Laura Ainsworth's "Keep Young & Beautiful" Diary

BluesJazzRadio.com Is Featuring My CD

2011-05-13T14:40:00.003-05:00

I just got word that the great online music site, BluesJazzRadio.com, will feature my debut CD, "Keep It To Yourself," on their new artist spotlight hour, Saturday, May 14, at 8 p.m. EST, 7 CST. There's a nice blurb about it on the home page. I hope you'll tune in, groovy cats!

Gaga Over Blossom Dearie

2011-04-28T06:29:00.005-05:00

Today being April 28, my wedding anniversary, I glanced at the Wikipedia almanac page to see what other momentous events occurred on this day. What caught my eye immediately is that this is Blossom Dearie's birthday. She was born April 28, 1924. And I defy anyone to think of Blossom Dearie without smiling.

For the uninitiated, Blossom Dearie was a wonderful bop-style jazz pianist (her first solo LP, “Blossom Dearie Plays 'April In Paris,'” was all instrumental), but she was most famous for her distinctive, little girl voice. Depending on the mood of the song, it could be playful, heartbreaking or hilarious. You could practically hear her famous platinum blondness in her helium-high vocals.

If you don't know her, I'm sad for you, but not surprised. She passed away two years ago in her Greenwich Village apartment, and despite making many highly-regarded recordings, Blossom remained the ultimate Manhattan cult act. She could never fill an arena in Sheboygan like Lady Gaga, but her acolytes were just as slavishly devoted as Gaga's little monsters are to her. Blossom may have played small cabarets and clubs, but only she had the juice to insist that her shows start at 5:30 pm so she could get home early, and her audiences would actually show up at 5:30! She was also reportedly the first act ever to insist that the audience not smoke when she was on stage. And because she was Blossom Dearie, they snuffed out their butts. If you came of age during the non-smoking era, you have no idea how revolutionary a change that was. Most nightclubs used to be smokey enough to cure hams in.

For you poor deprived souls who've never experienced Blossom, here is a link to her rendition of one of my favorite songs, Gershwin's “Little Jazz Bird.” I hope you enjoy it as much as my houseful of rescued parrots do, and that it encourages you to seek out more of her recordings and YouTube videos. And if you'd like to hear some funny personal stories about her that never could've made it into her obituaries, click here and here for a remembrance by my favorite contemporary singer, the dazzling Mary Cleere Haran. We also lost her very recently, but that's another tragic story that I don't want to think about when I'm celebrating my anniversary and Blossom Dearie's birthday.

How about you? Are you a Blossom fan, or have you become one after checking out some of these links?

Laura Ainsworth

Happy Birthday, Ella Fitzgerald!

2011-04-24T12:39:00.003-05:00

Monday, April 25, is the most sacred of holidays to a singer like me: it is the late Ella Fitzgerald’s birthday.

I grew up worshiping Ella Fitzgerald, which was not typical of most kids in the rock era. My school friends probably had, at most, a vague notion of who she was. But I was lucky to be born into the household of a renowned Big Band sax/clarinet player, and my musical horizons had expanded far out of the pop mainstream. A precocious jazzman, my dad Bill Ainsworth played for Tommy Dorsey while still in his teens and ended up backing the fledgling Frank Sinatra. Thus it is that, years later, I grew up hearing Frank, Peggy Lee, Nat “King” Cole, Mel Torme, Jack Jones, and, of course, Ella Fitzgerald. My dad not only played their records, he actually played with many of them.

To me, Ella was the absolute greatest of them all. Though she could scat and soar with an inventiveness and sophistication that shames today’s over-the-top pop artists, I came to love her most for the rich, pure, perfectly-pitched voice that blended deep chest tones with a headier resonance as she advanced far up the scale. (She could have trained as an operatic mezzo-soprano with unbelievable results). She had such a natural way with the lyrics, too. When the beauty of that voice was placed with the most wonderful songs ever written and simply gorgeous arrangements, nothing could touch the results. I feel a great sense of accomplishment when I am able to sing her songs in her exact keys and produce notes in the same range with similar vocal technique. She really did help teach me how to sing! That’s why my debut CD, “Keep It To Yourself,” includes the classic, “Midnight Sun.” I wanted to include my own take on one of Ella’s songs that I’ve studied the most to help me develop as an artist.

I saw Ella perform live with my dad only once. She was performing at the legendary Fairmont Hotel Venetian Room, and my mom and I got in on “comp night” for band members’ families. She was very old by then, with choppier phrasing and a little rasp to her voice, and coping with serious health problems. But she was still fabulous. Years later, I asked my dad for some little “inside” story about her that no one else knew. He said she’d spent her entire stay quietly in her hotel room, watching her favorite soap operas. Apparently, Ella in her later years grew to be quite a soap opera addict. She’d watch soaps all afternoon, come down and wow her adoring crowds, then head straight back up in the elevator to her beloved TV.

I wonder if Ella, if she were starting out today, would even get anywhere in the modern music marketing machine. She had enough trouble in her day conforming to the glamorous image stars were supposed to have. And I contend that looks are more important now than ever. She’d probably have to win a contest, as Susan Boyle did, to get a record contract. Of course, they’d make fun of her on national TV for being frumpy. Then they’d insist she lose 50 pounds, give her an extreme makeover and PhotoShop her like crazy.

If we hadn’t lost Ella in 1996, she would be turning 94 on Monday, and probably still sound better than most modern singers. In her honor, I plan to listen to her version of Cole Porter’s “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye.” Just think – if she’d been born a century earlier, before the miracle of recorded sound, that voice would’ve been lost to the ages. But we’re lucky; we get to enjoy her voice forever. As her famous commercial for audiotape used to note, it may not be live, but thank God it’s on Memorex.

DC Anderson Coming To Town

2010-02-13T07:42:00.003-06:00

Just got a note from our friend DC Anderson, a fantastic singer/songwriter and recording artist and a longtime star of the national touring company of "Phantom." That show is coming to Dallas, and DC is using a free night to perform his cabaret show at Pocket Sandwich Theater. He said to spread the word, so please pass it on!

He does both gorgeous ballads and hilarious comedy songs, and he'll be with Roy Zimmerman, whose satirical songs have been praised by the god himself, Tom Lehrer. This is a rare chance to see one of the top New York cabaret stars in Dallas. It's Mon. Feb. 22. Tickets are just $15. Phone 214-821-1860. You can also go to www.pocketsandwich.com and visit DC's website to learn more about him and hear his music. Hope to see you all there!

The "Art" of PhotoShop

2010-02-03T06:22:00.005-06:00

Sorry again that blogging has had to take a back seat to other things -- moving, performing, recording, and we have become writers for a new show for ABC Radio that is very successful -- too successful, in fact, leaving little time for webby activities.

Another thing I've been very busy with is recording my first album. I have found some fantastic songs, some quite surprising, that hopscotch genres and eras from the 1920s to today. There are serious ballads, gorgeous standards, and a few things that are obscure and hilarious. I took the songs to my partner, the jazz pianist other jazz pianists worship as a god, Brian Piper, with my ideas for how I wanted them to sound. He turned them into brilliant arrangements; played keyboards and sang backup vocals; and brought in some of the greatest jazz musicians in Texas for the sessions at Crystal Clear Studio. The players said they had more fun than on any other session they've played this year, and I think you can tell that from their playing. We're in the mixing stages now, and it should be out by late spring/summer. When it's ready, we want to throw a CD release party, so I hope you'll join my Facebook fan page to get on the invitation list!

Turning to the news, Newsweek offers something near and dear to my heart: examples of the most egregious uses of PhotoShop in recent years. I hope they're wrong about the Dove campaign doing retouching on those women. If the campaign for real beauty gals had to be PhotoShopped to look presentable, then what hope do any of us have?

Finally, I just discovered an artist I have to learn more about. Rachel Hovnanian creates artworks inspired by contemporary aspects of beauty, from pageants to bottles of anti-aging creams. Her work is on exhibit at the Dallas Art Fair this week. I went to a great panel discussion Tuesday afternoon and got a chance to meet her. I'm really looking forward to going back and seeing more. Mark your calendars!

Botox Avoidance and Singing Advice for Susan Boyle

2009-05-26T06:27:00.003-05:00

Yes, I know it's been months since I posted anything! I apologize for letting this drop, but I've been very busy with other things, including performing, recording, writing, moving, trying to sell a house in a terrible real estate market, recuperating from hand surgery and pneumonia, and starting a new "day job" with a new national show for ABC Radio Network, which is going very well. In addition, my computer conked out and had to be replaced, while my husband Pat, who is the webmaster and posts all this stuff, was too busy to help (he also was working on the ABC show, in addition to writing a third daily radio prep service for awhile for USA News Network). Something had to give, and blogging was what gave. But things are actually settling down a little, at least enough to sneak in the occasional post. I'll try to do more, when I have time.

Today, two things: Interesting quote about Botox and plastic surgery from Mary Louise Parker in the new More magazine:

"Somebody told me that they'd read that I had all this work done and showed me a picture, and it was totally airbrushed...It made me so mad. I don't like what that says to other women. I'm 44, and I look OK for 44. I'm not trying to look 34."

Of course, in Hollywood, looking 34 could be the kiss of death for an actress. Heck, looking 24 is the kiss of death for a model. But she makes a good point: don't believe any photos you see in fashion or celebrity magazines. These days, a good PhotoShop artist can not only make anyone look like a movie star, they can make it appear that you're sitting in Abe Lincoln's lap, and for good measure, erase Lincoln's unsightly mole.

And here's a little something I wrote for our radio service, the Comedy Wire . I really love Susan Boyle and her whole story, but it was annoying to me that these TV singing contests keep getting judges who seem to know nothing about singing (David Hasselhoff is going to judge someone's singing? Really?) and never say anything remotely useful. So after Susan made her second appearance on "Britain's Got Talent," singing "Memory" from "Cats," I decided that if nobody else was going to say anything constructive, I would. So here it is:

When a voice breaks the way Susan's did at the very beginning, it's often because the pitch is in the singer's passaggio, or transition area. (A passaggio is sort of like a car shifting gears.) Different singers have different passaggios; for instance, one of mine is around C#-D above concert A.

