Hollywood's True Nightmare (Aging)

What photoshop taketh away, it can also giveth. Today we'd like to bring our friends in Hollywood closer to God.

Every bit as much as cosmetic surgery, Photoshop® and digital technology have forever altered the meaning of the close-up and the celebrity photograph.



Even in the golden era of Hollywood, studios manipulated every publicity photo via meticulous styling, lighting, and retouching in the darkroom of artists like the photographer George Hurrell. Today's top pixel pushers are stars in their own right. The world's most sought-after professional photo retoucher, Pascal Dangin, was profiled in The New Yorker.

But, as the Good Book says:

....Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.
Job 1:21

It just so happens that these self-same digital wizards, the ones who reimage our celebrity universe into something beautiful and good and unblemished, in the darkness of their tiny home offices they sometimes use their power for – evil.

Just for Halloween, we're going to peek into an alternative reality through the miracle of Adobe® Photoshop® CS4 software. About 500,000 photoshop artists like to electronically hang out together and misuse their free time to mess with us. Here are some of the results of their creative play - click on any image for a closer look.

In the hands of these dedicated digital jockeys, several prominent actors get to reprise roles made famous by other Hollywood colleagues, as above. Some of the artists, though, go for more realism with their celebrity heroes.

Others just want to have fun (or not) with the stars.



Then there are those Mike-the-Mechanic types that just want the world to know that these famous faces are just plain folks like you and me! It's enough to melt McCain's heart. Mega-stars from the Midwest include some of our favorites - who knew??

Just for fun we're going to have you name their heartland occupations:

Jennifer Aniston _______________ .





Sharon Stone _______________ .





Ashley Simpson _______________ .





Tara Reid _______________ .





Britney Spears _______________ .





But what truly terrorizes Tinseltown, the Nightmare on Hollywood Boulevard, the boogey man that stalks the stars.... is aging. Bwwwwaaaaaa-ha!

What will our leading lovelies look like as time moves on, but without plastic surgery? Here are some of the very best of the projections by the same masters of the mouse, using age progression techniques that are realistic.

Jessica Simpson's image shows the characteristic change in skin elasticity in the décolletage and upper arm triceps. Her breast tissue is less firm. The skin on her hands, forearms, shoulders and face display the pigment clumping that comes with over exposure to the sun. The facial wrinkling is exactly as nature intended. The vertical bands of the platysmal muscle in the neck become more prominent and the subcutaneous fat thins on the back of her hands.

Sheryl Crow's image shows early peri-menopausal aging: the loss of the epicanthal fold (the skin of the upper eyelid) that evolves as the brow drops; the deepening of "smile" wrinkles; and loss of hair pigment.

Jennifer Love Hewitt is going to make someone a very nice grandma. As the facial tissues head south to form crepey jowls it completely changes the shape of her face. This kind of skin relaxation usually comes from excessive sun exposure to thin skin. Note the widening part that comes from thinning hair.

Lindsay Lohan is going this way, if she cleans up her act. It's accurate for a post menopausal age except perhaps for the eyelids...

Don't let this innocent smile fool you into thinking Kirsten Dunst is just about warm hugs in her dotage. She's still got a lot going on.

Party girl Paris Hilton is sure to be wearing pink at a ripe old age and having lots of fun.

And Gwen Steffani? Party-hearty, that girl is never going to quit!

Sadly, the same probably can't be said for Nicole Kidman.

Want to try it yourself? Here's a tutorial.

Happy Halloween everyone!


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

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!

Women & Tatts

It all comes down to Cher. Back in 1972 when she was 27 years old and newly separated from Sonny, she got her first tattoo:

"I thought it would be something different, a statement of freedom. Good girls didn't have tattoos then, no one was doing it...It was really the first step of an experiment to state making decisions on my own....I had made so few real decisions that I was bound to be bad at it. I was right."

Now all the A-list (and A-wannabe) celebrities are inking their bodies. The tattoo has become a female fashion accessory, rather than the rite of passage. It's no longer taboo, but still a little risque– different but accepted. It's almost difficult to name an actress who hasn't got a tatt. Everybody's doing it, from girl-next-door Jennifer Aniston to Bay-babe Pamela Anderson.

