Tired - yes

Damned either way - Yup

Scarred - definitely!

When surgery has moved on from pinning back the ears of a bullied child to designer vaginas, something has gone wrong!  Unfortunately if the above women hadn't resorted to surgery, it's likely they'd be on another list in another magazine/newspaper/website/TV show stating how old and wrinkled they look.  I guess they can't win. 

most of us are vain and want to look as good as we can. not all of us age in grace and i understand women, who remove eyebags or heavy wrinkles that make them feel older, sader or simply uglier than what they feel they really are. however, i am not pro surgery and i think especially those, who heavily overdo it or try to live up to hollywoods forever-young-trend should rather get a therapist to heighten self-esteem instead of a nosejob.

OMG Kate Jackson looks like an alien. That is so freakin scary.

I'm an OR nurse and have seen amazing plastic surgery that can really help people.  Then there are the procedures done that you just wonder  'what in the world are they thinking'?

For every person who wants to have surgery, there are doctors with less than sterling ethics who will do whatever the patient wants, whether it's a good decision or not.  it's a shame that people don't have more self-esteem and think that they are not attractive enough as they are.

Sadly, Hollywood and the media glorify this false sense of self and consumers go along with it.

Kudos to the natural beauty that people have and embrace!

that so many women feel the need for surgery or other type of cosmetic "enhancements" considering mainstream culture's standards of beauty for women. Old is not beautiful. At least in women. Age makes men distinguished. Just look at Harrison Ford, readying himself for yet another Indiana Jones. Think it's likely that a woman of his age would ever be cast in the lead of a big budget adventure flick? Unlikely. It's unfortunate, but true.

Just look at the Maxim "hot 100" list from last year. There were only a handful of women on that list over the age of 35, and the oldest was Halle Berry at 40. A massive 41 of the women on their list were aged 25 or under. (BTW -- AfterEllen did much better with only 12 women 25 or under and the oldest woman Catherine Deneuve at 63) According to mainstream culture, the younger a woman looks, the more attractive she is. Couple that with the obsession with thinness, it seems like the goal of women should be to look as much like an adolescent girl as possible.

Luckily there are those fabulous counter-culture movements working to subvert the dominant paradigm, for example AfterEllen! And Dove's Campaign For Real Beauty and Pro-age campaign. The only way that things will change is if we create that change ourselves. Maybe then women will allow themselves to age with grace and dignity and not feel depressed that they are somehow failures for getting grey hairs and wrinkles.

McNamara says:

"If women look old, we criticize, and if they try to fix it, we criticize more snidely. Frankly, I don't care if an actor wants to yank the whole epidermis up with Scotch tape and baling wire as long as he or she looks human and is still able to act. Unfortunately, unless you are Catherine Deneuve, you can't act if your face is petrified. Which is why I won't even watch "Desperate Housewives" anymore -- I live in fear of the day Felicity Huffman succumbs to whatever package paralysis deal they've got going on over there."

(http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-plasticsurgery13apr13,0,4921356.story)

Oh, I love good writing.

Ohhhh where to begin..

Priscilla Presley is was a beautiful woman and it's a shame she had to screw with it.  I think Lisa Marie is absolutely stunning and hope she doesn't follow in mom's footsteps.  Looking at the photo, her mouth is crooked, her left eye is lower than the right, her skin is too tight...how is that an improvement?  Unfortunately many women think that looks good.  WTF?

In terms of Kate Jackson, I think what happened to her is just called C-R-A-Z-Y.  After Charlie's Angels (which I loved her in, btw), she seemed to become a little on the nutty side.  I think in her case, and maybe I'm wrong, when you've got Farrah on one side and Jaclyn on the other you might feel like the red-headed stepchild.  But it's ironic because Farrah butchered her face with plastic surgery as well.  Jaclyn, however, still looks beautiful and never seems to age...damn her!!

Joan Rivers is just a glob of melting wax on top of a body.  They really should cast her as The Joker for the next Batman film.