Singing through it requires breath and volume control. Susan's song was probably pitched so it would be in her "glory spot" for the end; unfortunately, that gave her a more difficult note to start on. My guess is that she had a little stage fright - how could she not? - which caused her first breath to be too shallow. It's challenging to control volume on a first note, too, because you haven't heard yourself yet. She probably tried to sing that note at a higher volume than her breath could support. Result:CRACK!

Susan seemed to sense the problem; did you notice that she touched her diaphragm? Very soon, everything evened out and she sounded wonderful.

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Okay, that's it, and I promise it won't be so long before I post again.

No, seriously, I'm still alive

2008-12-28T05:17:00.005-06:00

Sorry to go so long between posts, but it took longer to heal from hand surgery than I thought. Also, like so many other Americans, my husband and I were caught in the real estate collapse. We had planned to move to Las Vegas, but the economy slowed there at the same time that we moved out of our Dallas house and put it on the market. Many months later, it has yet to sell or rent (despite it being an award-winning historic home -- if you want a deal, email me!) To cover the bills for two houses, my husband took on an extra job writing a daily syndicated radio news service, which left him no time to handle the typing for me, so it's been tough to post.

I am keeping busy behind the scenes, doing private shows, recording and preparing for an exciting new gig with the ABC Radio Network starting in January. I hope to get back to more public performances and more blogging as soon as time permits. I really hate that I haven't been able to comment on some of the stories that have come along in the past six months. For instance, doctors are doing full face transplants in America now. Even more amazing, they have yet to involve Joan Rivers.

In the meantime, to show how musically eclectic I can be, above is a photo of me (purveyor of Gershwin, Porter and Kern tunes) at a family Christmas get-together with my husband Pat's very talented cousin, Cliff Campbell, guitarist/songwriter for the progressive rock group, Fair to Midland. Here's a rather obsessive fan link with photos, songs and more, if you'd like to broaden your musical horizons. Hope to post again soon! Have a happy and safe New Year's!

"America The Beautiful" Documentary: See It NOW!

2008-09-06T06:04:00.004-05:00

Thanks to everyone who came out to see our show recently at Bass Hall's McDavid Studio. I apologize for not scheduling more public shows or updating the blog in awhile, but I have been very busy with private shows, recording, getting over a nasty cold, and most of all, moving. I promise we'll do more public shows soon, and of course, both "My Ship Has Sailed" and "Cole Porter: Elegance & Decadence" with the amazing Michael Gott are available for private bookings through http://www.lauraainsworth.com. But for those of you in the Dallas area, I have something I need to tell you about right away, and it's not a project I have anything to do with, other than admiring it.

A terrific documentary called "America The Beautiful" is playing right now at the Mockingbird Lane Angelika Theater. We saw it last night and met the director, a very nice man named Darryl Roberts. If you enjoyed the satire of beauty obsession I do in "My Ship Has Sailed," then you'll really appreciate this film, which examines the unrelenting pressure to meet an artificial standard of physical perfection. It covers everything from fashion magazines to anorexia to cosmetics to plastic surgeons who aren't really plastic surgeons (but they play them on reality shows) to some outrageous comments on women from a group of toxic bachelors, all tied together by the story of the rise and fall of a wannabe sexpot supermodel who is all of 12 years old. It's funny, informative, inspiring, heartbreaking and occasionally bone-chilling.

The director said that if the film pulls good audiences this weekend, the theater will hold it through the week, and that in turn will encourage other theaters to show it. If not, it's gone by Monday, which would be tragic. He urged people to tell their friends to see it this weekend. So I am telling you, and I hope you'll pass it along to everyone on your e-mail lists as well, to please get out and see this film before Sunday!

To learn more and see the trailer, click here.

Cole Porter Show May 30 in Ft. Worth

2008-05-21T07:32:00.002-05:00

Sorry for the lack of posts, but just as my broken hand began to recuperate, I started doing more shows and having to move to a new (old) house, and there's barely been a spare moment. I did want to let everyone know, though, that I am booked to do a really big public show. My friend, the fabulous pianist/singer Michael Gott, and I will be doing our two-person revue, "Cole Porter: Elegance & Decadence," Friday, May 30, at Bass Hall's McDavid Studio in downtown Ft. Worth. It's a gorgeous venue with a great sound system, and you're all invited to the party.

Come travel back through time with us to the '20s, '30s and '40s, to the days of glamorous penthouse soirees and chic Broadway opening nights, with such great songs as "Night & Day," "D'Lovely," "Let's Do It," "Love For Sale," and many more, including some hilarious rarities you've probably never heard, like "The Physician" and "The Tale of the Oyster." You won't think you're in Cow Town anymore, Toto!

Tickets are available through Bass Hall at 817-212-4280 or click here to get them online. You can click on the "Tell Me More" tab to learn more or go here to see video. Hope you can join us! It'll be swelligant!

The Perfect Face?

2008-03-11T06:07:00.001-05:00

Very busy getting ready for multiple shows, but here’s a shortie for you:

Two Beverly Hills plastic surgeons recently surveyed colleagues to find the most requested celebrity body parts, and the Star tabloid figured that if you combined them all, it should create the perfect face. To find out, they pieced together a photo of a woman with Katie Holmes' eyes, Katherine Heigl's nose, Keira Knightley's cheeks, Jessica Simpson's long blonde hair and Angelina Jolie's lips; and a photo of a young man with Daniel Craig's blue eyes, Leonardo DiCaprio's nose and Matt Damon's lips.

To be perfectly frank (or perfectly Frankenstein), the woman just looks to me like a lot of women who’ve had too much plastic surgery, and the result of stitching all those perfect young male parts together is a face that looks surprisingly like a young Jay Leno with a smaller chin. I guess this means Jay Leno is just one chin surgery away from perfection.

Ironically, if Jay Leno went to a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, he’d probably come out looking exactly like a young Jay Leno with a smaller chin.

I suppose if a woman didn't want to have all that done to her face, she could just get Dolly Parton's breasts. Then she'd never have to worry about any man ever looking her in the face again.

Come See Me Live!

2008-03-05T06:05:00.002-06:00

More blogging coming soon, as soon as I get over a nasty cold with a side order of sinus headache. But I wanted to let you all know that Brian Piper and I will be doing four public performances of "My Ship Has Sailed," March 27-30 as a fundraiser for the Grand Prairie Arts Council. The shows will be in the Women's Club of Grand Prairie, in a very nice country-club like ballroom with a raised theatrical stage. For tickets and info, visit the Arts Council site. Hope to see you there!

Oscar Night: Time to Get Your Cleavage Botoxed!

2008-02-25T06:48:00.002-06:00

Ooohh, tonight is Oscar night! Of course, for me, the nominated films – for the most part, a depressing and bloody lot this year – must take a back seat to the annual Red Carpet parade of The World’s Most Beautiful People. The Perfect People. The Sexiest People. The Perpetually Youthful People. The People Who Are Supposesd To Make Us Run Out And Get Plastic Surgery To Look Like Them.

But in order to maintain that essential illusion, Hollywood actresses will each spend untold thousands on designer gowns, hair color and extensions, weeks of intensive personal workouts, radical “cleansing” diets, diamond-particle “signature” facials, fat injections, wrinkle fillers such as Radiesse, subtle “one-stitch” facelifts for 30-something actresses, “spot” lipo to smooth every molecule of bulge, foot surgery to help them stand in stilettos, dental bleaching, and even calming doses of anti-anxiety drugs. If the Hollywood economy lost billions of dollars during the writers stike, the money spent on looking beautiful for Oscar night should make up for it.

Jeez, if I had this much pressure on me to look fabulous, I’d probably be popping Xanax, too.

I haven’t even mentioned Botox yet. Goodness, movie stars photographed outdoors in the afternoon sun can’t look squinty, so virtually every one of them will be Botoxed on the forehead and between the eyes. Of course, some Hollywood stars will come close to mainlining Botox. A few will look very pointedly paralyzed. Botox is also injected into the armpits to keep stars from perspiring on the Red Carpet or while waiting nervously for that possible Academy Award. Finally (this is something I just learned about, in a more detailed article in the London Daily Mail), Botox is now used to RAISE THE CLEAVAGE and make breasts look more youthful. (With all the breast implants in Hollywood, I would hope the dermatologist would take extreme care using needles around breasts!) There’s even a special cleavage “facial” that’s essential for anyone wearing a low-cut dress.

Oh, and here’s a newly popular but squirrely idea: false eyelashes made of mink or squirrel fur! They cost thousands of dollars a pair, but it you take good care of them, they’ll last five to seven wearings. Madonna got some that were made of mink and diamonds.

If all this isn’t enough to make the actresses look drop-dead gorgeous, they’ll also be dripping with diamonds and other precious stones. Many will have every square inch of skin airbrushed the perfect glowy color. They’ll strut in Jimmy Choo shoes -- and if their feet don’t look perfect in them, there are anti-inflammatary injections. Also, did you know that celebrity makeup artists can charge several thousand dollars for creating just one Oscar-caliber makeup? Appointments are booked many months in advance.

Sometimes an actress can do all this and still be savaged by the snarky TV and tabloid critics. So I understand why stars want to look as lovely as possible. At the same time, we out here have to keep all their efforts in perspective. There is so much we can do to take care of ourselves and look like real, relaxed, healthy, beautiful women without obsessing about our looks the way narcissistic movie stars do. Really, who do you think would make the more interesting dinner companion – you, or a perfectly-manicured J-Lo in hair extensions and mink eyelashes?

Of course, it's possible the mink might be a better conversationalist than J-Lo.

Demographics And The Presidency

2008-02-07T00:36:00.000-06:00

Disclaimer: The following commentary about age as it applies to the Presidential campaign has absolutely nothing to do with my choice for President of the United States, which reflects, as it should, my very close examination of the issues facing this nation and how they might be addressed in the real world by a real person. What does this individual think about the role of government? Is he or she able to communicate his or her views well? What philosophy might affect his or her choices for Supreme Court justices? What might we actually see in the world as a consequence, intended or not, of this person's election? In my opinion, race, gender and, yes, even age are not relevant to this analysis and should be set aside so voters can consider the things that really matter. So there.

