessed with beauty pursuing it at all costs," Dr. Etcoff says.
"We see images of perfect beauty everywhere. We see extreme makeovers now.
People will do so much to be beautiful. When I'm listening to [Jenny],
what I hear is a profound lack of self-acceptance, contentment, even a
self-loathing that fuels all this." Dr. Etcoff
says that Jenny likely suffers from a common condition now known as Body
Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD). BDD often strikes people in their
teens." It's a
psychiatric problem where people are pre-occupied with an imagined or very
slight defect," Dr. Etcoff says. "They can't stop thinking about it.
They've checked the mirror all day. They spend hours thinking about it.
They'll ask people, 'How do I look?' And what happens is, everyone says,
'Sure, I think about my looks.' But it becomes so preoccupying that it's
torturous. It becomes an obsession." Cheryl, a
mother of two, admits she is addicted to liposuction-and what was once a
quick fix has now turned into an obsession. Cheryl's had a breast
reduction, liposuction on her lower abdomen, "love handles" in the back,
as well as a tummy tuck and tightening of her lower stomach muscles.
Cheryl's obsession is taking a toll on the entire family, especially her
husband Brad. The plastic surgery bills have put the family in serious
debt, and Brad is working three jobs to work on paying off Cheryl's
plastic surgery tab. Now, Cheryl wants liposuction on her legs. If she
goes through with it, Brad has threatened divorce. "It wasn't
an argument," Brad says. "You get it done, and I'm leaving. I mean, it's
over. I'm prepared to get a divorce and take our kids. I've had enough
with the plastic surgery. Our household can't take it anymore. It doesn't
benefit me and it doesn't benefit my children. It's not only a financial
thing. It's hard to live in a house where somebody is always so unhappy
about themselves. I have an 11-year-old daughter and a 9-year-old son. I
don't need them growing up to be obsessive about their weight or their
looks." Cheryl
says, "He's tired of it all. We can't afford it. I mean, we refinanced our
house to do this. So I need to stop." In her
quest to get the "perfect face," Jenny decided she wanted Michael
Jackson's nose. Although her plastic surgeon told her she could never have
Michael Jackson's nose, Jenny insisted. She has had a total of three nose
jobs and says, "The last time I went in there [the plastic surgeon] said
to me, 'I'm warning you. If I do this, there's a very good possibility
your nose will completely collapse and it will be flat on your face. And
we will have to start all over again.' And I said, 'I'll roll the
dice.'" Jenny's
words hit home for Cheryl. "I'm done," Cheryl says. "I can't. I don't want
to roll the dice. A light bulb went off. I have two children. And my
husband. To roll the dice with my life, to lose my kids, lose my
husband.I'll stick with my legs [the way they are]."
Hope Donahue seemed to have it all: beauty, wealth, social status. She was an only
child who grew up with the best private schools, debutante balls, and a
home in Hancock Park, Los Angeles's old-money enclave. But beneath the
family's façade of "keeping up appearances," Hope hid a host of ugly
truths, including a mother increasingly jealous of her daughter's good
looks, an uncle's sexual advances and a father who cowed to the demands of
his wife and coolly reserved parents. Hope became addicted to a quest for
physical perfection in place of her self-esteem-and by the age of
twenty-seven she had undergone seven plastic surgeries. In riveting,
unflinching prose, Hope recounts her downward spiral that alienated her
family and friends, and led her to theft, bankruptcy and a sadistic
relationship before she began her recovery. A powerful response to a culture obsessed with extreme
makeovers and risky procedures that promise flawlessness, Beautiful
Stranger is a timely, cautionary tale. Her story will inspire the
countless women and men like her who struggle every day in a culture that
feeds us dangerous images of unattainable
perfection. http://www2.oprah.com/tows/booksseen/200502/tows_book_20050208_hdonahue.jhtml
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