Toss Those Tweezers! (Eyebrows)

Ah, the eyebrow. The window frame to the soul. They get plucked, penciled, and pierced; tinted, trimmed, and threaded; shaved, stenciled, and waxed. They must be important!

In fact, the eyebrow is the spokesperson for the face - particularly in women. Much of the time we have little control over the tiny muscles governing their spontaneous expression: arching in surprise, knitting together in concern, up and down in anger, irony, and joy. It's a large part of what makes the face, in both men and women, interesting.

From skinny to bushy, the brows tell of culture, fashion, and politics.

Robyn Cosio, author of The Eyebrow, argues that the story of the eyebrow's progress through the 20th century parallels the story of women's independence. The flapper era desexualized the newly liberated woman by taking away her hips, breasts, and eyebrows - penciling them back on thin and clueless through the 30s. Was the heavier, natural brow of the 40s and 50s a redefinition of femininity after the social upheaval of sex roles during the war years? The unkempt, even unruly, eyebrows of the 70s an encapsulation of the women's movement?

The eyebrow of the new millennium is large again. Ladies, toss those tweezers! A whole bevy of Eastern European fashion models— Daris, Natalia, Vlada, Eugenia, Sasha and Snejana are inspiring a return to the bold brow. Last Fall, the NYTimes profiled stylists who declared “[o]n both coasts, everybody wants a thicker brow that reminds you of Elizabeth Taylor and Ava Gardner.” Styles may cycle in and out of favor, but many stars have made their mark with a face anchored by a prominent brow and, often, little else. It's a big statement. Strong eyebrows make one look intelligent and empowered.

Nefertiti was a make-up queen when it came to her brows. She shaved them off and painted on those dramatic, elegant brows. Try to picture Audrey Hepburn without her brows, or Sophia Loren.

Bette Davis wouldn't have made it past her screen test if the cinematographer Karl Freund hadn't convinced the director that she had "lovely eyes" and would be suitable for The Bad Sister (1931).

Stars have completely changed their looks over the years by changing their eyebrows. Joan Crawford's incredibly thin blond brows of the 1920s evolved into her signature thick black brows of the 1950s. Look at how Madonna handles her eyebrows each time she reinvents her look.

Getting the right brow isn't easy. There's actually a catelogue of celebrity browshapes to help you analyze what features appeal to you. Round brow? Julia Roberts. Arched? Think Keira Knightley. Softly angled? Nicole Kidman. Curvy? Kirstie Alley. Flat brows? Brooke Shields.

Too much brow? A unibrow or monobrow, medically known as a synophrys, is fairly common in some ethnic groups. It's a sign of feminine beauty in Caucasus and Iran, where connected eyebrows are a sign of virginity and being unmarried. Salma Hayek has been quoted as saying she misses the days when she had one eyebrow because it would have come in handy for her role as Frida Kahlo, the legendary Mexican artist.

Less painful than tweezing or waxing, threading is a very trendy (and ancient) way of shaping the brow. Threading is widely used in India, the Middle East, China and Turkey on both men and women. (It is a Persian tradition to use threading to remove all of a bride's body hair before her wedding night in Iran.) Brad Pitt have been quoted in praise of eyebrow threading!

Doing without eyebrows is quite altering. In Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d-Urbervilles, the beautiful heroine cuts off her eyebrows to protect herself from the lust of men. It is an effective subterfuge. Charlize Theron bravely shaved her eyebrows to better portray the title role in Monster (2003).

Last month, da Vinci's iconic Mona Lisa was scanned using a high-definition camera. A 240-million pixel image using 13 light spectrums, including ultra-violet and infrared, reveals she probably once had eyelashes and eyebrows.

Putting them back on is possible. Permanent makeup will last a number of years, but eventually the tattooing fades, a bit like disappearing ink. It's said that in the 1700s, English women wore falsies made out of tiny pieces of mouse fur. Today salons specializing in brows enhance very sparse ones by gluing a tiny fiber onto each existing hair, a form of eyebrow extensions. There are also brow prosthetics — little toupees for the hair-impaired — in a multitude of shapes and shades. Surgeons offer hair transplant techniques involving tiny hair grafts.

Gravity & aging cause the forehead tissue to sag downward, dropping the eyebrows from their youthful position to a lower position above the eye. It's generally perceived as an aged appearance– or tired, sad, or mad.