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I'm writing this on "Super Tuesday," though I live in Texas and thankfully won't have to go out into the hailstorm (no exaggeration!) to vote now. But if I were voting today, the choice, as it's been presented in the media, seems clear: Do I want the young, dynamic black guy? The older white woman? Or maybe the super-old white guy? Hey, the Baptist or the Mormon? The only major demographic contest we don't have - at least, as far as we know - is gay vs. straight.

In fact, I'm reminded of an episode of "Will & Grace" in which Will (gay) and Grace (Jewish) are trying to decide whom to back for City Council: the gay man or the Jewish woman. Will, predictably, backs the gay man, while Grace, just as predictably, backs the Jewish woman. Later they realize they can't support either candidate -- not because of their demographics, but because of their incredibly horrid views.

But let's get back to our real election, where the stakes are higher because they are not fictional. Here, the young black guy has a Kennedyesque coolness and a hopeful message that inspires blacks as well as whites, some of whom perhaps long to recapture that wonderful media creation, Camelot. The older white woman is doing well among Latinos, Asians and, not surprisingly, older white women, some of whom have remarked, understandably, that they just want to see a woman president before they die. (Additional disclaimer: Please do not assume that I think everyone supporting these candidates is doing so strictly because of demographic kinship, but many obviously are.) The really old white guy is doing very well in the polls, but in spite of that was recently deemed too old to be President by columnist Anna Quindlen. ("Race, gender - they're both up for grabs in this election. It's age that has become the new taboo in a vitality culture.")

Quindlen refers to McCain's age as "the elephant on the campaign trail," saying, "There's been plenty of talk during primary season about gender and race; it's age that has become taboo."

Personally, I think all three should be immaterial and are a convenient way of tap-dancing around real issues. There has already been too much playing of the race and gender cards, not so much from the voters themselves as from those candidates -- and their husbands -- who think it can help them. If candidates truly believe that race and gender shouldn't play a part in this election, then they should refrain from bringing them up.

But now Quindlen plays the age card. She dismisses our society's so-called "age is just a number" mentality - oh, how I wish we had that mentality, instead of obsessing about age the way we do - and goes on to say this: "The gentle but inevitable passing of the guard that once gave young people an opportunity to rise has stuttered and sometimes stopped." WHAT?? I'd like to know what planet Ms. Quindlen is living on. As a woman in my chosen field, I'd see my opportunities increase exponentially if I were in my twenties today.

Quindlen also points out that Old Man McCain suffers infirmities from his years of incarceration and torture: the inability to climb stairs quickly or to raise his arms to comb his hair due to multiple fractures he received at the hands of the Viet Cong. My first observation: What hair? My second: I wonder whether she would've supported the young, dynamic-looking, poufy-haired John F. Kennedy if she'd known he suffered from Addison's Disease and almost incapacitating back pain? When the cameras weren't on, he must've climbed stairs as slowly as McCain. What about Franklin D. Roosevelt, so ravaged by polio that he had to use a wheelchair? How much correlation does age have with vitality and ability, really? If the writers of the Constitution had seen such a connection, they never would have specified that Supreme Court justices could serve for life.

In fact, I recently saw McCain's 95-year-old mother, Roberta, on the news and she is incredibly youthful and gorgeous! Oh, my god, have you seen this lady? She must use Perricone. And she's had the vitality to accompany her son throughout the campaign, city after city. McCain definitely got some good anti-aging genes.

When I think of the years of excruciating torture and lasting pain McCain has endured, I have no reason to conclude that this has left him a hobbling, feeble man. Instead, I'm reminded of the saying, "What does not kill us makes us stronger."

George Washington first took the oath of office when the average life expectancy was under 40, so even at age 57 he was way past his physical prime -- including his teeth, which had long since been replaced by a full set of painful dentures. He served two terms and left at age 65, which in those days was considered positively wizened. Ben Franklin, though never elected President, was active in government affairs into his 80s at a time when few even survived to that advanced age. We've had Presidents who were young, old, athletic, frail and even morbidly obese. Granted, Grover Cleveland could never be elected in the Media Age - not with the camera adding ten pounds to a body that already fluctuated between 300 and 332 pounds. It was only after serving as President that he relieved his severe sleep apnea by losing 80 pounds, and then he continued to serve, as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

No one who publicly asserted that a black person or a woman shouldn't be President would be respected today, no matter what rationalizations he or she might employ. But not so long ago, if we'd had a woman at the top of the ticket, there would've been dire warnings day after day about the emotional fragility and hormone swings that render all women -- with the possible exception of Margaret Thatcher -- unsuitable for high office. Thank goodness we're past that. Yet some are starting to talk about age in a similar way. It's as I always say...AGE IS THE LAST BIG CULTURALLY-ACCEPTABLE BIAS.

Of course, with a 71-year-old candidate, the choice of his running mate rises in importance, and Quindlen addresses this, posing the question, "If you enter the process stressing a hedge against mortality or incapacity, shouldn't that suggest something about suitability for the job in the first place?"

Answer: NO. Just the fact of being President is as much a risk of mortality as being older. It's a hazardous job in ways that have nothing whatsoever to do with age. I'm sure Presidents Kennedy, Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley, all assassinated while in office, would agree if they could speak to us. The choice of a running mate is always important. If you scan the obits, as I often do, you see that death or incapacity can strike at any age.

It's great that we have such demographic diversity among our candidates this time. Still, we won't be over our prejudices until these differences are simply incidental and play no part in our choice for President. I think we're still a long way off.

(I'll now pause to review the election returns from Super Tuesday, and wrap this up in the morning.)

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Well, it's just as I thought. According to a detailed demographic breakdown from Katie Couric and the gang at CBS News that made me want to tear out my hair, Hillary did well with white women, Latinos and Asians, and not so well with blacks. Obama received most of the black vote and did quite well with younger whites. The pattern was so striking that pundits expressed concern about the preeminence of "identity politics" among Democrats.

Among Republicans, Romney didn't fare too well; he won his home state of Michigan and also states with high populations of Mormons, who wouldn't vote for Huckabee, a Baptist, if Huck paid them to. Huck can't afford to do that, anyway - he runs a very low-budget campaign! Thus, another stereotype is shattered: rich doesn't necessarily trump poor in the Republican Party.

But it's the short, balding, white-haired, achy-jointed candidate who really won the night. That's right, the Grand OLD Party came out for creaky old John McCain. Thankfully, his age wasn't an issue to the voters, and I didn't even hear it mentioned by the pundits.

But if he gets the nomination, mark my word: we'll be hearing about it a LOT.

Celebrity Docs Can Be Bad News

2008-01-23T07:08:00.000-06:00

Well, did you miss me?

Perhaps you noticed – God, I hope somebody did – that my last blog entry was a few long months ago. As luck would have it, just at the time I was assessing the myriad news reports of the plastic-surgery death of Kanye West’s mother, I broke my hand. Kid you not. I slipped on a bit of nonstick cooking spray that had drifted onto the kitchen floor and, after doing a fabulous impression of Kristi Yamaguchi careening about on the ice, landed smack on my left hand with such force and at such an angle that my ring finger was turned completely around to the side. Oddly, there was no pain at all involved in this.

X-rays showed that the finger itself wasn’t broken, but there was a complicated “spiral” fracture of the metacarpal below that finger. So I had to have hand surgery, involving a long metal plate and numerous little screws, a few of which I can actually feel in the palm of my hand. Pity the person who has to stand behind me in line for the metal detector at the airport. Also, there’s now a long, red scar on the back of my hand that makes me glad I wear gloves while performing. It seems to be healing well, though; nice to know I’m a good “healer” in case I choose to go in for a facelift someday!

I found that recovery from hand surgery can really put a crimp – and even, at times, a cramp – in keyboard-related activities. Surprisingly, the pain didn’t start until after my finger had been put back in place, but then it was brutal. While I was slowly recovering the motion in my hand, so much age- and beauty-related news accumulated that I didn’t know where I’d begin. So I procrastinated, even after I was able to type, and more news piled up. You know how it is.

But let’s pick up where I left off: the sadness and horror of Donda West’s death. What a tragedy. “My mother is my everything,” Kanye West said at the time. The story of her death so dominated the celebrity tattle-shows that by now it must be “old news” to the relentlessly forward-moving press; still, a woman died under shocking circumstances, and I believe it’s not too late to weigh in:

Apparently, fame lends such an aura of infallibility to TV doctors such as Dr. Jan Adams that their patients don’t even wonder why they’re being operated on in an outpatient facility in a SHOPPING MALL. Donda West was going in for a breast reduction and a tummy tuck – increasingly common procedures but still major, major surgery – and that’s where the work was performed. AT THE MALL! Then, instead of being moved to some type of recovery facility where she could be watched, she was taken back to her room and LEFT THERE ALONE. (Pardon all the total caps; I have no other way to express in print my sheer contempt.) This was so wrong that only someone who’s been falsely told her surgery will be a breeze would ever agree to it. She certainly could have afforded the best of post-surgical care if she’d been under the impression that she needed it.

I had better surgical facilities and follow-up for the little bone in my hand than Ms. West had for her two major surgeries. And I had great confidence in my doctor, a specialist who does nothing but repair hands.

TV doctors are on TV because they’re good on TV. Never, ever give your trust to any doctor – or political candidate, but I digress -- just because he or she is telegenic. Even a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon “to the stars” isn’t necessarily any good – look at some of the stars! They look godawful! We tend to think celebrities are special people, with special abilities, but they’re not. According to “The Insider,” Dr. Adams has had 15 malpractice suits filed against him since 1998. My hunch is that the best plastic surgeon on the planet has a name known only to the lucky few who’ve been referred by word of mouth.

By the way, the “mommy makeover” -- breast surgery combined with a tummy tuck -- is rapidly gaining popularity. Women shocked at what pregnancy has done to their bodies, leaving them with sagging breasts, flabby stomachs, stretch marks and loose skin, are rushing to plastic surgeons. I haven’t had children, so I can’t write from firsthand experience, but it’s easy to understand their haste to undo the damage. Still, with all the physical, hormonal and emotional changes that take place in the months after childbirth, many doctors advise waiting on breast operations until at least three months after breastfeeding has finished, and postponing a tummy tuck until at least six months after giving birth.

