Effortless Perfection: Why We're All Screwed

According to the New York Times, plastic surgery is out! Says Laura Holson:


“It took years for Hollywood to create the perfect woman. Now it wants the old one back.

In small but significant numbers, filmmakers and casting executives are beginning to re-examine Hollywood’s attitude toward breast implants, Botox, collagen-injected lips and all manner of plastic surgery.


Television executives at Fox Broadcasting, for example, say they have begun recruiting more natural looking actors from Australia and Britain because the amply endowed, freakishly young-looking crowd that shows up for auditions in Los Angeles suffers from too much sameness.

“I think everyone either looks like a drag queen or a stripper,” said Marcia Shulman, who oversees casting for Fox’s scripted shows.

Independent casting directors like Mindy Marin, who worked on the Jason Reitman film “Up in the Air,” are urging talent agents to discourage clients from having surgery, particularly older celebrities who, she contends, are losing jobs because their skin is either too taut or swollen with filler. Said Ms. Marin: “What I want to see is real.”

Even extras get the once-over. Sande Alessi, who helped cast the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, said she offers to photograph actresses in their bathing suits, telling them they can keep the photo for their audition books.


Professional courtesy? Not exactly. Moviemakers prefer actresses with natural breasts for costume dramas and period films. So much so that when the Walt Disney Company recently advertised for extras for the new “Pirates” film, the casting call specified that only women with real breasts need apply. By taking a photograph, Ms. Alessi said, “we don’t have to ask, we will know.”

The move toward “less is more” is being propelled by a series of colliding social and technological trends, more than a dozen film and television professionals said.

Cosmetic enhancements remain popular, with 10 million surgical and nonsurgical procedures performed in the United States in 2009, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. At the same time, the spread of high-definition television — as well as a curious public’s trained eye — has made it easier to spot a celebrity’s badly stitched hairline or botched eyelid lift.

Men, of course, are not immune to the youthful lure of a surgeon’s scalpel. But it is women, to the surprise of no one, who are being scrutinized most closely.

Botox is the enemy in a post-“Avatar,” 3-D infatuated Hollywood, where the ability to crumple a mouth into a frown is as vital as remembering one’s lines. More startling is how young plastic surgery devotees have become. In January, the actress Heidi Montag was on the cover of People magazine touting the 10 cosmetic procedures she received in one day. She is 23.

“The era of ‘I look great because I did this to myself’ has passed,” said Shawn Levy, the director and producer of “Date Night” and the “Night at the Museum” movies. “It is viewed as ridiculous. Ten years ago, actresses had the feeling that they had to get plastic surgery to get the part. Now I think it works against them. To walk into a casting session looking false hurts one’s chances.” http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/fashion/25natural.html?sort=oldest

Call me a sceptic, but I highly doubt that this ‘return to real’ will coincide with a greater diversity of body types and faces on our screens and in the pages of our magazines.

My major issue with this new ‘turnaround’ trend is that it makes it even harder for women to fit the ideal.

Because when Hollywood execs say, “we don’t want women who have had plastic surgery”, what they really mean is: “we don’t want women who have had VISIBLE plastic surgery”.

In other words, they just want women to be naturally beautiful- without having appeared to have ever tried at all.

This kind of thinking puts the most insidious kind of pressure on women – to be ‘effortlessly perfect’ – e.g. be gorgeous and well-groomed, but don’t spend too much time putting on makeup, because that’s vain and shallow. Be clever, but don’t spend too much time with your head in a book, because that’s boring. Don’t order salad on a date! Chow down on a burger and fries – but don’t you dare get fat.

It comes down to the same ideology behind people who say they want women to ‘age gracefully’, and then hold up as examples people like Meryl Streep, Audrey Hepburn, Susan Sarandon and Helen Mirren (all of whom, by the way, I LOVE!). More power to Meryl, but I think we can all agree she’s starting at a very high base when it comes to the ageing process.

At the very least, an aesthetic which relies on plastic surgery is theoretically attainable for those with the time, money and determination – effortless perfection dooms us all to failure.