The subject matter of body art has undergone a revolution of sorts. The old stereotype of sailors and marines – and who doesn't know an aging WWII veteran with a blurry rendering on his bicep – are of a generation who never dreamed of finding their own name tattooed across the flesh of their stateside sweetheart. Today that's all changed. Women are elbowing out young men to get in the door of the tattoo parlor. In a recent survey, 22% of the UMass undergraduate women sports a tatt, twice the rate of the male students.

While "Mom" and the names of sexual partners still rank high in frequency and gang symbols are widespread amongst the prison-bound populace, the upsurge is in young women. Estimates are as high as 36% of all American women ages 21-32 now sport a tattoo. They seem to be indulging in tattooing as more of a journal of sorts. And the celebrity women are no exception. According to Angelina Jolie:

"Usually all my tattoos came at good times. A tattoo is something permanent when you've made a self-discovery, or something you've come to a conclusion about."

Okay, not counting the blue-tongued dragon she got when she was drunk and dropped trou in Australia a few years back (now covered by the black cross/dagger handle). Perhaps the most prominently tattooed actress today, Jolie has 13 tatts at last count and several older ones that were converted or removed. She has stated she’s just a “punk kid with tattoos” at heart, but dressed and strutting the red carpet, she is radiating more of a regal tribal look these days.

Some stars go so far as wearing it, literally, on their wrist. Not satisfied with a cement star in the sidewalk, Eva Longoria and Ashlee Simpson both sport small black outlined stars on their left wrists. Victoria Beckham has five stars on her lower back. Perhaps it’s part of the Michelin rating system?

And then there are those who want to commemorate their childhood. Nicole Richie sports a pair of ballerina slippers, as if her father’s composing Ballerina Girl for her wasn’t enough. But the little pair of angel wings on her back? You decide. Christina Ricci decided on having Aslan, the lion god of Narnia tattooed onto her left scapula to symbolize her emancipation from a hellish childhood – and seven more to go with it.

And then there are those fans that just go in for having the star himself as the tattoo: elaborate celebrity images are getting more and more popular. Reminds one a bit of those edible photographic sheet cakes.

This young female demographic is characterized by a certain exuberance of spirit that settles down as it approaches strapless wedding gowns and steady jobs. And tattoo removal. In the good old days, you died with your tattoos. Or you traded them in for horrific scars. Before the advent of lasers, a variety of treatments were tried: dermabrasion or skin sanding, X-ray treatments, chemical peel, liquid nitrogen, dry ice or CO2 'snow,' flesh-colored over-tattooing. The most common method? Surgical excision and skin grafting of the hole left behind. It wasn’t pretty.

The advent of medical laser technology has changed all that. Tattoos are created by placing drops of ink under the skin via a needle (hopefully). A Q-switched Nd: YAG laser is the one most often used to remove tattoos and other pigmented or discolored skin. The high-intensity light beam penetrates the dermis and is absorbed by the ink, vaporizing the pigment colors. It feels like rubber bands snapping against the skin. Hard. Over and over. The lymphatic system (the body’s natural filtering system) clears the dissolved particles of ink pigment. A tattoo that cost a few hundred dollars could require several thousand dollars and many laser sessions to remove.

Bright green, yellow and red inks are most difficult to remove. A new tattoo technology is available starting this fall called Freedom-2, a type of ink encapsulated in beads and designed to break up after one treatment with a special laser. It will be interesting to see if this 'removable' tattoo changes what and how often people adorn their bodies with images.

Tattoo removal clinic chains are making their mark or erasing it, so to speak: Dr. Tattoff, Tat2BeGone and Tattoo MD sprung into being on the West coast. Many states don't regulate tattooists or tattoo parlors, but do regulate medical lasers. These tattoo removal clinic chains are most often staffed by nurses. In other locales laser removal is supervised by physicians: plastic surgeons, dermatologists, or practically any physician with a laser payment to make.

Angelina Jolie has spent time in the doctor's procedure room: ex-husband Billy Bob's moniker has been lasered and the real estate tattooed over with the longitude and latitude of each of her four children. And Cher? At 61, she now thinks tattoos are "just plain stupid" and is in the process of getting them all removed.