Now, I’m not an A-list actress trying to schedule the birth of my child with shooting a movie in a bikini three weeks later, but this advice makes sense to me.

Of course, celebrity or not, in this age of political correctness, any time a woman considers having plastic surgery, the debate can’t ever just be about what the woman wants. Thanks to organizations such as the Boston group "Our Bodies Ourselves," it has to be about why she wants it. Is she doing it for the right reason? Columnist and mother-of-two Theresa Walsh Giarrusso, writes, “Yes, your body changes after having children. And, no, it’s not going to be the same again. But that’s OK. You’re a different person mentally and emotionally after bringing children into the world. Why shouldn’t you be different physically? Do we really need to look good enough to compete with 20-year-olds?”

Jeez, it’s not enough that we’re under societal pressure to maintain our sexual allure. We’re also under societal pressure to let go of our allure, from the very people who claim to be fighting societal pressure.

Personally, I really wouldn’t want to let it go. If I didn’t recognize my body anymore after pregnancy, I’d probably wait the recommended length of time, lose the baby weight, get super-healthy, and have the surgery. But I sure wouldn’t have it at the Mall.

Coming next: ABC News asks, “How far will Chinese women go in the pursuit of beauty?” (Hint: see below)

Lend Me A Hand

2007-11-01T06:58:00.001-05:00

Sorry for the lapse in blogging, but I have a good excuse. I slipped on the kitchen floor (it had nothing to do with age, I swear; just a slick spot), and in trying to break my fall, I succeeded in breaking a bone in my left hand. It was a pretty nasty spiral fracture that required an operation and plates and screws to fix (I am the new Bionic Woman!) I now have a big bandage and splint contraption on my left hand and can't type. This message is being typed by my husband, so please forgive any typoos or messpellings.

The splint comes off in a few days and I'll be able to type again. Until then, I'm working on a few short items in longhand for Pat to transcribe. At least this proves that I really can blog with one hand behind my back. Or in this case, propped up over my head.

Laura's List of Pet Peeves

2007-10-21T05:54:00.000-05:00

Sure, as always, there’s plenty in the news relating to age and beauty. I’ll get to all that. But first, I have to satisfy an urge I’ve had for awhile: to create my very first official List Of Pet Peeves. If you haven’t ever made one, try it sometime, just for fun, because it can tell you a lot about yourself. For example, I don’t consider myself that easily peeved-off, but my list of peeves turned out to be pretty darn long!

Some of these relate directly to The Age Thing (how could they not?), some only peripherally, and some not at all. Also, I chose not to include things we all hate, such as loud cellphone talkers, bad drivers and anything having to do with air travel. These are personal; some you will no doubt share, while others may just reflect my own quirks. They’re in no particular order. So, here we go, with the things that make me say, “Give me a break!”

LAURA’S LIST OF PET PEEVES

the term “baby boomer,” also any variation such as “boomer,” “aging boomer,” etc.

being pointed at or gestured at from a music video

competitive eating contests

MORE magazine (if you read my blog, you know why)

fake call-in radio talk shows that are really infomercials

phrases such as “most unique,” “more perfect,” “the most complete”

the Nobel Peace Prize

“over-the-hill” birthday parties with black balloons

flawlessly PhotoShopped models

Magazine lists such as “The 50 Most Beautiful People,” “The Top 100 Movies Of All Time,” etc. (there are many of these, and they all need to go away, but they won’t. Maybe I should list the Top 50 Reasons for Them To Go Away.)

white walls and beige carpet

“tear-downs” and starter castles in once-charming old neighborhoods

being lectured to on global warming and foreign policy by Hollywood stars, many of whom didn’t even graduate from high school

concert reviews that insist on critiquing the age and degree of hipness of the audience

awards shows – come on, how often does the most deserving person win?

thug culture

Christmas overkill: Christmas season starting before Thanksgiving is over (let alone Halloween!); also, 90 percent of all the Christmas songs that have ever been recorded

on the other hand, having to call the Christmas tree a “holiday tree,” when everybody knows it’s a Christmas tree

fashion magazines’ monthly lists of “must-haves”

the term “reinventing oneself”

the age limit on “American Idol,” also the constant references to contestants’ ages

extremely passionate, argumentative people who are absolutely convinced of something that’s factually incorrect

today’s Saturday morning cartoons – the worst politically-correct pablum! (where are Rocky and Bullwinkle when you need them?)

saying of any actress with millions of dollars to spend on herself that she is “perhaps the most beautiful woman in the world”

gross-out comedies – I won’t go see “The Heartbreak Kid” and will never, EVER see “Kingpin” again

using “they,” “them” and “their” as singular, as in, “Give your child the things they deserve.”

Hollywood-style celebrity “justice”

overuse of the phrases “if you will” and “at the end of the day”

seafood from China

impenetrable business jargon

image politics

politicians who run on an issue that disappears off the radar screen once they’re elected

dividing us by decade, as in “your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond”

ads for mascara in which the model is obviously wearing fake eyelashes

child beauty pageants

adult beauty pageants

reality shows, except for “American Idol” and “Dancing With The Stars”

food companies that sell their products as healthy when one look at the label tells you they are SO NOT

swarms of paparazzi – arrest those locusts for stalking and harassment

my frustrating and unending quest for sexy shoes that don’t hurt

rappers yakking over great old hit songs written by real songwriters

those not-so-fabulous fakes: dark spray-on tans, chopped-off noses, wind-tunnel faces, expressionless eyebrows, clown lips, chalk-white teeth, bowling-ball breasts

Dennis Hopper talking to children of the ‘60s about financial services

Hardee’s (The “Monster Thickburger”? Please, Hardee’s, stop the obesity!)

those long loops on dresses for keeping them on hangers – I can never seem to keep them tucked inside!

Conan O’Brien’s opening, with the loooooong, earsplitting trumpet blast at 12:30 AM (11:30 AM Central). Conan has a fantastic band, but how many thousands of times have they done that by now?

laugh tracks

televangelists, “psychics” and “faith healers”

hearing any actor called “the greatest actor of his generation,” especially if it’s Sean Penn, because he probably believes it

the term “generation” (because unless you’re talking about someone’s family tree, people are born on a continuum and generational divisions are arbitrary, so there!)

commercials that say, “Get the (whatever) you DESERVE!” (because, hey, for all they know, I’m an axe murderer and don’t deserve squat)

status designer handbags that cost as much as a new luxury car

Whew, that turned out to be a long list! It’s good that I don’t get very worked up about most of these things, or my life would be miserable. Fortunately, I’m an easygoing sort; there are only a few things that seriously chafe me. And I need this long list of annoyances to write comedy about.

Besides, the list of things I love would be much, much longer.

Next: "Absolutely Safe," a new documentary on breast implants.

Plastic Surgeons Losing Patience With Patients

2007-10-13T03:37:00.000-05:00

Definitely check out the October issue of Allure magazine. I was at the hair salon just long enough to read the article on plastic surgery patients who present themselves to their doctors as self-styled experts. This is becoming a frustrating problem for cosmetic surgeons and dermatologists.

These patients – almost all female -- have never graduated from medical school, but they’ve spent a lot of time on the Internet, where the real truth is, and they walk into the doctor’s office armed with stacks of single-spaced typewritten pages of exacting instructions. They’ve created computer morphed “Before and After” shots of themselves. They know all the medical terminology and sound well-informed to the layman. The problem is, they’ve never actually performed surgery, injected Botox and wrinkle fillers, or learned the hazards of many of the procedures they want their doctors to perform.

Nevertheless, they’re insistent. And they’re never satisfied – they have to keep tinkering. Ultimately, they have even more procedures to “fix” the bad results caused by the original procedures. Then they have to “fix” the “fix.” And then “fix” that.

One doctor quoted in the article spoke of a patient who had returned from Mexico with a vial of some kind of bone cement (I’m not kidding) that she wanted him to inject into her face. As any reputable physician would, he refused, explaining that he had no guarantee of what was in that vial. He could literally be injecting her face with anything, and he wasn’t going to be responsible for that. So she waved bye-bye with her perfectly-manicured hand and continued her search for someone who would do it for her.

No doubt she didn’t have to search for long. I've heard of dermatologists in Dallas who very openly perform procedures – or have their assistants perform them – that are unapproved by the FDA and pose serious risks to one’s health and/or appearance. You can probably find their names on various plastic surgery websites that extoll the virtues of such procedures. Go ahead, look them up, so you’ll know who not to patronize.

This problem seems to be a variation of Body Dysmorphic Disorder, which is what makes anorexics see themselves as fat when they’re actually starving to death and Michael Jackson think he’ll be perfect after just one more plastic surgery. Often it’s a focus on one particular physical flaw, but once that flaw is addressed, it can morph into a pathological appetite for perfection that will never be satisfied.

My friend Dr. Brown, who’s known as one of the best plastic surgeons in Dallas (and that’s saying a lot!), tells me he has women come in and tell him exactly how to make over their breasts. A common instruction is, “Make me as big as you can make me!” But Dr. Brown doesn’t do that. Often, he’ll counsel a patient that because of her height and bone structure, he can’t make her more than, say, a “C.”

I think I can safely say he didn’t do Pam Anderson’s breasts. Or the breasts of any woman who aspires to look like her.

Quite a long time ago, I actually consulted Dr. Brown about a possible reshaping of my nose, and the experience taught me a lot about the psychological aspects of plastic surgery. If you look at pictures of me on my website, you’ll probably say, “Her nose looks just fine! Why would she want to change it?” (at least, I hope you'd say that). Well, the reason was one photograph, taken from an odd angle, that really did make my nose loom large. So I told Dr. Brown that I didn’t want to change the shape of my nose, just make the proportion a little smaller.

He listened, then had me come in for some “Before” pictures, both front and side view. The assistant behind the camera looked confused and had to ask me, “Now, what is it that you wanted changed?”

I’ll never know if Dr. Brown had told her to ask that question, but it sure made me think. “If this person,” I wondered, “who sees hundreds of plastic surgery patients every year, can’t even tell that it’s my nose I’m concerned about, then what is my problem?”

