Does This Make Me Look Operated?

What do Sharon Osbourne (56), Vanessa Williams (45), Jennie Garth (36), Daisy Fuentes (42), Brooke Shields (43), Simon Crowell (49), David Hasselhof (56), Linda Evangelista (43), Janice Dickinson (53), Lisa Rinna (45), Lori Loughlin (44), and Courtney Cox (44) all have in common?

Fewer wrinkles!

It's not a coincidence that there has been a slew of Botox "confessions" from Hollywood celebrities in the last few months. It coincides with Allergan's (the manufacturer of Botox® Cosmetic aka Botulinum Toxin Type A) marketing push launched in 2007 and formatted as a hybrid public service/infomercial/giveaway featuring well-known personalities.
Olympians Mark Spitz (58) and Nadia Comaneci (47) both gave lecture tours on “Your Personal Best” this fall. Virginia Madsen (44) hawked Botox with her mother in "Freedom of Expression."

By her own admission, Madsen got the job by a slip of the tongue in an interview shortly after the surprise success of her Oscar-nominated film role in Sideways (2004).

But it is really just stating the obvious: Aging Hollywood faces have help from knives and needles.

Short of the kind of admissions currently being featured in magazines, how do you know who's telling the whole truth?

It's all in the ears.

Rhytidectomies do the heavy lifting and offer the most clues. In a traditional facelift, an incision is made in front of the ear extending up into the hairline and down around the bottom of the ear and then up behind it, usually ending in the hairline. (For an excellent pictorial tutorial of the actual surgery, go here.)

Shall we play I Spy? I spy with my little eye....operated auricles.

A pixied earlobe is the distorted result when the reattached lobule is pulled down and forward onto the cheek. A fine example is Micky Rourke's (56) left ear; both are shown. A competent facial plastic surgeon will preserve the shape of the lobe you with which you were born. Otherwise, a big earring is the answer.

Poor scar placement and poor incision planning can be covered up with hairstyling– less so if you are David Gest (55). Over time, John Cleese's (69) aging facelift has relaxed into something appearing fairly natural, but his misplaced post-auricular scar in probably still very visible. (Check out the big kiss scene in Fierce Creatures, 1997).

The pre- and post-auricular skin of the ear is specialized: it is thin and nonhair-bearing. In some (especially men) the facial skin does not match identically with the ear skin. Removing this patch of pliable, hairless skin can have unnatural results....like shaving your ear.

Perhaps more subtle is temporal hair loss or the sacrifice of the tuft of hair at the upper junction of the ear and face. As with Sophia Loren's (74) right ear, it can give a man or woman the appearance of wearing a wig.

The incision can go behind the tragus, that little cartilaginous bump in front of the ear hole, or in front of it. Female stars like Joan Rivers (75) usually opted for behind, in order to camouflage the scar. Poorly handled, the natural definition/indentation in that area is lost, blunting of the facial-ear junction.

Sometimes the tragus itself is distorted and pulled forward by the tension of the lift and/or the thickness of the redraped skin (this settles out over time as it has for Madonna, 50).

And whose operated ears do I Spy here?




After a traditional facelift, some of these stars may appear wonderful in photos, but as soon as they try to move their faces they look a bit Frankenface. The old-school operated look is something smooth and taut, but not young. The new look is all about volume, not subtraction. Volume is the very essence of facial youth and next-generation surgery is all about adding it.



New Feature FM107.1 on Demand - audio archive
http://www.fm1071.com/ondemand/

Did you miss hearing Anne flesh it all out with Kevyn Burger on-air? Use this link to find the FM107.1 audio archive of Knifestyles broadcasts by date (second hour). Step one: select the date shown on the blog posting; step two: click on Kevyn Burger; step three: click on second hour. Enjoy!

I Spy answers:

Coming Up Next!

We're having a short holiday respite, but will be back on air Thursday, December 11th. We plan to explore something very festive. In the meantime, you can access past broadcasts by using this link to find the FM107.1 audio archive of Knifestyles broadcasts by date (second hour).

