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!


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The Flesh Trade (Prostitution)

Rumor has it that Wall Street traders now believe in God.

Today we talk about the flesh trade practices of the rich and famous.

Well, perhaps $80,000 less rich over an unspecified period of time. Soon-to-be-former Governor Spitzer paid $4,300 for his pre-valentine's day date and there was a "credit" left over for future sessions. It's hard to imagine what came up.

We now know that the hourly rate for high-end prostitution beats most day jobs. The Emperors' top (and questionable) fee of $31,000 per day was more than even Britain's wealthiest man was willing to pop for: the "dull and demanding" Duke of Westminster topped out at the $1,000/hour services. Supposedly, the Emperors Club set its fees according to the “individual education, sophistication and and ambiance created by each of our models.” But maybe that's not what famous men want when they visit prostitutes.

Prostitution is defined as sexual activity in exchange for remuneration. On screen it's simulated but the transaction still takes place: it's sex for money. Off-screen at the Emperors Club VIP it's the real thing.

Just how many degrees of separation are there between the high priced hookers at the Emperors Club and the Hollywood actresses who use their sexuality to achieve a similarly exalted paycheck?

There are, of course, the stars who consent to play hookers on screen. So many, in fact, that prostitute roles (and all the euphemistic variations) are cliche. And then there are the hookers who service the stars out on the street (hello Hugh, hello Divine). And there are even the hookers turned screenwriters who win Oscars for their work (you didn't think she was born with the name Diablo Cody, did you?).

But the real money is in pandering to the movie-going John. It's the fans that buy the simulated sex on the screen. Showing bare breast in a Hollywood movie is de rigueur for actresses high and low. Why? Because it sells.

At it's most crass is Lindsay Lohan ripping off Marilyn Monroe with photographer Bert Stern's help. (Both the breasts and sun damaged skin are real.)

There are websites devoted to cataloguing every instance of "breasts, bush, buns" on film. Maintained by a crack cadre of skinterns, these movie reviewers are the unsung trainspotters of titillation. One celebrity nude database allows you to search on any actress's (or actor's) name and find out which pieces of flesh appeared in which film. For instance, Nicole Kidman has done her typical role, frosty and naked, in 15 mainstream films to date. Go ahead, try to find a prominent actress who hasn't flashed on-screen.

There are some striking gender differences. Despite films to the contrary (in The Wedding Date Debra Messing rents escort Dermot Mulroney for $6,000 plus first-class trans-Atlantic airfare), very few women are interested in paying thousands of dollars for hired sex. We pay in other ways.

Maybe that's why very, very few Hollywood films feature male genitalia on screen. Or even a naked rear end. In Somethings Gotta Give (2003) we get three opportunities for a leisurely study of Jack Nicholson's prosthetic buttocks, but it was was Diane Keaton who gave a full frontal. (Faithful readers, not one image could I find online.)

In Eastern Promises (2007), Viggo Mortensen sports nothing but his tattoos in probably the most violent four-minute screen fight to date. But it is one of the very rare instances in mainstream film where a major male character is shown fully nude.

Boyish actor Emile Hirsch floats naked Into the Wild (2007) as Chris McCandless. Briefly. In the distance.

None of the above film portrayals of male genital gee-whiz involve any sexual simulation stimulation. The closest we get may be Brokeback Mountain (2005). And you still had to use your imagination to visualize the naughty bits.

An explicit male nude scene is invariably hailed as evidence of an actor's "serious commitment to the role." When an actress takes her clothes off, everyone knows that line is a joke.

Women disrobe on-screen with a thousand-fold greater frequency because they're selling. They're selling to the movie industry to get the role and ultimately to the movie-going John. Men just don't have to put out to make it in Hollywood.

Designer Vaginas or Pimp My Vag

What's among the hottest new trends in cosmetic plastic surgery? I'll give you a hint. It becoming popularized under many names: "vaginal rejuvenation," "designer vaginoplasty," "revirgination" and "G-spot amplification" to name a few. In other words: surgery down there. Elective cosmetic genitoplasty being aggressively marketed to women on late-night TV and in magazines; even the NYTimes has written about it. Eponymous websites like labiadoctor.com actively target the young and nulliparous, as well as aging vaginas.

How do women talk themselves into it? The proffered promise is that genital surgery can enhance one's sexual pleasure, aesthetic beauty, and self-esteem.

Just who would offer up the most exquisitely sensitive part of her body to a surgeon with a scalpel? Apparently, growing numbers of enthusiastic women. It's estimated that an intrepid few of the 6,000 members of the American Society of Plastic Surgery (ASPS) have performed over 1,000 "vaginal rejuvenations" in 2005, 30% more than the previous year. That doesn't count in the pioneering gynecologists who do the bulk of these operations but haven't fessed up statistically.