It's sad that some women can't accept what they have and it's sadder that society puts pressure on them to feel even more insecure about it.  I had a straight friend (who is 29 and acts like she's 16) that swore up and down she wanted breast implants because shirts and dresses never fit properly.  Uh huh, right.  But I supported her to be a good friend.  Well...it only took about a week before she was flashing them to everyone.  Photos even surfaced on the Internet of her three sheets to the wind, dancing around a stripper pole and pulling down her top in front the entire bar. Sad.  Very sad. What a total lack of self respect, in my opinion.  We're no longer friends for various reasons but the major reason is that I cannot associate myself with people who don't respect themselves.  This story just goes to show that some women do these things for the wrong reasons.

Thanks Mrs Snarker, I was feeling alone....

Genetic gave me my first white hairs some years ago, near 32. I have decided that i'd like to see what i'll look like when my hairs will be completely white. And only then, i'll decide if I want to hide them...or not.

I remember have seen once the mother of my grandfather. I was about 7, she was about 90. I remember her with a face full of wrinckles (big wrinckles). But what I remember above all is that I never felt a softest skin...Maybe it's whyI feel the desire to touch someone whose face is quite wrinckle? Doctor DeBuono, do I need therapy ??!!

I don't know if that's the difference of culture but in france we say that wrinckles shows what kind of person you are. It shows that you live. Wrinckles of expression (don't know if that's correct in english, sorry) can be so charming.

In another way, I understand that when you have too much wrinckles, you feel bad when you look in a mirror.

And I can understand those who hate themself because all they see in a mirror is (for example) their nose.

For those people, I completely understand the desire of change .

But I hope it won't become a "normality". Expressive faces are so much more attractives.

I have no problems with, as another person mentioned, someone wanting to do some minor things that make them look a little more refreshed and feel better about themselves.  But who in the world convinced these women that all of the stuff they were having done was going to make them look better?  In my opinion, that's just as much of an issue on the part of the doctor as it is the patient.  But I digress.

The part that boggles my mind the most is that these are actresses.  Their job is to show emotion!  So how is is that they are encouraged to tug, pull, and freeze their faces to a point which makes that impossible?

It's just such a shame because I think age is damn sexy.  I have to at least hand it to Joan Rivers for making fun of herself on the Geico commercials... 

Cher, of course, is another horrific example of this unfortunate 'trend.' Also, has anyone checked out Sandra Bullock lately? Meg Ryan? They have had some type of facelift around their mouth-nose area and they look simply odd.

It's no surprise that our culture has shifted towards this pervasive use of plastic surgery and other medical 'fixes' for age. Since the Depression and perhaps a bit earlier, women (of a particular class decades ago) have been told they must conform to a particular white, Western perception of beauty, which, let's be honest, has been formulated by men. Women, of course, are guilty of perpetuating this unattainable beauty standard, and the Vanessa Williams photo is a good example of the whiteness of this ideal. We could toss out historical examples - Aphrodite, Venus de Milo, etc. - that have shaped Western notions of beauty and trace the evolution (de-evolution?) of these standards, which I find quite fascinating.

I could go on and on here, but I'll leave it at that, in fear of writing an entire essay and continuing my efforts to avoid actual work. I'll be curious to see if women of my age group will succumb in great numbers to this 'fad.' And I also wonder how this will affect the lesbian community.

Patient: There's like this longing ... this pull. I mean, does that make me, you know, like, some kind of...?

Maeby: Homosexual.

and it is not only the face (of course) that gets altered, but the neck (this is surprisingly easy btw) and rather new: the hands. and I am not talking about getting your age spots removed, but also removing veins and getting fat grafts. the latter ones are seriously scary and I have seen results that made me shudder. honestly, would you get vaseline injected into your hands just to make them look fuller and less wrinkled?

I am not sure whether it is true or not but somehow you get the feeling that the cosmetic surgery (just to nip and tuck) is not as big as it is in the US.

personally, i find older women with a few wrinkles and whatnot so much more sexy than girls my own age, maturity's hot, man.

and yeah, if you get say, breast implants or a face lift and it boosts your self-confidence, that's great, more power to you. but if this is your third or fourth (to be lenient) surgery, and you become addicted and obsessed, then yeah, that's a problem.