Hear Anne flesh it all out with Kevyn Burger. Step one: select the date shown on the blog posting. Step two: click on Kevyn Burger. Step three: click on second hour. Enjoy!

Bond Girls! Then and Now

"Careful with this one, Mr. Bond. She won't go to bed with you unless you give her something she really wants."

And he doesn't. They are not in love, there is no sex, and only a short kiss. That's the buzz on the upcoming 007 flick, Quantum of Solace, due out November 14th.

For the first time, the perennial playboy (Daniel Craig) doesn't bag the Bond Girl. Unknown Ukrainian model-turned-actress Olga Kurylenko plays a hard-as-nails chica Latina agent from Bolivia (confusing, no?) with her own private vendetta. (Even St. Petersburg seems confused: the Communist Party says Kurylenko has betrayed her roots.)

The modern Bond Grrrls are more forceful, stronger women who no longer giggle in their bikinis. But they still ooze sex, the kind that gets you into trouble. And the accents are still fake, the breasts still real.

Which got us to wondering....in what ways has the Bond Girl evolved?

In the '60s Bond was about swinging in the Cold War, a spy who combated the evil forces while making love to lots of beautiful women. It was the kind of film your parents wouldn't let you see.

Ursula Andress (72) first walked out of the ocean and into male America's fantasies as Honey Ryder in Dr. No (1962). She's had a facelift sometime in the past and only in the last few years has begun to lose her looks. Fluent in four languages, her accented english was dubbed over.

Honor Blackman (81) played Pussy Galore in Goldfinger (1964), probably the first to flex her brains and brawn on screen. Shown here in faux brusing to publicize a British campaign working to end domestic violence against women.

Diana Rigg (70) played Italian Tracy diVicenzo, On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), an British actress cast as a lovelorn Mafia heiress. To date she's the only Bond Girl to score a wedding ring. She confesses to a blepharoplasty at 44 and 20 cigarettes a day. Smoking is not a Bond Girl's best friend.

In the '70s the Bond franchise brought several women to the big screen and then took them off again.

Brit Jane Seymour (57 ) appeared in Live and Let Die and Swede Britt Ekland (66) in The Man With the Golden Gun. Neither performance was memorable – but that's quite the facelift (and browlift, and lip filler).

Jill St. John's (68) IQ of 162 was definitely higher than that of her character Tiffany Case in Diamonds Are Forever (1971), a voluptuous lady running around a burning oil rig in a technicolor bikini. St. John had a rhinoplasty at age 16, at the urging of her mother, but she didn't stop there; this is not the face of a sexagenarian.

Barbara Bach (62) was Anya Amasova in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), an American actress playing a Russian KGB agent, the Bond Girl incarnation of women's liberation as 007's first modern co-worker. Ringo has gifted her some lovely surgical work.

The '80s were pretty dry.

Most memorable was the French actress Carole Bouquet (50) playing Melina Havelock, a half British-half Greek in For Your Eyes Only (1981). The face of Chanel, she went on to captivate Gérard Depardieu, have her phone bugged by François Mitterand, and (allegedly) enjoy an affair with President Sarkozy.

In came the '90s. It just wasn't going to be a good decade, either, for Bond Girls.

Teri Hatcher (44 ), remember her? She played Paris Carver in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997). Okay, you don't remember it, only Desperate Housewives. Her real breakout role was uncredited in Star Trek: Next Generation in 1988. Some ongoing use of Botox (which she denies) seems indicated in this recent candid photo. Her periocular (crowsfeet) and glabellar (between the eyebrows) areas appear frozen.

Turn of the century?

But never say die – or in this case, Die Another Day (2002). Halle Berry (42) playing Giacinta 'Jinx' Johnson rises out of the sea, resurrecting the Bond franchise for the next century.

Did you miss hearing Anne flesh it all out today with Kevyn Burger on-air? Use this link to find the FM107.1 audio archive of Knifestyles broadcasts by date (second hour). Step one: select the date shown on the blog posting; step two: click on Kevyn Burger; step three: click on second hour. Enjoy!