Mary Elizabeth Williams wrote:
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make beautiful. Just look what they did to Kim Novak.
Until Sunday night, most of the world thought of Novak primarily as the siren of Hitchcock’s iconic “Vertigo,” a famously stunning actress whose career peak happened nearly 60 years ago. Then she showed up at the Oscars, presenting the award for best animated feature with an admiring Matthew McConaughey. Her hair was a shoulder length tumble of blond, but it was her face that was the most surprising for a woman of her 81 years. Her eyes seemed pulled back, her lips seemed strangely inflated and her skin seemed at once unnaturally taut and puffy. If you were on Twitter on the time, you could almost hear the collective gasp.
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Kim Novak, who in just the past few years has survived breast cancer, bipolar disorder, fireand a serious horse riding accident, doesn’t have to justify her face or her private choices to anyone. She essentially left the Hollywood race years ago, and the snark of the Internet likely has little effect. But hers wasn’t the only heavily scrutinized and shock-inducing countenance in an evening that began with host Ellen DeGeneres declaring youth “the most important thing in the world.” There was 68-year-old Goldie Hawn’s not-exactly-natural-looking appearance. There was DeGeneres’ crack about 67-year-old Liza Minnelli looking like an “amazing Liza Minnelli impersonator.” There was the entire train wreck known as John Travolta.
Yet the sad part is how unnecessary – even career-killing — so much of this flat-out disfiguring is. In sharp contrast to the some of those profoundly appearance-altered presenters Oscar night, it was a field of considerably more natural-looking older actors – Bruce Dern, June Squibb, Meryl Streep and Judi Dench – who were among the actual nominees. And it was the still actively working 88-year-old Angela Lansbury and 68-year-old Steve Martin who picked up honorary Oscars. Why might that be so? Could it be because none of them, not even Streep, have ever been famed primarily for being beautiful?
With a few notable exceptions – like Joan Rivers, who built an entire career of making fun of her own looks – the most extreme, downright troubling plastic surgery almost inevitably appears on the most once-gorgeous faces. Poor Mickey Rourke, for instance, has admitted, “I went to the wrong guy,” and the results speak for themselves. It’s sad, because there seems a whole lot to be said for letting go of that youthful beauty – like facial mobility, and career longevity. And though being desirable may be all you want when you’re 20, trying to hang on to it can be a curse that lasts a lifetime. ("Kim Novak and the curse of beauty," Salon.com)
Kim Novak? For a second there I thought it was Brad Pitt. If he keeps shooting his face up with fillers, that's what he'll look like in a few years. He almost looks like that now.
I love Netflix and cable because you can see men and women with naturally aging faces.
It's better to age naturally with wrinkles and lines than to look like an overinflated water balloon.
Patrick McEvoy-Halston Patricia Schwarz "Naturally aging faces"
Wo/man's part of nature, and is proving a powerful agent of its overall character. And if we slow aging, eliminate it, pull it back, will people who let themselves look old still be granted your appreciation, or be deemed unnatural?
We should hope the mind ever-grows; maybe we ought to engineer the same thing with skin … that is, as we age, our already great skin becomes even that much more silky smooth, are already-limber bodies, possess that much more sublime sway. Why content ourselves with having the maturity to admire people who don't devote so much of their attention to their appearance?
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In sharp contrast to the some of those profoundly appearance-altered presenters Oscar night, it was a field of considerably more natural-looking older actors – Bruce Dern, June Squibb, Meryl Streep and Judi Dench – who were among the actual nominees. And it was the still actively working 88-year-old Angela Lansbury and 68-year-old Steve Martin who picked up honorary Oscars. Why might that be so? Could it be because none of them, not even Streep, have ever been famed primarily for being beautiful?
Patrick McEvoy-Halston This is not the only possible explanation. None of us are in the mood for a pre-fall, arrogant Tiger Woods or Lance Armstrong. We once loved them mightily, exactly for being bigger than the game, shedding all ostensible confines of human nature, but are in the mood to applaud now those who in comparison seem chastened -- no matter how good they become, they'll be self-effacing, and not ever claim to own their sport.
We saw instantly in all these aging -- their further aging, maybe even their eventual corpses. To prefer, to find contentment in this, this effacing, over they're for a moment stopping time to behold immortal them, may suggest a symptom of our Depression sickness, not our maturing preferences.
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston One of the nice things about botched facelifts is that they may helpfully keep alive the idea of altering our appearance drastically. Everyone here seems to agree that the ONLY acceptable possibility to is go for modest, graceful changes … which has us all sounding suspiciously like the conservatives at court.
"Classicism is fine, but there are other aesthetics …" someone might helpfully seep into the emperor's ear, granting Mozart a sounder listen.
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