Aging Gracefully vs. Cosmetic Intervention

Danny Ghitis for The New York Times

When I saw the large photograph of Dr. Fredric Brandt, the “King of Collagen” on the front of last Sunday’s New York Times Styles section, I was startled by the image of an expressionless face with red over-puffed lips and a gold halo around his head like that of a saint on a Greek Orthodox icon.

My first thought was that it was Bruce Jenner, father to the Kardashian klan, who seems to be turning from a man into a woman with the help of cosmetic fillers and plastic surgery.

But no, it was an article on dermatologist Fredric Brandt, who is evidently the leading doctor of choice with celebrities like Madonna and Stephanie Seymour, thanks to his ability to keep them looking ageless.  According to The Times, “Dr. Brandt is the designated magician responsible for keeping faces both well known and otherwise in states of extraordinary preservation. …The 64-year-old physician acts as the syringe-wielding wizard responsible for using techniques like his signature Y lifts—in which fillers are injected below the cheekbones—to hold back time for any number of supermodels, trophy wives, celebrities and industrial titans of either sex.”

The author of the article, Guy Trebay, responded to a comment by Dr. Brandt that some Hollywood stars want to cut too soon, to overfill, “When there’s too much pulling, too many procedures, you lose the softness along with the personality of the face…” by asking him if he felt his experiments on himself had produced that effect.  Brandt replied, “People think I look pretty good.”

Now I’m not in a position to criticize people for using cosmetic surgery, since I’ve written several articles for Vogue magazine on the subject of my two facelifts over the past 20 years and a go-around with “Fraxel: Repair” laser treatment five years ago. (I’m now 73.).  But my gut reaction to The Times’ photograph of Dr. Brandt was that he’d be an ideal candidate to play a vampire in one of those films that have become so popular recently. His skin is so taut and his face so pale (except for the red puffy lips) that he seems embalmed.

This was much like the reaction my husband had to the sight of Kim Novak in her much-discussed appearance at the Oscars.  (I missed it, but looked her up later.  The problem that both Kim Novak and Dr. Brandt seem to have is:  too much filler and too much Botox, eliminating all the expression lines that make a face individual.)

On Sunday I saw the article on Brandt, then on Tuesday I looked up the reactions on-line to the piece.  I wondered if I was the only one appalled by the famous doctor’s work on himself, but after reading 106 comments, I learned that the vast majority of the reactions echo my thoughts—that the doctor’s appearance is “super creepy” and, as one person wrote.  “When a doctor can't even perceive his own disfigurement, how could you possibly trust his aesthetic decisions?”

 Monday night, on the Turner Classic Movie channel, I saw an hour-long interview with Eva Marie Saint, talking about her life in films and the leading men and directors she’s worked with.  She said straight out that she was 88 years old (and has been married to the same man for over 60 years.) People, she’s turning 90 on July 4, 2014!

I thought she looked wonderful—she had wrinkles, sure, but they were nice wrinkles.  I can’t tell you if she’s had any “work” done, but her neck did have the turkey wattle effect that is so hard to avoid.  I remembered Eva Marie Saint vividly from her role in “On the Waterfront” with Marlon Brando.  It was her first film and she won an Oscar for it in 1954, when I was 13. It was a shock to see once again in the clips from the film what a young, innocent, almost vulnerable girl she appeared.  But now, at 88, she was confidant, vivacious, funny, smart and she moved with youthful grace—all of which made her seem much younger than her years.

I listened avidly to what she said about her life, hoping to catch some clues as to how she remained so vital.  One thing she emphasized was:  “You have to walk every day—walk for an hour every single day!”  It was also a matter of genes—her mother had lived into her nineties.  And she remarked several times that she had a very happy childhood and a long, loving marriage to a husband who was a director—and thus understood her art as an actress.  But she felt that if she had married a fellow actor—or a lawyer or doctor—there might have been a clash of egos that would doom the marriage.