Then, when I saw the photos and realized that they looked more like “After” pictures, I told Dr. Brown that I’d decided against having any work done on my nose. He must have been relieved. And I’m glad that he trusted me to come to my own conclusion; if he’d just said at the outset, “You don’t need it,” I might have just answered, “Well, I think I do.”

Unfortunate, overdone nose jobs are as common as paralyzed faces these days. One big difference, though: Botox wears off in a few months, while, to paraphase James Bond, a nose job is forever. And if the first attempt isn’t right, there has to be another procedure, and perhaps another. I’ve seen many hypershortened noses that are beyond saving. Then the question becomes like a bad trip to a casino: Do you want to walk away with your losses, or risk what you have on another procedure, knowing you’ll probably come out worse but might come out better? In that sense, the addiction to plastic surgery seems to me a lot like the addiction to gambling. With this kind of risk, you might lose the ranch or lose your nose – or, like Michael Jackson, you might lose both.

This isn’t to say that a nose job is never a good thing. If you really don’t like your nose, if it’s caused you to suffer comments and heartache all your life, then I say, “Rah-rah, rhinoplasty!” If you’re in show business, and a slight change in your nose will make you photograph significantly better, then go for it, as lovelies from Paula Abdul to Halle Berry have. But find the best surgeon you can, one who will get it right the first time. Find one who will listen to you, and then…LISTEN TO HIM. Have the work done. And then, if at all possible, consider it a finished work of art.

Your life is a work in progress; your face shouldn’t have to be.

The Mammogram Song

2007-10-10T06:24:00.000-05:00

In honor of October, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, here is my wonderful friend and mentor, queen of the satirical folk song, Lu Mitchell, singing her hilarious song, "The Mammogram," and actually finding humor in what we all have to go through...

The Hallucinatory Halo of Health, and Other Cautionary Tales

2007-10-10T05:29:00.000-05:00

A round-up of news from all over...

The famously shrinking Jared lost tons of weight by eating all his meals at Subway. So everything they have at Subway must be healthy, right? Wrong!

Cornell University found that people who eat at Subway, billed as the healthy, lowfat alternative to typical fast food, tend to consume more calories than McDonald’s diners. They gave students coupons for either a Big Mac (800 calories) or a 12-inch Italian sub with cheese (900 calories) plus any free extras they wanted. Subway eaters were more likely to add chips, a cookie and a non-diet drink because, researchers concluded, Subway has a “health halo” that makes people assume everything is low-calorie. Subway eaters were also more likely to snack later in the day because they think they ‘deserve it” for eating so healthily.

Also because, as everyone knows, free food has no calories.

Their snack of choice? I’m betting it was a Big Mac.

Does anyone really think Jared lost all that weight by eating 12-inch meatball subs with cheese? I’m thinking that most of the people in this study were college students with fast metabolisms, who got the extra cookie because it was free and Subway has really good cookies. The ones who did have weight issues probably just thought, “Well, this is free; I’ll diet tomorrow.” And maybe it’s not that Subway has a “health halo” but that McDonald’s has the opposite: an especially bad rep as unhealthy fast food that makes people choose more carefully. This study may have some merit, but I’ve noticed that researchers, after painstakingly accumulating and analyzing their data, often interpret the facts in an incredibly subjective way. On the bright side, if deluded people keep chowing down on Subway meatball subs, Jared has plenty of big old pants he’d be happy to sell them.

BIG SOUTH AMERICAN BREASTS

I didn’t know this, but it’s become a tradition in Venezuela, a truly beauty-obsessed nation, to give one’s daughter breast implants for her 15th birthday. There’s more plastic surgery taking place in Venezuela than anywhere else on earth – is it any wonder that it produces the most beauty queens? -- and the 15th birthday implants are so popular, they’re advertised on TV. Breast augmentation has become a rite of passage, like nose jobs in Beverly Hills.

Proving the old adage that even a broken clock is right twice a day, socialist president and aspiring revolutionary Hugo Chavez has come out against the ridiculous fad, calling it “horrible” and “the ultimate degradation.” He also wants his country rid of “Western icons”such as Barbie dolls. He lectured the country about this on a recent Saturday TV appearance that ran eight hours.

I hear that people actually watched the whole thing, transfixed. Maybe because it was illustrated.

Obviously, Chavez hasn’t thought this thing through. If he wants a socialist revolution, what could be more helpful than a country full of giant boobs? Also, his stand against fake breasts could be the final straw that makes Venezuelans rise up and overthrow him. He’s said some crazy things before, but this time he’s gone too far!

MORE ON BOOBS

Scientist Patrick Mallucci presented a breakthrough report in London this week. He thoroughly researched photos of hundreds of female celebrities with fake boobs to help plastic surgeons create perfect-looking breasts for clients. (Millions of guys do this job on the Internet, and he’s apparently the only one who gets paid for it.) Speaking to the Breast Enlargement Conference (yes!), he said he’d found the ideal breast job is a “45-55 percent proportion,” with the nipple at least 45 percent from the top and not at the halfway mark or lower.

He also declared British model Caprice to have the best fake boobs in showbiz (they’re absolutely capricious), while the worst are Victoria Beckham’s, which are “unnaturally round.” I tend to agree. Of course, they look that way because in honor of her husband, she had two soccer balls installed.

Also, her nipples are in the bottom 10 percent.

This researcher had wanted to study female celebrities with real breasts, but, unfortunately, he couldn’t find any.

THE RULES OF ATTRACTION: HIGHS AND LOWS

McMaster University in Canada studied the Hadza tribe of Tanzania and found that men with deeper voices had more children than men with higher-pitched voices. Researchers said previous studies found that women find males with deeper voices to be more attractive, judging them to be older, healthier and more dominant and masculine. Also, men perceive women with higher voices as more attractive, subordinate (!), feminine, healthier and younger.

Okay, then, I want to know why Jessica Rabbit, the most seductive cartoon character ever, was voiced by Kathleen Turner, not Jennifer Tilly or the woman who voices Minnie Mouse. And why have men traditionally been attracted to sultry-voiced women like Lauren Bacall and Susan Hayward?

Conversely, why did women like the Bee Gees in the ‘70s? Sting sounds as though he’s on helium, yet he’s perceived to be all the things on the above laundry list. And look at Mick Jagger and Robert Plant: they don’t have deep voices, and I’ll bet they’ve got more children than anybody. Some they don’t even know about.

I personally tend to like lower voices, for both men and women. My husband has worked in radio and doesn’t have the basso profundo “voice of God” announcer’s voice, but it’s still pretty low. It makes him more attractive to me than he’d be with a high voice. On the other hand, he doesn’t have kids. I think this may be another one of those studies in which subjective conclusions have been drawn. Or maybe those conclusions are just particularly true in Tanzania.

STUPID MAN COMPARES OLD WIFE TO NEW

A 43-year-old man in Johor state, Malaysia, was in bed with his 48-year-old wife when he began unfavorably comparing her sex skills with those of his new, younger, second wife. Bad idea!

Wife #1 became enranged, grabbed a kitchen knife and nearly deprived him of his manliness. He managed to get to the hospital and have it sewn securely back in place.

Though the wife could get up to three years in jail, she’s not worried. All she needs is one woman on the jury. Then it’s “justifiable penicide.”

Men, listen up. Never, I repeat, NEVER, compare your older first wife to your younger second wife. Especially when you are naked, and there’s a kitchen knife within reach.

STILL TOO FAT FOR THE RUNWAY

Have you seen the billboards that show anorexic French actress Isabelle Caro nude? The shocking pictures of this emaciated woman are captioned with the slogan, “NO TO ANOREXIA.” There’s a magazine ad, too, and Caro has been featured on Entertainment Tonight and other TV shows. Critics say girls might look at Caro as a role model because she’s getting to be a celebrity, and they have a point. But photographer Oliviero Toscani said that girls with anorexia who look at it would say to themselves that they have to stop dieting, not that they have to look like Isabelle Caro.

My thought is that girls with anorexia will say to themselves that Isabelle Caro looks fat.

Or maybe they’ll look at the pictures and say, “Hey, I’m not that thin... I’d like to be…”

I’ve seen what she looks like, and it’s a skeleton with some skin stretched over it. I don’t know how this woman is still alive. In fact, my theory is that she’s not actually alive. I think there’s been some taxidermy involved. She’s been stuffed and mounted.

Well, mounted.

THE BRITISH ARE PHYSICAL WRECKS

A study by the gym chain L.A. Fitness has found that the fitness of Britons has reached a new low: 53 percent can’t touch their toes, 68 percent can’t do 20 sit-ups, 60 percent can’t carry their weekly shopping home from the supermarket, and a quarter of British women are too fat to fasten their own bras. It has occurred to me that these are the very women who really need to wear bras! I suppose many of them just give up and wear tube tops.

The Brits seriously need to start getting in shape. Here’s one suggestion: If they’re having trouble carrying home their groceries, maybe they should stop buying so much food.

Next: In October’s Allure magazine: Plastic surgery obsession from the doctor’s point of view.

Don't Believe Your Eyes...Or Anyone Else's

2007-10-07T03:50:00.000-05:00

I’ve just watched two absolute must-see videos. The first one, Onslaught, a Dove film at campaignforrealbeauty.com, opens with a closeup of a lovely fresh-faced girl, maybe about 9 or 10 years old, and then takes off into a bombardment of edgy media images at breakneck pace: flawless faces, perfect bodies in tiny bikinis, and “transformed” skin, interspersed with yo-yo weight loss and even a brief flash of the toilet bowl as it awaits an upchucked meal. (This all happens so fast that one may need several viewings to take it all in.) It ends with another shot of the young girl with her friends as they walk to school and the message, “Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does.”

Bravo, Dove! Of course, it has to be said that Dove is a part of the beauty industry, but they deserve a huge commendation for their unique approach.

Several months ago, I was surprised by the cynical reaction to the Dove campaign expressed by an acquaintance of mine. “I can just see the executives and ad people sitting around the table, talking about how they need to position their company to cut through the clutter,” she said (I’m paraphrasing here), her eyes rolling. “That’s all it’s really about.” And she considered it exploitative to show the women of various body types in their underwear.

