Showing posts with label Salma Hayek. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Salma Hayek. Show all posts

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Toss Those Tweezers! (Eyebrows)


A
h, 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.


Like the music we played on air?

Brad Roberts - Crash Test Dude: Brad Roberts Live - Singing Your Favorite Hits - Bette Davis Eyes

Lauryn Hill - The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill - Can't Take My Eyes Off of You


Want to read more?

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Dish with Lori & Julia


Today we dish with Lori & Julia on FM107. And what do inquiring minds want to know? For starters there's the ta-tas poll published in this month's In Touch magazine: top breasts in Hollywood. The number 1, 2, and 3 positions are held by Scarlett Johansson (22), Salma Hayek (39), Jessica Simpson (26). The tag line is that "they aren't afraid to embrace what nature gave them." Oh, boys and girls, it's a sad, sad day when Anne has to let you down, but...not everything in Hollywood is real.

Yes, we're here to tell you that only one of the above lovelies is wrapping her arms around what nature gave her. The other two are clutching silicone. In an interview, Scarlett Johansson talks about stripping nude for roles: “I’m proud of my breasts. I call them my girls. They’re my charms, my feminine wiles. I’m very comfortable with my sexuality, my body and my face…” In this picture you can see 'the girls' as no surgeon would have ever left them: soft, low, and asymmetric. And, as anyone who's viewed the opening frames of Lost In Translation knows, what you see coming you also get going: body fat is rarely distributed in isolation.

Our other two top polling place winners are sporting the handiwork of a surgeon. Do we really have to tell you that Jessica Simpson has implants? They're as fake as her front teeth.

Actress Salma Hayek sports a look not found in nature: Barbie® is a fiction. How can we be so sure? Just check out the photos from before and after and you decide. Outside of pregnancy, no woman grows breasts in adulthood. Both women appear to have had multiple sets placed.

Says Hayek: "I find it very boring to have to be skinny all the time. It bores me and makes me bitchy. And yet in Hollywood it’s okay if you’re a bitch - as long as you’re skinny!"
Oddly enough, these stripper-size implants make petite women look heavier, unless their clothes are skin-tight or nearly off.

And then there is the question of noses. Jessica Simpson is rumored to have undergone a competitive sibling rhinoplasty (see the post about her sister). Salma Hayek certainly underwent a very skillful tip rhinoplasty well before her breasts.

And what other nose has caught the eagle eyes of Lori & Julia? Michelle Pfeiffer turns 49 this month:
“When I’m rested, I look pretty darn OK. I can hold off on that facelift for another few years....(But) when I’m feeling weary, then I think, maybe I better make that appointment.”
Pfeiffer's nose is narrow and pinched, very 'tippy,' and the nostrils are notched. It's also gotten even thinner with age. All of this is unfortunately common, post-rhinoplasty, in patients with aggressive surgeons– and constitutes an 'over-operated look' (albeit in a very beautiful face). Her nose has looked like that her entire film career; check out stills from 1982 Grease 2. It could be a rare case of nature imitating art. Probably the only way to know for sure about whether her nose has undergone the knife is to locate a high-resolution picture from her high school days.

Courtney Love's (42) nose has certainly been all over the place. In December of 2006 she traveled to France for reconstructive surgery. Very few surgeons are skilled enough to resurrect a nose after it's been previously operated: it's a sub-subspecialty. Why is it difficult? Not only is her tip cartilage over-resected, her nose is very crooked. Revision of a twisted nose is probably the most technically challenging rhinoplasty. The surgeon must correct the septal deviation as well as straighten the 'nasal pyramid,' the bony framework supporting the tissue. And don't forget, you want to breathe through it. Sometimes the nose can be made completely straight; usually some tissue memory persists, reappearing six months to a year post-repair. That's why in the past Courtney Love's nose has sometimes looked relatively good (left) and then not-so-good. To date, her nose has been operated on four times.

The French surgeon also removed the hideous implant material from her lips (probably some form of Gortex). The post-surgical swelling she displayed (far left) at Hilary Swank’s Freedom Writers movie premiere in January 2007 was normal. Once it subsided enough for the result to be evident, she went in March for yet a third revision, probably a dorsal onlay and/or tip graft (near left) along with injected lip filler. She also announced that she had her breast implants removed. And no, she hasn't had a gastric band placed. It's just good old-fashioned weight loss and left-over lumpy liposuction.

And now you know.


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