Time for a lift! If Botox chemical fix doesn't do it anymore, then it's time for surgery. In a direct browlift the incision is immediately above the brow in a forehead crease– this raises each brow but not the entire forehead (Sylvester Stallone). A temporal lift places a wedge excision in the hair for a lateral pull. A coronal lift puts the incision behind the hairline, excising a wedge of scalp and hoisting up the entire forehead including the eyebrows (Elizabeth Taylor). The least invasive, most natural look involves an endoscopic lift of the brow by re-suspension of the forehead muscles under the brows.


Interested in this look? Eyebrow extensions can cost between $75 to $250 and takes 45 minutes to two hours for an effect that lasts two weeks. Brow reconstruction with hair transplants by a physician involves 150 to 200 grafts for a complete male eyebrow or 100 to 150 grafts for a complete female eyebrow at $4-10/graft. A facial plastic surgeon might charge $3,900 to $5,900 for an endoscopic browlift.


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Old Hollywood Styles

Before there was plastic surgery and photoshop, the stars kept up an illusion of glamorous perfection without resorting to knives, needles, or software. How did they do it? The answer is the Big Five: RKO, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, MGM, and Paramount Pictures.

During the Golden Age of Hollywood, the studio system owned the stars, who were literally created and exploited to suit a studio's needs. Actors and actresses were contract players bound up in 5-7 year contracts to a single studio, and could be loaned out to other film companies at any time. It wasn't even until 1945 that stars gained a legal right to freelance. (Quick: who was the last contract player signed? Jamie Lee Curtis in 1977!)

A star or starlet was literally a construct; a studio controlled the minutiae of stars' images in and out of pictures with their mammoth in-house publicity departments. There was nothing candid about it. What you saw was what you were meant to see.

For instance, in 1945 when a blotto Clark Gable wrapped his Duesenberg around a large eucalyptus, MGM notified the police and the press, floating the myth that Gable's car was forced over the curb by a wrong-way driver. Unlike Lindsay Lohan, the drunken escapade was not witnessed by paparazzi-- they didn't exist! (The term was coined by Federico Fellini in his 1960 film La dolce vita.) And no publicized rehab stint: Gable's alcoholism was 'treated' with a 3-day drying-out in the hospital while he "recovered" from his cuts.

In 1939, Judy Garland headlined in The Wizard of Oz, an international star at just 16 years of age. Her contract stipulated that her physical appearance not change, so MGM's studio physician prescribed "diet pills" and barbiturates to sleep. If you look closely, you'll see amphetamine shakes in one Oz film scene.

Other forms of "moral turpitude" were concealed from the public. William Mann's recent biography of Katharine Hepburn points out what Hollywood knew but didn't tell: the gate swung both ways...but mostly away from her leading men. The gossip columnists and fan magazines led a symbiotic life with the studios and revealing some truths just wasn't mutually beneficial.

Most of the iconic black and white stills that we remember from old Hollywood made the most of dramatic directional lighting and makeup techniques that would be laughable in color. Look closely at the most striking photos of Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, or Audrey Hepburn. Their lips and brows are often heavily over-painted. A fan once told Hepburn: "You have the most beautiful eyes in the world!" Hepburn retorted: "The most beautiful eye makeup, maybe."

In fact, Polish-born Max Factor was probably the one individual most responsible for the silver screen image. He was the man who invented movie makeup, even coining the term itself. When Joan Crawford wanted bigger lips she went to Max, not the needle. He ran a straight line of color across Crawford's natural lip contours and it became her trademark: 'the smear.'

In the mid-30s, Clairol Hair Color was born. The studios soon realized how great peroxide blondes looked in their black and white films and conceived Mae West and, quick to follow, Jean Harlow. Not enough hair? Transplants wouldn't come about for decades and follicular unit hair transplants became popularized only in the 1990s. Instead, wigs and hair pieces were the order of the day.Everything from Billy Burke's Good Witch Glinda curls to

Lucille Ball's bright red wig came from Max Factor. According to Shirley MacLaine, Dietrich only wore wigs because she had thin hair.

