In the annals of excess, plastic surgery often gets top billing. It's right up there with food and alcohol as 'best in moderation but often abused.'
Is there any way around this blaming the thing itself rather than the person who missed the moderation memo?
Us magazine this week posted a picture of Lara Flynn Boyle — the latest memo-misser. But the quotes they used pretty much nail why the actress, who rose to fame on the series Twin Peaks and was known as Jack Nicholson's main squeeze for a few years in the late '90s, may have a tendency to use fillers to excess:
On a vanity level, I am not looking forward to aging at all — I think I look pretty good now," the Daily Mail quotes her as saying 10 years ago
The above left picture was a little over 10 years ago, in 2000, where Lara Flynn Boyle did indeed look lovely. But the actress, who is now 42 (pictured above right in 2010), has battled an overabundance of plastic surgery — more accurately cosmetic work, in the form of injectable fillers — to the point where she sometimes resembles Priscilla Presley.
As I often do, I turned to our go-to guru on cosmetic aesthetics, Wendy Lewis, author of Plastic Makes Perfect for some insight:
Lara Flynn Boyle's plumped lips were popular fodder at plastic surgery conferences when she was DA Helen Gamble on The Practice. She was rail thin and her lips entered the courtroom before she did. Curiously the show ended about a year after the first hyaluronic acid filler was FDA cleared in the U.S.
The recent pics of her are just sad, and all too typical of so many celebs that are victims of the syringe. Fillers are a great tool for facial rejuvenation and enhancement, but it is easy to overdo it and end up with distorted features that are neither young-looking nor aesthetically appealing. Lara needs to just say no."
But Wendy Lewis also adds a perspective that is all-too-often forgotten by those of us who don't have similar pressures:
Celebs are damned if they do and damned if they don't. The paparazzi crucify them when they are caught in sweats with their hair in a ponytail just hanging out and being, well, normal. But they also torture them when they have had work done. It's a double-edged sword.
The best advice is to keep it natural and subtle so as not to attract too much unwanted attention. Sometimes these candid 'gotcha" shots are taken right after they sneak out of their doctors' office when the swelling, redness and bruising is so visible. 24 to 48 hours later, when it settles down, they may look just fine."
This was probably the case with Ashley Judd who was also a recent target of media criticism.
There are, of course, a number of lessons to take away from these public examples.
- You can opt to never get anything done.
- You can hold the moderation memo close to your heart as an advice bible.
- You can plan, if you ever do decide to do anything, not to see anyone for a few days afterward.
Whatever you do, follow your heart, not a fad or celebrity example. As I said in the Women of the World article—what would you do if you didn't need anyone else's validation?
More tales of plastic surgery & perspective:
Ashley Judd & the Pillow Face Cure
Name that Forehead
Hillary & Meryl
Injectable Fillers and Needle Fatigue
What To Do When Injectable Fillers Go Wrong