I must confess -- cynic though I am -- that I love the Dove Campaign For Real Beauty. The quest for perfection forced on us from all sides can be so damaging; this campaign shows how we can be suckered by it and helps us find our way back to the real world. Even if, in the end, it is just a way to sell products, at least it’s the right way. May they break all sales records with this campaign.

Dove has another great video that rapidly details the amazing powers of Photoshop to “beautify” a woman’s face. It’s called Evolution, and it's been on their website for some time; but there’s a new one, not associated with Dove, that does the same thing with a woman’s entire body. It’s called The Power Of Photoshop. Unless you’re a professional photographer who’s already skilled at this process, you have to see it to believe it.

In the video, an extremely heavy woman is posing with much of her ample flesh exposed. The Photoshop artist gradually reproportions the woman’s body and face, much as a sculptor chips away at a block of marble to create his vision of Aphrodite. The woman’s dimply skin becomes flawless, her breasts are lifted and shaped, her dark hair triples in volume as her hips become one-third their original size, and the light around her glows like hundreds of buttery candles. She has become a completely different woman, and the effect is totally realistic. Now, she’s ready to post her picture on eharmony.com.

Wow, this is even faster weight loss than they promise in those ads for weight-loss products. No hunger, no surgery, no sagging skin, and the weight stays off!

I’m urging every woman to watch this, in the hope that she’ll never try to compete with Photoshopped media images again.

*************************

A WORM’S-EYE VIEW OF TIME

As any reader of this blog knows, I follow the Perricone Prescription. That means no sugar or other high-glycemic foods and plenty of antioxidants, both in food and as supplements. I think it’s had quite a remarkable effect, not just on how I look but on my overall health, so much so that I even sing an aria, “O Worship Dr. Perricone,” in my show.

Scientifically, Perricone has been on the cutting edge, but the jury is still out on some of his recommendations. For example, the German Institute of Human Nutrition says that a key to living longer might be giving up sweets and – here’s the surprising part – avoiding vitamins.

At least, if you’re a worm.

In their study, they blocked the ability of worms to process glucose, with the result that they (the worms, not the researchers) lived 25 percent longer. In a human, that translates into about 15 years. The scientists found that restricting sugar at first caused the worms to build up free radicals that cause aging. You’d think that would be a bad thing, but their bodies responded by building up stronger, long-lasting defenses. This might explain why taking antioxidant vitamins to wipe out free radicals doesn’t seem to help people live longer. The researchers said, “The bad thing in the end promotes something good.”

So it seems to me that, if you restrict sugar and take antioxidants, you won’t live longer, but you will look younger when you die. Very important if you want an open casket. You should have seen how young these worms looked – you wouldn’t even have known they were segmented! They looked unsegmented!

Actually, I know what preserves worms best of all. Tequila.

To Gray Or Not To Gray

2007-10-03T06:51:00.000-05:00

Did you know that the typical mega-bookstore has an entire section devoted to aging? It's true! You see, it's very important to age in exactly the right way, because every choice you make is going to be a political and personal statement, loaded with implications about your values. I just found this out in an article called "The War Over Going Gray" by Anne Kreamer, who has also written an entire book on how your hair should age. It's called Going Gray.

Kreamer, after coloring her hair for over 20 years, decided to stop doing it. "I found to my surprise," she says, "that by visually challenging my peers (if I was really gray, so must they be!), I unwittingly landed myself on the front lines of a public struggle - literally superficial but at the same time almost existentially meaningful to American women - with the vicissitudes of age."

She says she encountered two reactions: "a sort of proud, sometimes, sanctimonious right-on-sister enthusiasm from fellow gray-haired women," and "an equally proud, sometimes resentful don't-judge-my-choices-I-do-this-to-feel-good-about-me defensiveness in the comments of the committed-to-dyeing cohort."

"Hardly anyone was lukewarm in their reactions," she continues, "which suggests to me we may have a contentious new baby-boomer argument over gray hair that is as mutually judgmental as the mommy wars between working and stay-at-home mothers was in the 1980s and '90s."

Again with the boomer thing. Never mind that the youngest boomers -- many of whom, I'm sure, are graying now -- were three years old during the Summer Of Love. Among even the oldest boomers, I'll bet I could find a few who weren't cutting class to join sit-ins or dropping acid at Woodstock. Nevertheless, there's an assumption that all the baby boomers used to be hippies and they'd be selling out, man, to do something as dishonest as color their hair! It's ironic: former flower children are obligated to say goodbye to the hair they had as children. The kids who believed they should "never trust anyone over 30" are now forced to deal with the politics of age. Well, what goes around comes around.

I know I live in Dallas, home of the hair that's big and blond, but have I completely missed something? Where is the existential meaning in the decision about hair color? Why is hair color an "age thing" at all? High school girls color their hair. High school boys color their hair. Twelve-year-old girls get highlights, just for fun. Most women of all ages change the color of their hair or at least enhance it in some way.

Women go gray "in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond." Hair color, including the way it changes through the years, is a genetic trait. Raven-haired Lara Flynn Boyle has said in an interview that her hair turned totally white in her twenties but that she chose to keep it dark. (I agree that the dark hair is very dramatic against her fair skin.) But all-over silver hair can beautiful at any age; I think women such as Emmylou Harris who attain it at a young age and look beautiful in it are lucky. And just think - if you're tall, skinny, have great skin and beautiful white hair, you can be quite successful modeling for Chico's.

I didn't get the "white hair" gene. My poker-straight blond hair, about a decade ago, started turning a little darker and more ashy. I had it highlighted for awhile, but so many Dallas women are blond that I'm glad I made the decision eight years ago to turn it a vibrant but natural-looking red. It makes me feel good. It makes my eyes look bluer. And the shade suits my overall coloring so well that most of the people I've met in the past eight years are stunned when I tell them I'm not a real redhead.

Judging from my eyebrows, the hair on my head is probably coming in an ashy-blondy-brownish color. If I stopped coloring it, the occasional gray hairs that might be there would probably blend in and look like subtle highlights, if they were noticed at all. My mom didn't get much gray in her taupe-colored hair until very late in life, so I probably won't, either. I'll never have Emmylou Harris hair. I have as much chance of that as of having curly hair. Or thick hair, drat.

Never did I dream that by coloring my hair I was being dishonest in any way or making some kind of personal statement about aging. But it seems I have been, without even realizing it!

Kreamer points out that of the 16 female U.S. Senators, not a single one has visible gray hair, though they range in age from 46 to 74. Of the 70 female members of the House, only seven have gray hair. "Political professionals," she reports, "say that the double standard is a great unspoken inequity but that candidates and officeholders don't dare publicly discuss it for fear of seeming trivial."

What double standard? There may presently be, percentage-wise, more gray-haired men than gray-haired women in office, but that number is going down as more and more men feel the pressure to look young and vital. Ronald Reagan dyed his hair. (The joke was that he'd gone "prematurely orange.") I'm sure quite a few men in Congress do. I'd be willing to bet Mitt Romney's coloring the gray, and my hunch is that other Presidential candidates - not just Hillary Clinton -- are, too. Joe Biden got a hair transplant. And imagine how many toupees there must be among politicians! How many men in politics are being "dishonest" by covering their male pattern baldness?

Kreamer's article paraphrases Clairol's in-house creative director of color and style as saying that one powerful motivator of gray-haired women to dye their hair is to live the fantasy that they're still 30 or 35 instead of 45 or 60. (This statement chafes me for so many reasons that if I were currently using Clairol hair coloring, I'd switch to another brand.) She says that rather than sell it as a fantasy or lie, the postmodern beauty industry casts artificial color as a means of expressing a deeper truth about who one is.

Gee. I color mine because it's fun, it looks striking on stage and, as previously noted, it makes my eyes look bluer.

Rose Weitz, who wrote Rapunzel's Daughters: What Women's Hair Tells Us About Women's Lives (Jeez, another book on aging hair??), says, "Even if, in the abstract, we think we look all right with gray hair, we nonetheless feel as if we are losing our 'real selves' if we no longer have our 'real hair color' - the color we had when we were young and looked our best." If that's true, I should want to be blonde forever. And who says we "looked our best" back then, anyway? Some of us did. Some look better today.

Interestingly, Kreamer notes that when she tested gray hair vs. brown hair on Match.com, posting the pictures three months apart, she had much more success as the gray-haired version of herself. (She gave her age accurately for each posting.) Three times as many men in New York City, Chicago and even Los Angeles were interested in the "gray" Kreamer. She speculates that her honesty made her seem refreshing and accessible, or that perhaps her gray hair made her stand out among all the fake, colored hair.

Both of those possibilities may be true. But an additional consideration is that the gray just looks really good on her. Did she ever think about that?

Probably not. In her article, she says, "These days, choosing not to dye has become a statement rather than a casual stylistic choice."

She obviously didn't talk to me. But I'm telling you now that, down the road, as I get more gray in my hair, my decision about coloring it will be nothing more than a casual stylistic choice. My hair color will never be a political statement. It will not reveal my numerical age. It will not clue others in to my opinions any more than my numerical age does.

And to you gray-hairs out there, dyed or not: Unless you're in a field that demands employees who look as if they're straight from Central Casting, I recommend that you get over yourself and stop overanalyzing this issue. Do whatever you like with your hair. It's not that important. Really.

Kreamer didn't talk to my friend Lu, either. Lu is a longtime Dallas folksinger and songwriter who has straight, thick, uniformly gray hair. It's not a dramatic white or silver, just light gray. She wears it in a distinctive short cut that looks good on her. (For those who care how old she is, she's 80, though she looks many years younger, even with the gray.) I asked her about the to-dye-or-not-to-dye question; does she keep her natural color as a personal statement, or what?

Her attitude was very much like mine. She's not making any statement; she just chose to do what she liked. I saw an old picture of her with brown hair, and I have to say, I like the gray better on her. The lighter color is eye-catching, and she stands out in the crowd.

She could go blonde, and I'd say the same thing.