In the final analysis, young women getting tattooed may be all about empowerment.

And power is really sexy.

What do you think? Click on the envelope icon and send us your thoughts.


(Okay, this last tattoo is made up.)


Want This Look? A professional tattoo can be had for under $100, and one that costs a few hundred dollars could require several thousand dollars and many laser sessions to remove. Dr. Tattoff charges $39 per square inch of tattoo for each treatment. Full removal takes an average of eight treatments, spaced at least a month apart, using different Q-switched lasers for different-colored inks.

Darker Side of Tanning

Here's the myth: it is overexposure, or sunburn, that might be the cause for any of the negative things you read about sunlight and health. Overexposure and sunburn are not synonymous! In reality, tanning is an art that converts animal skins into leather. Exposure to UV light turns on the melanocyte color producing cells as a response to injury to the epidermis. This is the opposite of vitiligo, the skin disease Michael Jackson suffers from, in which those same cells lose the ability to produce pigment of any kind.

Historically, a tanned body belonged to the working classes who labored out-of-doors, while fashionable pale skin belonged exclusively to the upper classes and aristocracy. For many centuries and well into the nineteenth, a whitening agent for the face was used, composed of carbonate, hydroxide, and lead oxide. Arsenic was commonly employed starting in the mid-tenth century. It brings a whole new meaning to the idiom "suffering for beauty."

Who single-handedly changed this? Designer Coco Chanel inadvertently gave the Paris fashion world the tan after cruising from Paris to Cannes on the second Duke of Westminster's yacht early in the 20s. (She liked his clothes.) The suntan had arrived as the symbol of wealth and leisure. A tan in the winter meant the bearer had enough money and status to vacation in an exotic, warm climate.

The search for the perfect tan has led to basking in the sun, wipe-ons pioneered by Coppertone, tanning beds, and now spray-on airbrushed tans. The first greased Little Miss Coppertone was not Jodie Foster, but rather a 3-year-old girl in pigtails named Cheri Brand, daughter of the Bronxville illustrator who sketched the original 1959 ad campaign: Don't be a Paleface!

And Hollywood jumped in, too, glamorizing a tan with technicolor film in the late 30s. The perennial tanning idol of the screen was immortalized by Doonesbury's Zonker and his entry into the George Hamilton Cocoa Butter Open. The current rage for Paris Hilton-types is the sunless tan, again pioneered by our orange friends at Coppertone. DHA (dihydroxyacetone) is a chemical refined from sugar cane which temporarily colors the skin by reacting with the keratin protein found in the top layer. DHA is considered completely safe, but it gives no protection from sun damage: it doesn't stop UV light.

Speaking of ultraviolet light– both UVA and UVB rays are harmful to the skin. Tanning beds employ UVA radiation, which actually penetrates deeper into the skin than UVB. The research unequivocally points to UV exposure as the source of common skin cancers. The rate is rising by leaps and bounds. At highest risk are those with light eyes/skin/hair or a family history of skin cancer, but anyone can move into the high risk category just by tanning. Basal cell (affecting deepest layer of the epidermis) and squamous cell (middle layer of epidermis) carcinomas are the most common of all cancers. Malignant melanoma, though less common, is the most dangerous, the leading cause of skin disease death. If you get one, you will get more.

In the end, tanning early on makes for a hagged-out look later in life: sagging skin, deep wrinkles, uneven tone, broken blood vessels, and age spots (macules and solar lentigines). Take a good look at the hands, decollete, and neck of any tanned woman over 40. It isn't pretty up close. Plastic surgeons delicately refer to it as "photoaging."

Lest you think baking in the sun is done and over, just think of how many Hollywood stars are photographed on the beach in bikinis. Do you think they've got on their SPF 40?

Tanning the old-fashioned way invites paparazzi. It's easy to find popular stars on the internet wearing not much more than their sunglasses: Jennifer Aniston, Sharon Stone, Elizabeth Hurley, Natalie Portman, Janet Jackson, etc. (But you never did really think of them as role models, now did you?)

