I am writing this in disgust. I just paid for a 'Good Housekeeping' magazine because it had a picture of Christie Brinkley on the front cover and the words, "Christie Brinkley tells 'the truth' about face-lifts, fad diets, ect". I am (unfortunately) old enough to remember when Christie had a very obvious surgical makeover. She was looking her age, in her late thirties, and virtually overnight, her face seemed to be 10 years younger. She did something way beyond botox (not even available then, if memory serves), and she looked great! She still looks great at 50.

What did she say in the magazine? That she had never done a thing. I remember when Demi Moore insisted that her breast size increased forever due to breastfeeding (there is no way), and Michael Jackson admits to ONE nose surgery to improve his breathing?

Why do celebrities lie about plastic surgery? Does this set up unnatural expectations for us mere mortals who don't defy age and aren't born perfect? Please share my rant so I don't feel so unbecoming.

I totally agree with you with regards to this issue Mrs. Pigpen...

I think if more celebs were honest with regards to the types of proceedures they've used normal men and women would have a better body image...It extends beyond lying about surgeries and botox etc. into the touchups on pictures magazines do. (take a little off the thighs and middle etc).

But then, not everybody in the real world is so honest either about the extremes they go to... which leads to the promotion of false/misinformation. Many personal trainers for example use steriods and promote the workouts they do on them when this training regime doesnt work or even can be counterproductive for a natural person. Also see all the supplements or diet plans (trimspa anyone?, south beach diet etc.) that celebs and athletes say they used...all the workouts they CLAIM got them that beautiful body when many times surgery, disordered eating and/or steriods were used. Most times the supplements and workout schemes are not productive for the average person. With regards to steriod use...denial probably centers around the fact that they are illegal, and who wants to admit they cheated?. With regards to surgery...I dunno, embarassment? fear that people will judge? On some of it I think its a money thing...at least with regards to advertising schemes..

It seems to me that if people were more honest in this regard, it would save a lot of people a lot of time and insecurities.

well off to watch NIP TUCK (without commercials)...Have you seen it? I like how it addresses a lot of the issues surrounding plastic surgery without necessarily promoting it like some of these reality plastic surgery shows. (ie: MTV's extreme making over people to look like celebs or the Swan).

I think that celebrities lie about their looks in part because they want to remain special somehow. Any fool with enough money can pay for plastic surgery, but only the somehow gifted can look like a teenager when they are in their fifties naturally.

I think this urge to be special stems from the nature of the entertainment industry itself - there is so much competition, and so little work for the ordinary-looking or people who look middle aged, that every feels they have to not just look perfect but be perfect. And if they admit that they have had plastic surgery, that's tantamount to admittting that they were somehow imperfect beforehand.

Of course, it's silly, because everybody changes as they age. It used to be that only women were afraid of being put onto the personal and professional scrapheap, but now men are in the same boat. If it isn't surgery, it's fake tans, hair dyes, and being rather skinnier than they used to be (think Stallone or Willis).

Of course, underlying all of this is the idea that only youth and beauty are valuable. In showbiz, this is to an extent understandable, since the people in it make their living being looked at. The thing that concerns me is that the values of showbiz seem to have overtaken society as a whole, so we not only become complicit in the value judgements we make (sneering at beach photos of off-duty celebs in a "ooh, don't they look old/fat/wrinkly" way), we ourselves become obsessed about the way we look.

But celebrity in denial is nothing new. Think of Hollywood attitudes to homosexuality. Are there ANY gay male American movie stars? Almost certainly. Do any of them admit it? Er, nope.

celebrities live in a shallow and empty world. where looks are just a little more important than who you are married to this week.







isnt kevin spacey gay? hes a popular actor,,, and rightfully so.

I think you've got it exactly right, in a way I hadn't considered before, Julian. Paradoxically, that's we pay so much to keep seeing them. The public wants those people to be perfect, to live vicariously through them, or dream about them, or whatever.

I love Brando and Nicholson when it comes to plastic surgery. They just let themselves age and it gives them a more dignified, aura of respectability in my opinion. I pity the ladies that are trying to look 18 when they're 40.

I like those actors, too. However, there's no way a female actress could let herself go like that and still be able to work, unless she plays the part of an ogre or something.

I just want to add that admitting to having had plastic surgery is a bit taboo in any circle, not just celebrities. I think it has something to do with the inherently morbid nature of submitting ourselves to the knife in the name of beauty/vanity or the idea that we are somehow toying with nature's plan.

Yup. I think Brando is a poor choice, being what we Brits call a "biffa". Someone like Clint Eastwood or Sean Connery are a better examples, I think. They clearly look like men in their seventies (except when Granpa Sean wears his funny wigs in his movies) but are still active and doing their thing.

And while this is less common in female actors, there are sometimes examples of older women ageing gracefully - Jessica Tandy, of Katharine Hepburn, though since they're both dead I can't think of any other female movie actors that have hit 70 without beginning to look like a recovering burns victim.

Lack of good roles for older women isn't exclusive to older women, though - it applies to all women. The main reason being that more men than women write scripts, and direct or produce plays and films. We get it a lot at the amatuer theatre group where I do stuff. Lots of the women members complain that there aren't enough decent roles for women.

Ask them to come up with plays, though, and few can think of any beyond Steel Magnolias. We read it once, and even our female members agreed that it just isn't the sort of thing that we would want to do - too sloppy and mawkish by far. Also, few of the women calling for all these fantastic female roles ever put themselves forward to direct. Most of them only suggest them because they want to be in it - naturally enough, for a group mostly made up of actors, with only about five or six people willing to direct, only one of whom is a woman.

Last year, I directed Twelve Agnry Men with a cast of women. It worked pretty well - you can read up some more about it on our website. Though I must admit this was at least in part motivated by my desire to shut the women up, so we could do another play later on with an all-male cast. Needless to say, it hasn't worked.