Fighting Ageism With Dancing Parrots

2007-09-26T05:38:00.000-05:00

Too busy for much blogging the past couple of days, but here's something fun to share with you. A website associated with the Dallas Morning News put together a video profile on me that turned out very cute. Kudos to Allen Houston, who shot it and put it together. It includes clips of Cady, the footless wonder cockatiel, singing her little heart out and of Aussie the cockatoo dancing to "Let's Misbehave" by Cliff Edwards (aka Ukelele Ike and Jiminy Cricket). How much more entertainment does any human need?

Click here to watch it.

New Modeling Star Is Barely 13

2007-09-22T04:42:00.000-05:00

Maddison Gabriel has blue eyes, dark blond hair, and is 5-foot 7. That’s not very tall for a model, but in this case, she could still grow a few inches. She just turned 13 years old.

Chosen when she was 12 to be the official ambassador of Gold Coast Fashion Week in Queensland, Australia, she apparently wore a number of revealing outfits during the event. How revealing? I don’t know, but I’d be willing to bet they wouldn’t have met the dress code at my middle school.

Her participation has sparked strong debate in Australia, with Prime Minister John Howard deeming it unacceptable. “Catapulting girls as young as 12 into something like that is outrageous,” he said. “There should be age limits -- I mean there has to be -- we do have to preserve some notion of innocence in our society.” Europe has set an age limit of 16 for appearing on catwalks (I didn’t know that); he wants Australia to do the same.

But Maddison’s mom has demanded an apology from the Prime Minister. He’s getting “very doddery,” she says. “He does not know exactly what 13 and 14-year-old girls are like. I used to vote for him. We’re trying to get our teenage daughters to act older.”

Why? So old rich guys will want to date them?

Fashion Week spokesman Kelly Wieler said, “Maddy got in because she was the best contestant. The judges saw that she was fit to do the job.” She added that Maddy wouldn’t be modeling swimwear or lingerie. (She didn’t mention that many designer clothes look just like lingerie and are just as revealing.)

As for Maddison, she feels she deserved to win and become the “face” of the show. “I believe that I can fit into women’s clothes, I can model women’s clothes, so I should be able to do it, she insisted. “It doesn’t matter about age. It matters that you can do the job. Modeling is all I’ve wanted to do since I was six. I don’t think I’m too young.”

If she can fit into women’s clothes, it’s because most of them seem designed for women who are built like 12-year-olds. And even though I’ve said many times and believe with my whole heart that “it doesn’t matter about age,” I am always talking about the world of adults. This is another issue entirely.

For me, the most important question to ask is why the “face” of this women’s fashion event is that of a barely 13-year-old girl. “Best” is subjective; why was she considered the “best” contestant? She’s a cute girl, and if this were a junior fashion show, she would be perfect. But this event is for grownup women, and I don’t understand why grownup women are supposed to aspire to look like a seventh-grader, albeit a very tall one playing dress-up in mommy’s makeup and heels.

This attitude about fashion and beauty is not unique to Australia. Here in Dallas, we have an annual event called the Fashion!Dallas/Kim Dawson model search. (Fashion!Dallas is part of The Dallas Morning News, and the Kim Dawson Agency is a local modeling agency.) Each year, hundreds of contestants show up at a mall to have their pictures snapped. There are specific height and age requirements. Judges select the finalists, whose pictures appear in the paper. Readers get to vote for their faves and select two Readers’ Choice winners, but the judges pick the actual winner or winners. This is a big deal; being chosen can really jump-start a career in modeling. Case in point: the first year’s winner, Erin Wasson, who went on to be a top international model.

The age threshold for a girl entering this contest is 14; the cutoff age is, I think, 21. Last year, the girl who won, Ali Michael, was – you guessed it -- 14.

I’m reminded of myself at 14, certainly tall enough to model after growing six inches in one year! My height was 5-foot-9, considerably taller than most of the boys (alas), and I was to grow another inch. I was skinny, too, with blue eyes and long, straight, very blonde hair. But I was painfully shy, absolutely naïve, and certainly no fashion plate; Mom made most of my clothes. I’d gotten contact lenses but was a year or so away from wearing makeup. Maybe someone could’ve gotten hold of me then and made a model out of me, but I’m glad nobody did. I was a baby – way too young. I wasn’t at all ready to be a model in the very adult and sometimes rough world of fashion.

Today, though, the fashion world actually seems to prefer babies to wear its grownup clothes. It’s not my imagination – the models really are getting younger. In real life, some of these models wouldn’t even be old enough to wear a prom dress.

By amazing coincidence (I’d already started writing this piece), today’s paper features this year’s finalists in the Model Search. There are a dozen finalists this year, all girls, ranging in age from 14 to 20. The 20-year-old, a 5-foot-11 brunette named Ren Vokes, is described as the “elder statesman” of the group. “Everyone here is 14 and I’m 20,” she observes. “I feel like an old person for the first time in my life.”

Cry me a river.

Not all the other girls are 14, but most are 14-16. Looking at their headshots, I’d think they all could get work as professional models. (An interesting aside: one of the 14-year-olds is Asian, and she still has Eastern-style eyes, with no fold. I wonder if this pretty girl will feel pressure to change that.) In the photos, they all look closer in age than they actually are. I don’t have a favorite to win, but I’d be more likely to bet on one at the lower end of the age range than the upper end.

I can remember, way back in the Jurassic Period, when teenage model Brooke Shields created a scandal just by saying, “Know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.” It was widely thought that she was too young to do such a suggestive ad. Times have changed. Young teens now look to such stunning role models as Paris Hilton as their fashion icons.

Even so, my concern is less for the extremely young girls involved in modeling than for the grownup women who feel compelled to try to look like them. Think about it: even a 30-year-old woman is surrounded by images of girls half her age. Some of these models are in ads for anti-aging products.

What is wrong with this picture?

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Next time: “To Gray Or Not To Gray…that is the question,” and you better get the answer right because it’s an incredibly significant personal statement and a matter of political correctness. Or so I’ve read.

Facing Spiegel's "Reality," Beestung Breasts & Other News

2007-09-20T05:30:00.000-05:00

The Spiegel catalog has just arrived - I get one about every three days - and once again, there's a section called "Reality Dressing - fabulous at every age!" As you might guess, it's one of my biggest pet peeves. This one has eight full pages of how to dress in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and "ageless," which I assume is code for 70 and over.

It starts with a two-page spread featuring one women from each of the age groups; for example, the 50s are represented by Beverly Johnson, "legendary model." (This is one of those rare gigs for 50-plus models.) The other women are not professional models. They include a pediatric nurse, a real estate broker, a copy editor and a retired teacher. The 40s are represented by Lynette Lewis, author of "Climbing the Ladder in Stilettos," though she appears to be wearing a medium-height heel. All the women, from 20 to "ageless," look polished, confident and attractive.

They're all dressed in "casual chic" for fall: black pants with lots of leather. But there's a problem: I'm supposed to see how they illustrate "leather in every look for every age," but for the life of me, I can't see what it is that makes the clothes appropriate for their particular age group. As long as these women have essentially the same body shape, any one of them could wear any of the outfits. And if they could, why have they been divided into decades? I don't see the point of this whole exercise.

I personally would wear any of the outfits on these two pages, except maybe the boxy red jacket they put on the "ageless" woman, simply because I think big jackets overwhelm my willowy build. I feel swallowed by them, and would "at any age." Ditto the super-wide pants on the 60s woman.

The next two-page spread features a lineup of put-together outfits - no models here, just the clothes - with one supposedly for the 20s, one for the 30s, and on through "ageless." I'd wear the 20s and 40s outfits but definitely not the 30s, 60s or "ageless" ones. (Oops, they seem to have left out the 50s! Whatever will Beverly Johnson wear?)

The next two-page spread has another lineup, this time of "9-to-5 looks for every age and every style." None of these are my style. One possible exception is the 20s look, but it has those floppy, wide pants. An outfit that might look chic on someone - someone who isn't me -- is the black "ageless" pantsuit, which could look quite smart for the right business occasion. But with its matching long coat, it's so covered-up. Any long coat tends to make me think of Bea Arthur, and black pantsuits remind me of Hillary Clinton. As for the outfits for 30s, 40s and 50s, they look matronly and would add about 20 pounds - some might say 20 years -- to anyone's frame. (Again, these clothes are shown without models.) I would never wear them, "at any age."

Moving on to the next two-page spread, we come to my favorite part. The catalog takes one article of clothing, in this case a leopard-print "trapeze" jacket, and shows it used appropriately for the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s. (Oops, this time they left out "ageless"!) And for each decade, they thoughtfully provide an appropriate adjective.

In your 20s, you want to be "edgy." In your 30s, "sophisticated." The 40s are "elegant." The 50s are "adventurous." Finally, in your 60s, it's time to be "dramatic." And, believe it or not, for the woman in her 60s, they pair the leopard-print jacket with A LEOPARD-PRINT SKIRT. My Lord! Even SCTV's Edith Prickley wore a tasteful black skirt with her leopard jacket. That's right, I am telling you that even Edith Prickley had enough taste to know that top-to-toe leopard would've been too much! What are they thinking??? And why didn't they include a matching, leopard-print pillbox hat?

I've tried to cultivate a wardrobe that manages to be edgy, sophisticated, elegant, adventurous and dramatic, all on a limited budget. Ironically, many of my clothes come from the Newport News catalog. Newport News is part of Spiegel.

So, listen up, Spiegel. I am not a demographic category. I have always been and will continue to be "ageless." Stop defining a woman by her decade of life. I hate it, and I'm sure many other women are sick of it, too. Your "Reality Dressing" pages are a prime example of the age-obsession that drives me insane.

It's not my reality at all.

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BEE STING DEFLATES BREAST, AND OTHER NEWS

Southern China City News reports that a woman from Miaoli, Taiwan, was riding her motorcycle while wearing a low-cut dress when a bee stung her on the breast. "My right breast disappeared in one day," she said of her saline implant. I understand this was so traumatic for her, she broke out in hives. Her surgeon said this is very unusual, but the woman is very skinny, and her thin skin was stretched tightly over the implant. (Bet that looked natural!) Ironically, her natural breasts were exactly the size of bee stings. The doctor replaced her implant but advised her to avoid acupuncture. Also, lapel pins.

Victoria Beckham should be warned about this.