First I heard about all the plastic surgery digs on the social networks during the Oscars, then last weekend I read about Dr. Brandt and saw the results of his work. Finally, after marveling at how Eva Marie Saint has maintained her verve and beauty for 88 years, I think it’s time for me to stop fighting.

In the last year or so I’ve acquired those fine crepe-y wrinkles around the mouth and eyes. Everyone knows that  people like me, with fair skin and blue eyes, wrinkle sooner and worse than those with darker skin, but I’ve decided to let time take its toll without further cosmetic intervention---except, maybe, just a teensy, tiny shot of Botox between the eyebrows now and then, when I notice that those frown lines are back, making me look perpetually angry.   

Why I Won’t be Seeing the Oscar-Winning Movie this Year

 I love movies and I’m always thrilled when I read about a film made for adults.  It’s a sad fact of life that the big-budget productions, issued in the summer, all feature superheroes with super powers or Will Smith saving the universe –films intended to appeal to teenaged boys, unless they’re made to appeal to pre-teen girls with dreamy, pale-skinned vampires and pumped up wolfmen.

But by fall, the studios start bringing out serious films made for adults, because it’s the build-up to the Oscars. (The nominations will be announced on Thursday.) I liked last year’s surprise Best Picture “The Artist” (a black and white silent film set in the 1920s?!), and 2010’s winner—“The King’s Speech”. I absolutely loved 2008’s winner—“Slumdog Millionaire”, maybe more than most because I’d recently come back from India where I posted about the reality of the homeless beggar children in the cities. “Slumdog Millionaire” had a happy ending (boy gets girl and wins a million) and a big Bollywood dance number—how could anyone resist?

But this year it’s looking as if I won’t be buying tickets to most of the nominees for Best Picture, because I have this built-in protective mechanism which keeps me away from exceptionally violent films. And I’m not alone. I think most women don’t want to see strung-out scenes of violence and torture. But this year, all the “serious” films seem to be over the top for violence.

By the way, The New York Times reported yesterday: “A chain saw finally pried the inhabitants of Middle-earth out of first place at the North American box office…”Texas Chainsaw 3rd” (Lionsgate) beat projections and took in an estimated $23 million for No. 1 (‘Massacre’ was dropped from the title after the Colorado movie shootings.)  Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Django Unchained’…ended up second, selling about $20.1 million in tickets, for a two week total of $106.4 million.”

This year the top-rated (by the critics) films that will probably be nominated for Oscars have so much gore, violence and torture , I just don’t want to put myself through it.

I did see “Lincoln” which I liked—although I didn’t love it as much as “Slumdog Millionaire.”  But I definitely think Daniel Day-Lewis will get the Oscar for best actor, and he deserves it.  And “Les Miserables”, although it’s been criticized for the unrelenting suffering in extreme close-ups, is also a film I want to see.  I adore the Broadway sound track and tend to sing along at top voice when I’m driving –but only when I’m alone, because I wouldn’t want to submit anyone else to my singing. That would be another form of torture.

Which brings us to “Zero Dark Thirty” a film about the killing of Osama Bin Laden.   The subject fascinates me and I was eager to see it until I read that the first half hour of the film is devoted to scenes of torturing a man by waterboarding. I know that a half hour of torture is more than I can sit through. 

When I was seven years old in Minnesota , my very religious grandmother would  take me to Bible movies, which often involved torture—Samson and Delilah  among others.  During the torture scenes I would run out of the theater area and huddle in the foyer to the amusement of the lady selling tickets.

Next we have “Django Unchained” by Quentin Tarantino. I liked “Pulp Fiction” which had its moments of violence.  But all the critics say “Django” is way over the top. The latest New York Magazine said of the film, “Connoisseurs of ‘wet’ gore will be especially delighted, given that every bullet generates a whoopee-cushion’s worth of red sauce.  The only violence that’s not a kick is done unto slaves, who are whipped, torn to pieces by dogs, and, in a particularly ugly moment, driven to slaughter one another for sport….It’s manna for mayhem mavens.”

