Jonathan Van Meter's New York magazine cover story this week about plastic surgery — really, is there more to be said about people in this city having work done? — had, like anesthesia gone wrong, one unexpected side effect: outing an anonymous source who plans to get plastic surgery for her 60th birthday. It didn't take much sleuthing to finger the woman as Elle publisher Carol Smith. Gracefully owning up to the detective work, Smith says her face lift will have to wait; she's moving apartments.
Celebrity rags are always ragging on famous ladies who get an (alleged) nip and/or a tuck. Well, now we’re giving it to a few of the men.
We’ll start with Thierry Mugler, who has done gone lost his mind.
Why she waited until after the Sex and the City series on HBO, and after the Sex and the City movie on the big screen, we'll never know. But Sarah Jessica Parker has gone ahead and done it, removing the most obnoxious thing about her: her chin mole. "Yes, she had the mole removed,” a source tells CelebTV.com. "It was not for medical reasons." This will do nothing, however, to end comparisons of Parker to horses. CONTINUED »
Is a link — to LiftMagic.com, where a photo upload and a couple of clicks will tell you how several different cosmetic procedures might have you looking sometime soon.
Last night we finally picked up the New Yorker. Jonathan Lethem’s story was weird, and frankly if the New Yorker didn’t run an excerpted version of Fortress of Solitude, which admittedly made us cry back then, there’s no way, no way, it would have gotten into this issue.
Lizzie Widdicombe had another classic Talk of the Town piece. Just because she’s good doesn’t mean we resent her any less for regularly publishing in the New Yorker 18 months after graduating Harvard.
And Malcolm Gladwell was back to his pre-Tipping Point days in his piece on I.Q. tests. In other words, we enjoyed him again. But apparently we were mistaken. CONTINUED »
Not that any of these celebrities had plastic surgery, of course, because we would never insinuate something like that (which would draw the attention of attorneys). But what a difference a nip makes. And yes, there's the requisite cameos from the Jackson clan.
Thirty pages of plastic surgery tales? We wouldn't even expect that much from New Beauty, and those are the glossy pages where a sad story of body dysmorphic disorder skewed with a celebratory slant is most fitted. But we're talking New York Times shopper Alex Kuczynski, whose true-life tome Beauty Junkies hits bookstores in October like a scalpal does the hairline. Kuczynski's story is a common one: Girl goes in for skin therapy; girl walks out with eye lift, collagen injections. plumped lips, and a forehead that even an Upper East Side townhouse explosion couldn't furrow. What social status observing scribe hasn't been in that situation? But Alex learned her lesson: She's quit "beauty treatments" cold turkey, abandoning the hollow world of age upkeep for the hollow world of a Vanity Fair excerpt, coming at you in September.
Face Off [Memo Pad]
Editorial Director