What these surgical volunteers have in common is a shared misconception about normal genital anatomy and low self-esteem– coupled with the notion that a surgical fix is the answer.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), with 51,000 members, issued a two-page statement in the September 2007 issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology that declares "it is deceptive to give the impression that any of these procedures are accepted and routine surgical practices." Moreover, the doctors concluded that "the absence of data supporting the safety and efficacy of these procedures makes their recommendation untenable."

The British Medical Journal (BMJ) also weighed in on the topic with a May 2007 article calling cosmetic genital surgeries an "extreme and unproved intervention" that "could undermine the development of other ways to help women and girls to deal with concerns about their appearance."

Among the treatments doctors are offering only labiaplasty, which involves trimming and reshaping that part of the female external genitalia (the four folds of tissue of the vulva), is well documented in the scientific literature. Vaginal "rejuvenation" employs techniques similar to vaginal reconstruction after trauma (birth or tumor): the wall, muscle and connective tissue is supported and the introitus (opening) is tightened. (The non-surgical approach is to tone by strengthening the muscles with Kegel exercises. Yes! you could do it right now and no one would know.) Less commonly, the fat of the mons pubis is be reduced or enhanced, the clitoral hood removed, the hymen restored, or the G-spot plumped.

But the big seller is labiaplasty.

Who of the rich and famous are having it done? Well, what exactly would one be doing that might reveal the appearance of one's labia? Beyond Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan (nothing obvious there), the only rich and famous patients we can rightly suspect are the action porn stars. Larry Flint made a career for himself in the 1960s revealing the labia minora; doing so at one time changed the classification of a girlie mag from pin-up pulp to porn. In Australia, it’s still illegal for an adult publication to show the inner labia. Pamela Anderson's labia first famously disappeared when one of her 1990 rear-view poses was selected for reprint in a Playboy's Sexy 100. That area was airbrushed out, effectively 'defeminizing' her.

Nowadays, photoshop is used to create the illusion of uniformity. The carefully composed vulvas found in men’s magazines promote a smooth, sleek clam-shape as normalcy. Reality? Most adult women have inner labial lips that are at least partially exposed.

Historically, you have to go pretty far back to find that realism in the Western hemisphere: perhaps the Vénus impudique c. 24,000-22,000 BCE. Classical European sculpture and art right through Victorian times most often showcased the feminine ideal as a smooth, hairless surface with a hand firmly shielding it from view. The rule-buster was the mid-nineteenth century masterpiece by Gustave Courbet entitled L’Origine du Monde. (In contrast, less familiar erotic art has been produced in Japan, China, India and most Asian cultures for centuries.)

We modern women are equally mystified by and estranged from our own genitals. We don’t know how it’s supposed to look, do we? Whose aesthetics do we want anyway? The sad truth is, prospective patients come toting porn particulars. But is this a realistic consumer guide for the women, let alone the girls, to whom this surgery is being marketed?

No two vulvas are ever identical.

These trendy surgeons' websites offer for-profit before-and-after shots which are extremely misleading. Nearly all the surgeons are men. The aesthetics are entirely made-up and money is the driving force. There are some hilarious discussions on female-authored sites like Jezebel.com– check out this posting. That blog did some undercover comparison shopping interviews and found the pornographer more trustworthy than the surgeons; he alone seemed to hold a sincere appreciation for natural feminine variation. Much like Carl Linnaeus, the porn guy offered a taxonomy: "the bat," "the clam," the meat," and "the out-and-about." (In the 16th century, Sheik Umar ibn Muhammad al-Nafzawi wrote The Perfumed Garden, an Arabian erotic manual cateloging 34 different types of vulvas!) Or one can explore down-there diversity by ordering the video Viva la Vulva. And for the artistically inclined, there is this lovely, best-seller coloring book for purchase.

What about the other claim? Does it really improve sex? The inner labia (minora) are richly endowed with nerve endings while the vagina itself has few. Tightening the vaginal vault shouldn’t help much and resecting a muscle compromises its strength. If the pelvic muscles are strong, orgasm is likely to be more intense and pleasurable– puts the ooh-la-la in lady-land. Cutting the labia could actually hurt (yee-ouch!) the chances of gaining better orgasms by interrupting the pertinent nerve fibers. And the post-surgical scarring alone, to say nothing of possible infection, could also seriously alter sensation for the worse. It's called dyspareunia, ladies, and that kind of pain isn't sexy fun. Most experts agree, great sex is in your head.

Does it turn men on? One article quoted them extensively:

"Unless there's some surgery that can change the taste of the vagina from salty and pungent to sugary — like a Twinkie, maybe? — then I probably don't care. Men are more concerned with 'rug burn' from infrequent shaving than the appearance of the vagina."

"Women constantly do things to their bodies I wouldn't do on a dare, so this latest craze in body alteration doesn't shock me or anything."

"I never thought about someone having unattractive labia. I'm usually so happy to get to see them in the first place that it never occurred to me they might be too big or too small."