Does this make you want to rush out and buy a ticket?

I think that filmmakers believe that every time they make a movie they have to surpass the last one in shocking the audience, either with sex or violence.  Consider all the great films in which the sex happened off camera (and was much sexier because of that). And think of “Psycho”, which terrified a whole generation out of taking showers.  Nowhere in the shower scene of “Psycho” do you see knife slicing into flesh or even a naked body, and yet the murder is so much more terrifying because of what you DON’T see.

I saw the previews of “The Impossible” –based on a true story of a family caught in the terrible tsunami which ravaged Thailand in 2004. The New York Times review said in part: “’The Impossible’ is also, in its way, a horror film, with nature as the malevolent force threatening innocent lives. The dramatic emphasis is on the anguish of a mother and her son, who survive the waves and are separated from the rest of their family.”  Evidently much is made of the severe wounds the mother suffers, with lots of close ups.  People magazine said, “It could turn a sensitive viewer—and who isn’t in these troubling days—into a ball of anxiety.”

 I’m going to opt out of this one.

 A movie I would like to see, but probably won’t is “Amour”, the French-language film which many are calling the best of the year.  It tells the story of a devoted couple, married for decades, when the wife suffers a stroke and begins to fail while the husband looks after her.  “Her movement is restricted on one side, speech falters and dies to a moan; diapers are required.”  according to the New Yorker review. …”Even George’s resources are of no avail, and that is why he is forced to consider, at the last gasp, what love required him to do.  All amour is fou.”

I probably will force myself to go see this film, which is earning accolades, because, after all, my husband and I are in our seventies and have been married over forty years, and the next stage in our life is what this film is about, but I have a feeling that’s it’s not going to be a fun evening.

I’ve heard really good things about “Silver Linings Playbook”, including that it is both funny and uplifting, but as soon as I told my husband it’s about two people with mental health problems coming out of rehab, he vetoed going.  And then people are suggesting that “Life of Pi” is likely to be nominated for Best Picture.  I heard it’s beautiful to watch, and the trailer is stunning, but I read the book and at the end wondered why I had invested that much time in the story of a youth who gets stranded on the ocean in a small boat with a tiger.  I think the whole thing was a metaphor for something that I never figured out.

“Beasts of the Southern Wild” I’ve desperately wanted to see ever since I first read about it. Here’s a bit from The New York Times:

“One of the most striking aspects of ‘Beasts’, given its pedigree, is the way it blends realism and fantasy, allegory and observation. ‘Once there was a Hushpuppy,’ the narrator (herself the Hushpuppy in question, played by the remarkable Quvenzhané Wallis) informs us, and this 6-year-old girl, living in tough circumstances in a stretch of Louisiana bayou called the Bathtub, very much resembles the heroine of a fairy tale.”

I would love, love, love to see this film, starring a sassy six-year-old girl of rare courage, but it was so briefly in a local theater that I missed it because I was traveling.  Maybe it will come back after the Oscars if it wins enough statuettes.

I think I’m not alone in wishing that serious filmmakers, trying to make serious films, would not feel the need for explicit torture and gore to make their point.  We have enough of that in real life.  We’ll see on Sunday Feb. 24^th if Oscar  voters agree with me.

 

What to Wear to the Mad Men Party?

(Okay, daughter Eleni has issued a challenge and I have accepted it.  If 100 people vote on my facebook page or on this blog post for me to wear the extremely ugly palazzo pajamas shown below to the party tomorrow, I’ll do it, but my husband is threatening that he won’t been seen with me if I do.)

Tomorrow night, Saturday, the Worcester Art Museum is launching an exhibition of photos from the nineteen sixties called “Kennedy to Kent State—Images of a Generation.”  And they’re celebrating the opening with a party.  The invitation says “Go Mad with Motown, martinis and more” and ends with “Mad Men-inspired attire encouraged.”