Max Factor began his career at the turn of the century as an apprentice to a wig maker. He was also the supplier of choice to actors like Jack Benny, Bing Crosby, Henry Fonda, Gene Kelly, Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, and George Burns. Factor's toupées were carefully made from imported Italian, German and Balkan peasant hair and almost invisible, each strand sewed in place on a piece of fine flesh-colored lace. On occasion you can buy a famous one, like Frank's MGM model at left.

Max Factor also created false eyelashes in 1919. They did for the eye, what photoshop now does: made them larger. You can't name a silver screen icon who didn't wear them (most still do). Carol Channing made a career on them and at one point had to paint lashes on her lids after developing an allergy to the adhesive.

And breasts? Hollywood has always been famous for sex and breast is best. While it's now one of the most common cosmetic surgery procedures performed in the US, it wasn't that way before the 1960s.There was no silicone in Jane Russell's sweater. When Howard Hughes designed a steel underwire projection bra for her to wear in The Outlaw (she refused), the film's release marked the beginning of the end of film censorship.

Marlene Dietrich once referred to Elizabeth Taylor as "that British tart with the big tits." In those days on-screen nudity wasn't part of the equation; for those who were less endowed it was addressed with padding and costume design. Bette Davis once remarked about Joan Crawford's falsies: "I keep running into them, like the Hollywood Hills." When director Alfred Hitchcock insisted that Grace Kelly reshoot the Rear Window scene with falsies inside her negligee, acclaimed designer Edith Head instead surreptitiously hiked up the straps, told the distraught (disgusted?) actress to stand up straighter, and sent her back out. Hitchcock was fooled.

And the men? It was widely rumored that Frank Sinatra—all 120 pounds of him—stuffed his back pockets with handkerchiefs for the movie On the Town. Costarring opposite Gene Kelly's dancer's derrière is a lot of competition.

Feeling chubby? There was no lipodissolve or liposuction to cure that tight-fit. Instead, actors and actresses dieted, exercised, purged and generally put up with more curves than anyone tolerates in Hollywood today.

Joan Crawford was a perpetual dieter, lunching on black coffee and soda crackers (spread with mustard). She was also a jogger before the word was even invented. On the way to work in the morning she would run for a mile or so with her limousine trailing her. Orson Welles described Audrey Hepburn as "the patron saint of the anorexics." Enemas offered quick temporary weight loss through dehydration and many actresses like Marilyn Monroe chronically indulged in them (she died in 1962 when she was given an enema containing Nembutal). Even at her "happy birthday Mr. President" best, Marilyn was full-figured by today's standards. Elizabeth Hurley’s opinion: "I'd kill myself if I was as fat as Marilyn Monroe."

And it wasn't just women. Male actors dealt with their waistlines by wearing corsets long before Tim Curry thought about it. Rock Hudson said, "I did a movie with Duke Wayne and was very surprised to find out he had small feet, wore lifts, and a corset. Hollywood is seldom what it seems." (Speaking of not being who he seems...)

And the alternative to today's ubiquitous Hollywood facelift? Old age. Yes, boys and girls, the stars just got old. But as Bette Davis said: "I will not retire while I've still got my legs and my make-up box."

Hear Anne live on the Kevyn Burger show 10:00 to 11:00am Thursdays featuring Knifestyles of the Rich & Famous.

Too Rich, Too Thin

Women think about their weight the way many men think about sex: all the time. So when is thin, TOO thin?

Just these last few weeks too thin has been selling Hollywood gossip rags. In Touch magazine apparently photoshopped out Angelina Jolie's (32) protruding arm veins for its May cover. The normal body fat that gives a smooth contour to the flesh is missing. Her emaciated arms reflect a significant weight drop while grieving her mother's death this past January. And Keira Knightley (22) is in and out of the tabloids. She has long denied eating-disorder rumors and in January of last year she sued a British tabloid for implying she lied about not having anorexia after losing weight during the grueling Pirates shoot. She probably is telling the truth. Neither woman appears to have a pathological relationship to food.

Last February former supermodel Tyra Banks was on the cover of People after having made a huge internet splash in an unflattering bathing suit. The very same month she was featured inside Vanity Fair channeling Audrey Hepburn. At 5’10” and 161 lbs. Banks's BMI is 23.1 and well within the range of normal health. It should surprise no one that the same woman can look fat in a paparazzi shot and stunning in a photo shoot. We all can.