Children and adolescents are thought to be the most vulnerable because their skin cells are dividing and changing more rapidly than those of an adult. One blistering sunburn in childhood more than doubles a person's lifetime chances of developing a melanoma. And, as the ozone layer thins, exposure to natural UV radiation exponentially increases. So learn to love your sunscreen.

And all you prom kids? Go ahead, slap on a tan and have fun– just don't do it via a tanning booth.



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

Dish - By Request

Pull up a saucer and get ready: today we do our Dish By Request show. Meow! Thanks to all of you listeners who emailed in your must-know video clips and photos featuring knifestyles of the rich and famous.

First we'll start with the boys. I very recently refused to see Wild Hogs, the film about middle-aged men gone wild, but apparently most of you did pay the $6.50! The four men on a roadtrip (Tim Allen 54, John Travolta 53, William H. Macy 57, and the baby of the bunch Martin Lawrence 42) all play their age and have the bodies to match their parts. They look unoperated. The only juicy tidbit I could discern was Travolta's dependence on an elaborate hair system in his public outings - and, well, other sorts of public outings.

Now supporting actor Ray Liotta (52) is a different matter. Sometime after the wrap and before August 2006, he underwent eyelid surgery and what appears to be microfat transfer to his face. (The patient's own fat is carefully withdrawn, processed, and re-injected in micro droplets where acne scarring is present.) His handsome bad boy look has been replaced by a freakish squint and distorted mouth. He has what may be the worst upper lid blepharoplasty I've seen in a male star - look carefully and you'll see the incisions. His hooded eyes are now slits, a permanent squint and even lower brow line. About 50% of the transferred fat will reabsorb by one year's time, but it accentuates the creases of his oral commissure and unbalances the lower third of his face.

Katie Couric (50) is the nightmare patient: the surgeon's work is on high-definition view every evening for the world to judge (okay, CBS only pulls in 7 million). Fans everywhere panicked when America's smiley cheerleader transformed into a glowering anchor - a forehead that didn't move, eyebrows sharply arched. Oh no! Oh yes: botox injections require quite a bit of finesse and there was an obvious learning curve here. Her glabellar muscle was over-treated, springing the eyebrows apart and depressing the medial (inner) two-thirds of the brow. The outer third of the brow is released upward by injecting the lateral canthal area of the obicularis muscle which encircles the eye orbit. Too much and the result is that classic look-of-death that children receive from their mothers when teetering on the edge of public misbehavior. What you see on-camera now is a more skillful application of botox. The injections weaken, but don't freeze, the muscles of the forehead and the eyebrows retain some natural expressiveness.

And everybody's favorite girlfriends? Courtney Cox (43) says:

There are huge changes in my body and my face, and I obsess over them. I just try not to have too many mirrors around.

Her new show Dirt is all about remaking her into a mean, evil muckraker. The lighting, make-up, and camera angles all conspire to erase her charm and good looks. Combine that with weight loss and the natural facial fat atrophy that occurs with the onset of one's 40s, and you have the changes on display. Courtney Cox's only obvious surgical intervention has been lip fillers. Her surgeon has done a good job maintaining the natural lip proportions for someone of her ethnicity (the lower lip is 1.5 times the size of the upper lip). But she could look a lot better if she gained some weight.

And all that broo-ha-ha about Jennifer Aniston's (38) cleavage at the People's Choice Awards? Puh-leeze, ask any tranny, adhesive tape is a girl's best friend. Combined with a tight-fitting bodice you get the look Aniston was sporting that night. She has openly discussed the revision septoplasty recently performed by a prominent Beverly Hills facial plastic surgeon (her first was 12 years prior). Straightening her c-shaped deformity probably required some work on the nasal pyramid as well; it's difficult to straighten either the external nose or the septum in isolation.

And sadly, we have to report that Sharon Stone (47) has effectively erased her glamor. The lovely, subtle threadlift she underwent a few years ago has been poorly revised along with the installation of a set of breast implants. Basic Instinct II has been called

....a prime object lesson in the degradation that can face Hollywood actresses, especially those over 40.

Her face is now strangely inert and ill-at-ease, her breasts Barbie-like. She's become oddly generic and striving, the opposite of her former cool, blond self-assurance. Let's just remember Sharon as she once was (at right). See the movie if you want reality.


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