For a compulsive hoarder like myself, this is a piece of cake. (I guess that would be refrigerator cake if we’re evoking the sixties.)  I went to the back of my “out of season” closet where I keep “souvenir clothes.”  Then I started taking photos and trying on outfits (the ones that I could still zip up)  and quizzing my husband, Nick, on what I should wear.

I was 19 and in college when the sixties began.  By 1963 I was in New York in graduate school and in 1964 started my first job in public relations (next came magazine journalism) in Manhattan.

As I wrote last March in “Remembering Mad Men Days”  there were two dramatically different periods of fashion and lifestyle in the sixties.  Above are photos of me in 1965 (check out the hat and gloves!) and in1968—(what was I thinking?).  Between those two photos came the tsunami that washed away the hats and gloves and washed in mini skirts, Vidal Sassoon bobs, Twiggy, Mary Quant and the Beatles. The TV series Mad Men has been portraying both sides of that watershed as the program moves through the decade, so there’s a lot of leeway in what to wear to tomorrow’s party.

Sadly I no longer have either of those outfits I’m wearing above, but here’s what came out of my closet.

This is the jacket to a matching dress making an outfit that I call my “Bob Hope suit.”  The Ladies Home Journal had sent a woman reporter to Los Angeles to interview Bob Hope for an article and she arrived at his house wearing blue jeans.  The comedian threw her out and informed the magazine that he would not speak to a woman reporter dressed like that.  So the editor told me to go out and buy a “nice Republican suit” and this is what I bought.  Bob Hope seemed to like it, because he gave me a good interview.  But now the dress part of it is in the hands of my daughter Eleni who wore it recently to HER job at a New York magazine.  She also wore an ultra-mini dress of mine that was once worn by Twiggy in a fashion spread.  Neither dress would fit me any more. (Eleni weighs about 100 pounds.)

This sequined jacket and glittery blouse are both more eighties than sixties, as Eleni pointed out.

This orange dress is brand new, but it has the sixties look that’s been brought back by Mad Men fans, including the fabric that turns into paisley at the bottom.

Both this black jacket and dress and the shocking pink one have really big shoulder pads, very short skirts and lots of glitz on the buttons or the gold trim.

This dress has the right sixties look—very small waist and full skirt—but now I can’t begin to close the belt.

This is the dark blue jumpsuit that I wore to the Oscars when Nick was executive producer for Godfather III, which was nominated for best picture.  But that was in 1991 as I wrote in “Famous Oscar Flubs and Moments” and everyone was watching Madonna channeling Marilyn Monroe in all- white and Michael Jackson, sitting next to her, in a drum majorette’s outfit.

Now these incredibly ugly Palazzo Pajamas are perfect for a Sixties party.  And no, I’ve never had the nerve to wear them anywhere.  I bought this outfit at one of the vintage clothing shows that happens in Sturbridge, MA on the Monday before Brimfield opens, three times a year.

The pajamas, coincidently, were designed by Anne Fogarty who happened to be the sister of my first magazine-editor boss, Poppy Cannon, but they’ve both passed on to their rewards long ago.  Daughter Eleni e-mailed me “I really vote hard for the palazzo pants.  You’d be the belle of the ball.”

I know she’s right, but I still can’t muster up the nerve to be seen in public in that monstrosity, authentic as it may be. 

So with the help of my husband, this is the outfit I chose for tomorrow’s party. It may be more “Dallas” than Mary Quant  (I shopped at Biba Boutique the whole two years I lived in London—why didn’t I keep the stuff?) but at least I can still get into it.

And I think I’m going to pair it with these Beverly Feldman shoes.

I suspect there will be a lot of (old) people like myself tomorrow night reliving their salad days. I hear there will be devilled eggs and Jello…how about onion dip and Ritz crackers…and refrigerator cake?