Body Mass Index (BMI) is sophisticated way to calibrate height & weight (BMI=kg/m2) and do away with the "big boned" excuses. Here are the standards used in medicine:

Less than 18.5 = underweight
18.5-24.9 = normal
25-29.9 = overweight
30-39.9 = obese
40 or more = morbidly obese

We are a fat country and getting fatter. Approximately 33% of adult Americans are obese and an additional 32% are overweight. Yet we also have an peculiar national body dysmorphia, where female celebrities are ruthlessly pilloried for appearing at a normal weight. So from where does this national body distortion arise?

One finger points to the fashion industry. Unlike cigarettes and liquor, American is not protecting it's young from the influence of underweight image marketing. For example, Tyra Banks (33) began modeling on the catwalk at age 18 with a BMI of 16.2; by age 20 as she finished puberty she was curvy enough that her agency pressured her to lose 10 lbs. Instead, she switched to underwear/swim suit modeling in 1995. By 1997 she was the first black woman to be featured on a Sports Illustrated cover, then going on to Victoria’s Secret stardom – all with a BMI 18.8! That's just within the range of normal.

Drugs, diet pills, fasting, laxatives are rife in the image industry – very, very few of these women are that underweight by nature. After a spate of anorexic models died or fell ill last year, Madrid Fashion Week city council organizers enacted ground-breaking legislation: mannequins with a BMI of less than 18 (5'9" 123 lbs.) would be banned from the catwalk. About a third of the models who appeared the previous year won't qualify under the new guidelines, top models such as Brazil's Fabiana, Spain's Esther Canadas, Britain's Kate Moss and Estonian Carmen Kass. But Madrid is alone in treating this as a public health issue. The really big fashion venues – Milan, Paris, New York, London – aren't buying in.

"We worked hard to restrict advertising for alcohol and tobacco because of the potential dangers to our young people, and fashion is now the only major industry without health guidelines." –Lynn Grefe, CEO, National Eating Disorders Association

One study found 47% of school girls 5th-12th grade want to lose weight because of magazine pictures – pictures which are photoshopped out of reality (there are whole websites devoted to exposing this.) The print and film media are actively engaged in a manipulation of public perception. The female image school girls buy into is a simulacrum, an unsatisfactory imitation of, a substitute for real womanhood."Even I don't look like Cindy Crawford when I wake up in the morning," admits the famous supermodel.

How serious is it? It’s a mental illness that progressively damages the body, fatal to 15-20% of sufferers. It precipitates more deaths among females aged 15 to 24 than all other causes combined. (It caused Terri Shiavo's heart failure and brain death.) And eating disorders have doubled since 1960s. An estimated 10 million girls and women, as well as 1 million males suffer from anorexia nervosa (starves, obsessive, body dysmorphia, compulsive exercise) or bulimia nervosa (normal weight, binge/purging cycles). There is some evidence of altered brain chemistry that makes it hard to stop. For more information check ANRED.

Of course there are some famous dead Hollywood anorexics, like Karen Carpenter (32) and Margaux Hemingway (41), along with the aforementioned Audrey Hepburn (61). Several stars lived through it and talked afterwards: actress Jane Fonda (69) suffered from bulimia from age 13 to 37.

The current crop of Hollywood sufferers includes many. Nicole Richie (25) repeated bouts of fainting underscore her eating disorder/drug problem. In November, Richie told Us Weekly: "I'm not in rehab, and I don't have an eating disorder. I'm getting the help I need and taking care of my health." Denial ain't just a river in Egypt. Mary-Kate Olsen (21), Kate Bosworth (24), Victoria Beckham (33) all share the disease.

There are a few stars in Hollywood speaking out against the pervasive thin image. Cameron Diaz (34) has said:

“We get ideals from images that we see and there certainly should be more responsibility put on those people who are putting those images out into the world. Let’s be a little bit more responsible to what’s realistic.”

Kate Winslet (31), nicknamed 'Blubber' in school, has unapologetically appeared nude in six films. She describes the trend as "unbelievably disturbing." After being Photoshopped into an approximation of supermodel perfection for the cover of a GQ magazine Winslet veraciously complained: “the retouching is excessive. I do not look like that and more importantly I don’t desire to look like that.” Listen to what the GQ editor said in response and take it to heart – and tell your children:

"These days you only get two kinds of pictures of celebrities - paparazzi pictures or pictures like these which have been highly styled, buffed, trimmed and altered to make the subject look as good as is humanly possible. We do that for everyone, whether they are a size six or a size 12. It hasn't a lot to do with body size. Practically every photo you see in a magazine will have been digitally altered in this way."