 I got the shivers...

I understand that this is the life they chose, but it must suck for them to know that they are getting old in a job where they are expected to look young forever, and they choose to "fix it" (by messing themselves up.) I just think It's really sad. I won't lie though, there have been times that I've looked through a magazine and thought "damn she got old" I'm trying though, I'm trying to fix my brainwashed mind.

You know who I think looks really good but has probably had something done is Judi Dench.  I really looked at her face in the Pride and Prejudice movie, and she looks good but appropriate.  Her face has clearly aged, but she has the tight jawline of a 20 yr old.  Whatever she had done, it didn't leave her looking freakish.  I hate that horrible embalmed look, it's just awful. 

Just watched Nip/Tuck which centred around a gang of LA ladies of a certain age going after Christian's manhood and his plastic surgery expertise (guess which one was of more importance to the dollies?)

What disturbed me was seeing actresses I recall from a bygone era looking totally awful, I am guessing (praying) because of their makeup for the show....

Shari Belafonte in a blonde wig?? (If this is really her, whew, there are too many layers of political meaning to dive into. Did Rosa Parks not teach us anything?)

Donna Mills looking like a fly in amber at age 67 and then being surgically turned into some sort of feline demon because she was off her meds? WTF?

 Joan Van Ark with the worst upper lip botox imaginable? She used to look so wonderful! Agggh!

As for Priscilla, I now understand the source of that fabulous, frozen visage. I don't know what to make of all of this except to say that I really appreciated Julie Christie's wrinkles and long, lovely grey-blond locks in Away From Her. 'Nough said...

She used to be pretty....

Is it just me or is she starting to look more like Lisa Marie? But in a horribly disfigured kind of way? Lisa Marie is gorgeous (she looks so much like her daddy) but it seems that Cila can't get anymore out of Elvis so she gotta start looking like her daughter now? 

I say we should all age gracefully...wrinkles and all 

~Elvis Presley~
There's a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo!

Maybe her video for "Buttons" is really a PSA...

Not Only But Also

Compare possibly the two most famous Australian women in the world.

These are paparazzi shots, so no airbrushing, and remember, this woman grew up in the harsh, unforgiving Australian sun....

 ...as did this one, who is also two years younger than her ...

Oh Nicole...*shudder* ... what are you doing? Remember what you looked like before you turned to plastic?

Not Only But Also

Love Pussy xx

She alone should be a perfect example to women about taking plastic surgery too far. When I see younger pictures of her, she looks like a different person and not in a good way. If they aren't getting bad plastic surgery, women are using botox way too much. Facial expressions are not the enemy. As someone mentioned before Nicole Kidman's facial expressions have been missing for years.She's pregnant now but her face still seems somewhat frozen but more relaxed. I do wonder what the long terms effects of botox are with continued use.Any one know?

Madam fish lips herself...Meg Ryan.  And then there's Goldie Hawn and Courtney Love.

Ms. Beckham is annoying to me to begin with, but turns it up a notch with the breast implants that look like two grapefruit halves stuck on her chest.  Not hot.

Step right up ladies and gentlemen and check out the freakshow: http://www.awfulplasticsurgery.com/  Please beware of the horrific gasp that will erupt from you when browsing past Mickey Rourke. 

I'm going to sue you now, for putting up that Joan Rivers picture without any warning.

*shivers*

That face doesn't scare only children, big kids too.

Cosmetic surgery is such a turn off. Yuk!

This just makes me sad, because I know alot of "young hollywood" is going to succumb to this trend. They look wonderful now, but once that first wrinkle comes I know it will be all over. They will begin to nip, tuck, inflate, deflate, and staple themselves into unrecognizable depictions of who they used to be.

As for the 30 and over group in hollywood who have already had their first few alterations. PLEASE STOP NOW!!!!!! If not you'll wake up one morning with a face like Joan Rivers, and be wondering what the hell happened!