So why do women do it? Another great undercover article by Lisa Carver, Surrender the Pink (borrowing from Carrie Fisher's book, you can guess at what it means), offers one conclusion:

"He shines a bright, hot light between your legs and offers you power over a part of yourself you don't understand. We could, by harnessing his "laseroscopy" machine, control our vagina. That's the snake oil he's offering. In the hour and a half I spent with him, he never mentioned men. It was power he was selling me. And for just a minute, I forgot I was a spy — I was ready to buy."

Want this look?
A labiaplasty operation performed in the Midwest runs around $4,900 in surgeon's fees. A vaginorrhaphy is in the neighborhood of $5,500-7,000. Labiaplasty is an outpatient procedure usually performed under local anesthesia. Very, very few women have clinical significant labia hypertrophy (labia stretched so long that it pulls into vagina with intercourse) which insurance would cover. Check with a gynecologist.

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Early Intervention (Authentically Aging)

Today's topic deals with those first steps– no, not the toddler ones, the surgical ones. Is it ever too soon, too early? Or, the earlier, the better? Read on...

The statistics vary, but the percentage of 20-something patients seeking out anti-aging therapies is on the up-tick. And it's not just lotions & potions that they are after. It's also the non-surgical procedures like laser treatments and dermal fillers and botox.

Premature aging is really the venue of pack-a-day smokers and girls who own tanning goggles, yet full-blown age-orexics are popping up everywhere. Hollywood has it's share– just read the tabloids to see what Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Simpson, Nicole Richie, Britney Spears, etc. are having done– but the antiaging obsession is affecting younger and younger women all across the country.

A young woman may pursue a series of light glycolic peels and microdermabrasion over several months to encourage skin cell turnover; Intense Pulsed Light therapy (IPL) laser treatments to eliminate broken blood vessels and sun spots; lipodissolve for cellulite; a little bit of Botox to forestall furrow lines between the brows or crowsfeet; and finally, Restylane or Juvederm to soften any smile creases should she be so reckless as to grin a lot (see above). And of course religious application of a topical retinol (vitamin A) preparation at night and sunblock, moisturizer and topical vitamin C everyday.

(You could also institutionalize yourself transfixed, motionless, and out of the sun ala Oliver Sacks's patients in Awakenings. All of the above will keep the face looking younger, longer.)

These would-be patients are completely preoccupied with the quest for sexy, ageless skin. Physiologically they don't want to leave their 20s. Middle-age has become no-woman's-land. Where does this antiaging fanaticism originate?

In the last decade cosmetic procedures have moved out of the exclusive domain of the surgeon's office into day spas, salons, you name it. It's now ubiquitous amongst the beauty industry. More and more surgeons have responded to the competition with...well, injections, laser, etc. for those who request it– whether or not it's medically indicated.

It's been described by one provider as akin to giving a kid who's underaged a sip of beer: "Okay, take a little taste of this. Better you try it here than at some party." No one involved in this is going to put the kibosh on it.

And today's young woman is raised in a media-driven culture. There was a time when Vogue's top fashion models were actual society beauties well into their 30s and beyond, who could afford the dresses they were wearing. Now haute couture is sold on the backs of emaciated 16-year-old giants. Hollywood has only character parts for the 'aging actress' while the surgically rejuvenated ones try desperately to fit into roles written for cellulite-free 25-year-olds. Television shows most of all exemplify the media's ever increasing tendency to marginalize the middle-aged female.

When people think of facelifts, images of aging Hollywood stars with their faces pulled as tight as their red carpet gowns might come to mind. But some of these 'ageless beauties' hung on with the help of subtle early intervention; threadlifts were said to have long ago helped the facial contours of Catherine Deneuve (63) (she's since had a lot more). And Nicollette Sheridan (43) clearly had work done when she turned 40. Sharon Stone (49) had her first facelift in her mid-30s immediately after wrapping Basic Instinct.

What constitutes subtle? Endoscopic browlifts have replaced the old-fashioned hairline deforming coronal forehead lift (Elizabeth Taylor) and nearly scarless lifts allow plausible deniability. Top-flight aesthetic surgeons have refined the techniques used for early surgery to a fine art. The best are now able to combine several minimally invasive procedures to give a final result which surpasses that of traditional facelift surgery IF the patient starts early– in her late-30s to mid-40s and her skin is in great shape.

Key here is the integrity of younger, intact skin. Pampered epidermis is elastic and resilent before hormone shifts kick during a woman's 40s. So these 20-somethings do have some validity to their concerns: rejuvenation really is all about the skin.

Can you age-proof the body? Not really. You can turn back the clock, like daylight savings time, but the clock is always running. It is a youthful conceit to believe that medicine has conjured up a surgical Dorian Gray.

So what's a girl to do? The most effective anti-aging interventions are well within the pocket book of every 20-something. Wear sunscreen liberally, year round. Indulge your inner movie star with polarized sunglasses when you venture out. Exfoliate daily and avoid smoke like the deadly wrinkle-producer it is. Save some of your money for another decade or two when gravity really kicks in.


Hear Anne live on the Kevyn Burger show Thursdays featuring Knifestyles of the Rich & Famous.