Want this look? It can't be had surgically, but recovery in a facility can be expensive and ongoing.

Cigs & Sun

Who said glamor is dead? Catherine Zeta-Jones (37) "out on the terrace, half-nude, very pregnant, and sucking down a cigarette" may typify a defiant backlash in Hollywood. Today we look at the effects smoking on the skin of the rich and famous.

Cigarettes, in combination with sunbathing, is what will build the character actresses of tomorrow– or at least ones who look the part:

"I really like smoking..." Salma Hayek (40)

"I only wanted to quit if it was easy." Courtney Cox (42)

"I smoke. I smoke Camel Lights. I'm not going to stop." Gwyneth Paltrow (34)

"There is a tremendous satisfaction in the spit, and I can do it and not mess up my lipstick." Ashley Judd (38)

"Britney Spears showed off the enormous rock given to her by new fiancé Kevin Federline on the balco

ny of her swish Los Angeles apartment - and then proceeded to empty an ashtray full of butts on to the street below." June 28, 2004, The Mirror (UK)

So who else smokes off-screen? Lindsay Lohan (20), Kirsten Dunst (24), Charlize Theron (31), Drew Barrymore (32), Cameron Diaz (34), Uma Thurman (37), Naomi Watts (38), Jennifer Aniston (38), Nicole Kidman (39), Elizabeth Shue (43) just to name a few. All of these younger actresses are known for their looks and have built a career on them. So what exactly does smoking do?

Free radicals form when the body is exposed to tobacco smoke; these highly unstable and powerful molecules cause disease and damage cell DNA. The cells of your body start behaving erratically, producing a range of responses that make your skin age faster. The immune system is impaired by smoking, as well. (Ask any plastic surgeon, they won't operate on a patient who's actively smoking pre- and post-surgery, movie star or not.)

"Smoker's face" is actually part of the medical lexicon. Lighting up affects your visage on multiple levels:

• restricted blood flow through the capillaries (tiny veins near the skins surface) preventing oxygen and nutrients getting to the skin;
• increased production of an enzyme which breaks down the supply of collagen vital to skin elasticity, accelerating age-related decline;
• reduces the body's store of vitamin A which provides protection from damage;
• inhibits absorption of vitamin C, a vital antioxidant for skin protection;
• continual puckering from drawing on a cigarette and squinting in reaction to the smoke create deep, premature wrinkles around the eyes and mouth.

But the really big film news is the come-back of Mr. Butts. New research shows more cigarettes, cigars and pipes are being smoked in films now than at any point over the past 50 years. An analysis of 150 films produced between 1950 and 2002 has found there are now about 11 depictions of smoking in every hour of the typical film. In the same time period, the percentage of smoking Americans dropped by nearly 45% to just 22% of the population; Hollywood depictions have doubled in the last 10 years.

Of course, there have long been iconic images associated with screen smoking. Audrey Hepburn ignored her mother's beauty tip to: "keep to six cigarettes a day only."At her worst times she chain smoked two to three packs a day. She also suffered from asthma and died of colon cancer at only 63, frail and old for her years. Not exactly what we want to imagine for the sublime Holly Golightly.

It's no secret that cigarettes are the preferred diet aid of the very thin. Kate Moss (33) is regularly photographed with her cigarette, a lighter and a mobile phone as her fashion accessories. And what do they have to look forward to? Here's Melanie Griffith (49) who smokes like a chimney: a poster child for the effects of cigs & sun– and at the outer limits of what plastic surgery can do for her. Take a good look. That's your skin on drugs (nicotine).

Lest you think the media influence is completely to blame for a new generation of smokers, there is one more influential factor: parents. Here's Melanie helping out her daughter, Dakota. Susan Sarandon (60) was quoted as saying "Kirsten Dunst asked me the other day how my skin looks so good. I said: 'Well, first off, don't smoke.' " Do you think Dunst will take her advice?


Hear Anne live on the Kevyn Burger show 11:00 to noon every Thursday featuring Knifestyles of the Rich & Famous.