Glad to see someone addressing this issue. I remember watching Hollywood Squares as a little kid and how scary Phyllis Diller appeared. It used to be NOT the norm, but the obsession with looking young has taken over, including common sense.

I heard a waiter telling a story about two older actresses who were eating and got into a disagreement.  He said it was very strange because they were exchanging angry comments, but you couldn't tell from their frozen faces and of course they had the DSL lips (commonly know as D*ck Sucking Lips) that everyone else makes fun of. I think it's totally bizarre, even garish. They look like they belong in the Hollywood Wax Museum.

Also, heard that they have just discovered that botax CAN travel from the injection sites along the nerves to the brain. Something that the plastic surgeons were insisting was untrue.  Not so!!!  Scary sh*t!!! If I were Nicole Kidman, I would be very worried about the baby I was carrying and if I had done any damage to it as a result of my own vanity.

I'll grow old gracefully. In my opinion, it's all attitude anyway.

Well all right I'll admit it, I've liked Nicole Kidman for a long time. And she still does sort of look pretty great, even if she can't really move her face much - this of course, is in comparison to Priscilla Presley or Goldie Hawn or Meg Fishlips Ryan. But Cate Blanchett looks SO much more amazing - those eyes! that gorgeous mouth! I think that perhaps it depends on the crowd you're talking to. Maybe us, being gay, see natural beauty as genuinely gorgeous (as evidenced by Helen Mirren) and we see Marcia Cross as creepy (whatever anyone says, she looks creepy!)

However, I do think that we're totally prejudiced and hypocritical sometimes. We don't mind some plastic surgery, like Jennifer Lopez's, for example. She looks like an almost completely different person from who she used to look like, but we don't mind. Or at least I don't. We don't mind Patty Heaton's nips and tucks either, or even Vanessa Williams who must have had some sort of work done.

But anyway, I have to agree, as will all people on this site anyway, about the horrors of extreme plastic surgery. Why can't people grow old gracefully? It's not so much that some people are lucky to look gorgeous as they grow old; it's more that grace is a matter of accepting it, of looking more like Judi Dench than Kate Jackson or Farrah Fawcett. I want to see wrinkles and grace and beauty and experience and depth, not a shiny face, a stiff mouth and blank eyes!

some of these women look down right gross!  And let's not forget the men, Burt Reynolds comes immediately to mind.  It's a toss-up for 'most extreme totally fake':  Burt Reynolds or Joan Rivers.

Although I do love Joan Rivers in her new Geico commercial, "Steve, my face, I can't feel my face!" 

Cate Blanchett?  Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Kate Smith?  What happened to the hot woman I loved from the 70s (before I knew I loved women)?  She's hideous.  And unfortunately, I'm not exaggerating, I really think that looks hideous.

sunnyday, I'm sure you meant Kate Jackson and not Kate Smith from "God Bless America"

Anyway, re the Angels, when the 3 of them presented at the Emmys's (I think) a few years ago, honoring Aaron Spelling, it struck me how amazing Jaclyn looked compared to the other two. Kate looked passable, Farrah looked terrible but Jaclyn was perfect. Now I couldn't tell if she had any work done... maybe she did. The thing is if she did indeed have work done, she decided to go subtle and apparently got a real pro to do it. That got me thinking about how it could be that these women in H'wood who could well afford the best surgeons, consistantly use doctors who are second rate or just in it for the money. Who tells these people that they look good?

It seems Brit and Euro women do not fall under the spell of the night, as a general rule.  I hope and pray that Penelope, Salma, Binoche and Winslet allow themselves to age gracefully.

I also agree that at least Rivers makes fun of herself.

Where I live in So CA, average women with some extra cash are getting their face frozen.  I know a lesbian who had restylane injected above her upper lip to smooth out the wrinkles, but now she looks like she has a hair lip.  She also had an eyebrow lift and now just looks scared.  She used to be attractive, but not any more.  I love women as they age, but some of them are just frightening after they've had so much stuff injected into their face they don't even look like themselves anymore.  Oh well, there's more then one way to get over a crush.

Shele