13 novembre, 2006 16:28

Suffering in name of beauty

A New York Times writer tells us what it's like to ride the anti-aging train.

BY DIANA McLELLAN

BEAUTY JUNKIES: Inside Our $15 Billion Obsession With Cosmetic Surgery.

Alex Kuczynski. Doubleday. 290 pages. $24.95.

In New York, women have their toes trimmed to squeeze into pointy Jimmy Choo shoes. In Los Angeles, gals who've had everything else done now get genital beautification. Says one, ''I've spent so much money for the rest of me to look like Dolly Parton. So why should that look like Willie Nelson?'' Many under-40 men today think it perfectly normal for the breasts on a reclining woman to stand up like rockets at takeoff.

The New York Times' racy features writer Alex Kuczynski has written an expose of the cosmetic surgery industry, and she really knows her stuff. The 30-something beauty confesses that she hopped aboard the fix-me train at age 28. At first, it was just a couple of Botox shots to the brow. Later, she was persuaded by her doctor to have her almond-shaped, slightly slanted blue eyes ''fixed'' to reduce the volume above the upper lid. She's had lard lipo'd from her thighs.

In 2004, in quest of that Angelina Jolie suck-the-chrome-off-a-trailer-hitch moue, she had her upper lip stuffed with Restylane, a mucus-like synthetic form of hyaluronic acid. It gave her a yam-sized Donald Duck disaster zone below her nose that kept her housebound for several days. That -- and the recognition that a friend had, in the course of various improvements, become a frightening ''meat puppet'' -- cured her of her addiction.

A few choice statistics from her sumptuously fact-packed Beauty Junkies: In 2004, almost 12 million surgical and nonsurgical beauty procedures were performed in the United States -- including 290,343 eyelid jobs, 166,187 nose jobs, 478,251 liposuctions and 334,052 breast augmentations. Despite the fact that those high-cohesive silicone-gel European breast implants are generally illegal here, it's estimated that a third of all artificial breasts in this country are ''in trouble.'' Still, since 1997, breast implants are up 147 percent. Liposuction's up 111 percent; Botox use, 2,446 percent.

Kuczynski emphasizes the harsh realities that steer these soaring numbers. First, boomers are graying more reluctantly than any previous generation. Second, many surgeons and dermatologists actually prefer big-bucks, high-satisfaction cosmetic work to, say, cancer surgery.

At its core, the rage for ''age management'' is a ghastly business. Beneath those glamorous Chiclet-tooth veneers may lurk stinking stubs that revolt even the dentists who created them from perfectly healthy teeth. People who have gastric bypasses (140,600 Americans in 2004) find their new slender bodies swimming in gigantic sacks of skin.

But as long ago as the 17th century, the wise Francois, duc de la Rochefoucauld, observed that, ''One must suffer to be beautiful.'' Today, 73-year-old Joan Rivers adds, ''I wish I had a twin, so I could know what I'd look like without plastic surgery.'' As for Kuczynski -- well, she's gone off the Botox.

Diana McLellan reviewed this book for The Washington Post.