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Speaking of breast implants, did you know that the Australian military has given taxpayer-funded breast implants to some of its female sailors? (Maybe they take it out of the budget for torpedoes.) A spokesman defended this practice, saying plastic surgery is provided where there are compelling medical, dental or psychological reasons. He said suggestions that they're trying to make the female sailors look sexy are not only wrong, but insulting.

Of course, suggestions that the sailors don't look sexy are also wrong and insulting.

The spokesman also noted that in an emergency, breast implants can double as flotation devices. And women who've had the surgery don't have to admit it. The policy regarding plastic surgery is strictly, "Don't ask, don't tell."

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More implant news: The Hindustan Times reports that Indian men have noticed women looking at their butts, and they're getting self-conscious about it. A doctor at one cosmetic surgery clinic said that for every seven female patients he sees, there are now two men coming in for butt treatments. "Butt therapy" can involve anything from liposuction and toning/firming to hair and scar removal. A few men have even gone in for implants, but so far, not many. Probably just Bollywood actors.

If this doctor wants more male patients for this procedure, he should tell them that butt implants will help align their lower chakras.

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A Cosmopolitan magazine survey of over 5,000 Australian women found that they are unhappy with their bodies but don't know how to change them. Almost half said if they could change anything about their lives, it would be their bodies; 42 percent consider themselves overweight or obese. Yet a quarter of the women exercise once a month or less, and nearly half don't eat fruit every day. One in six women prefer chocolate to sex, and one in ten would rather skip a meal than give up alcohol to lose weight. Yet 10 percent said they're so depressed about their bodies, they'd give up four or more years of their lives to lose weight. Presumably, they mean the years they'd have to spend on a weight-loss diet.

Realistically, as long as women are this depressed, is there any way they could give up cheesecake? Not to mention chocolate -- if it's better than sex, giving it up would be worse than death. I can also see why they'd rather give up food than booze: food reminds them they're fat, while booze helps them forget they're fat. With these habits, they may indeed lose four or more years of their lives, and still die fat.

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Speaking of chocolate, a psychologist at England's University of Bristol says that despite what chocoholics think, chocolate is not literally addictive. He said some people may think they have no control over their craving for it, but the compounds in chocolate that produce a buzz in the brain are found in higher concentrations in other foods, such as cheese and avocados, which are not generally thought of as addictive foods.

This doesn't explain the people who would do anything for a Klondike bar. But I think it's probably the same as with nuts: sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't.

I also believe there may be people addicted to avocados. I no longer eat chocolate (it causes my migraines-drat!!), but I can polish off a pretty generous bowl of guacamole. Especially if it has a little cheese on it.

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Finally, the Northern Italian town of Piobbico has unveiled a monument to ugly people. It's sponsored by the World Association of Ugly People, an Italian-born group that has spread around the world. Their motto: A person is what he is and not what he looks like. So instead of a monument showing a good-looking movie star or dashing war hero, this monument depicts "a person who is just as beautiful, but only on the inside."

It will be unveiled, then immediately veiled again. Oh, and the person they have chosen wins a free Extreme Makeover.

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Next time: the new star of fashion modeling. She just turned 13.

Weighing In On Britney, Madonna & Demi

2007-09-18T06:00:00.000-05:00

I've seen footage of Britney Spears as a little girl, singing confidently and on-key. After she'd had a few hits, I saw her sing live on "Saturday Night Live," just sitting on a stool with a hand-held microphone, and thought she did a good job. But Britney's appeal has been more about her hot dancer's body and her choreography - some nice moves, but certainly not too difficult for most high school drill teams to pull off -- than about her voice.

In case you are Amish or from the planet Neptune, I should mention that the voice we've heard on CDs and in concert was created in a studio. (To find out how modern hit songs are manufactured, just click here.) In concert or on TV, Britney is always lip-synching to a backing track. If you think that's because she can't be expected to sing while she's dancing, you haven't ever been to a Broadway show. And her songs, while catchy in the beginning, are now just tuneless and annoying attempts to be seductive, delivered in that generic overproduced whisper that also marks the "music" of Janet Jackson and countless other pop and hip-hop artists who really don't have much voice at all. (To be fair to Britney, these other artists also lip-synch.)

I don't know what happened to Britney's voice. Maybe she just got so accustomed to lip-synching that she lost her confidence for singing live. Or maybe she spends so much time in loud clubs, talking over music, smoking Marlboros and pouring hard liquor down her throat, that she's fried her vocal chords. Whatever the reason, Britney is a musical performer who never sings.

So what does she have left? Her ability to lip-synch, her smooth dance moves, her hot, sexy body? As we saw on the recent MTV Music Video Awards show, the lip-synching and the dance moves didn't come off well. Some of the choreography didn't come off at all. Later, it was revealed that Britney was 4-1/2 hours late to rehearsal and showed up with a frozen margarita in her hand after clubbing all night. She has only herself to blame for that, but with all the personal trauma she's been through in recent years, self-inflicted or not, and the constant public scrutiny, I'm wondering whether--deep down--she even wants to be on stage. (Check out late-night host Craig Ferguson's monologue on the relentless criticism and joking about Britney.) If she doesn't, she should go somewhere secluded, find some serious help, and get her life together. This will take some time. There are plenty of attractive girls with talent who'd love to be pop superstars and who would definitely show up for rehearsal.

She did make the cover of Entertainment Weekly, and the feature story is all about her, but I'm sorry: there is such a thing as bad publicity, and this is it.

Some might say that Britney's missing rehearsal was a sign of her overconfidence. I speculate that it was the opposite. This was to be The Comeback, and she must've been feeling more pressure than she could handle. So she avoided the situation, preferring to down drink after drink of liquid confidence to get herself up on that stage. Yeah, that helped. Good plan.

So, simply through lack of preparedness, her dance moves didn't click. She wasn't sure of the lyrics, either, even though they seemed to consist of nothing more than "gimme, gimme, gimme," so at some point she simply stopped mouthing them.

That leaves her hot, sexy body.

The Internet has exploded with comments, pro and con, about Britney's appearance on that show. They range from "Most women would kill to have that body" (probably true) to "Britney is a fat tub of lard" (a gross exaggeration). Most of the "fat" remarks have been incredibly snide, and I'd be willing to bet that most were made by people who weigh more than Britney. Weight seems to be something that no one can get exactly right, and yet it's sooooo important. Opinions vary, and everyone has to "weigh in."

Two pregnancies - along with, it must be said, mass quantities of fried chicken and tater tots - had wrought havoc on Britney's trim, sexy body long before the MTV show, but she had gotten herself into pretty fair shape for The Comeback. It was revealed later that she rejected the flattering outfit created for her as "not sexy enough" in favor of the tiny black bra and little-boy shorts she must've been carrying around in her purse. That must've been the margaritas talking. Or maybe it was the outfit she'd been clubbing in the night before.

The body that might have looked stunning in the other outfit definitely lost its "wow factor" in the bra-and-shorts. Britney doesn't seem to understand what "sexy" is. It's not getting out of a limo in a short skirt and no panties. It's not wearing as little clothing as you can get away with on TV, especially if the outfit is unflattering. In other words, this discussion shouldn't even be about Britney's weight. It should be about her taste and her judgment.

Also, have you noticed that the emphasis on super-thinness seems confined to white girls? Beyonce has a little extra poundage - temporarily lost to shoot "Dreamgirls," but now comfortably back on -- and so does Jennifer Lopez. They are both considered sexy. Queen Latifah's career hasn't been hurt by her size. It's only the white singers who have to be matchstick thin. I just read a capsule review of white blues singer Joss Stone that mentioned she'd finally lost her baby fat; would that have been said of a black singer? Unlike Britney, Joss Stone is a tremendous talent, but we're still talking about her weight.

When looking at Britney's career, it might be useful to compare her with Madonna. Both started as hot, young dancer/singers with lithe bodies and small voices. Both had the early success in pop music that's typically associated with flashes-in-the-pan. Both appealed to a young, fickle demographic. Yet Madonna built on her early success, while Britney soon faltered. I'd say - and Madonna would no doubt agree - that the critical difference was Madonna's steely determination and singlemindedness. Critics say that Madonna has constantly "reinvented herself" (a term I hate; I'll have to write about that sometime), but I don't think that's it. Her various incarnations were always expressions of the Madonna we knew; the important thing is that she grew as an artist. By the time she sang the torch song "Sooner Or Later" for the film Dick Tracy, her voice had become a lovely thing. The chirpiness heard on early hits such as "Borderline" was gone, replaced by a rich, emotional, mature sound. She sings live in concert, though probably with a backing track, and she's kept her dancer's body, even at almost twice Britney's age.

Ironically, the very maturity that transformed her voice has been her biggest liability in the pop music world. Now in her late 40s, Madonna is the brunt of jokes about her age. It doesn't even seem to matter that she's kept her body in top form. Weight is something virtually all of us can do something about, but age...well. No one, repeat, NO ONE can turn back the clock.

Case in point: Demi Moore, who is in the news. (If an over-40 actress is in the news, you can bet the subject will be age.) In the London Daily Mail, Lucretia Munro writes that four years after undergoing a massively expensive, top-to-toe makeover, Demi has failed to win the big Hollywood roles she'd hoped for. It's estimated that she spent close to half a million dollars on personal trainers, nutritionists, yoga instructors and various surgical and cosmetic procedures. Those who follow such things say she even had an operation on her knees to lift the sagging skin. Demi showed off her lean, sexy body in 2003, emerging from the sea in a skimpy bikini for Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.

Since that time, she's appeared in only two films, with two more to be released this fall, while ex-husband Bruce Willis (almost a decade older than she) has appeared in 13.

Demi has said she hoped to overturn the belief that juicy roles should not be given to older actresses, but it doesn't seem to be working out that way, even though she's looking great. And the problem seems to be unique to Hollywood; European filmmakers tend to care much less about it. "If we are told we are not valuable once we hit 30, it is a problem," Demi said. "We have to say, 'I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore.'"

The same article quotes Sharon Stone as saying, "When I went to the Oscars, it was like, 'Oh, there's been an archeological dig and look what we've found, a 40-year-old."

Her body looks great, too, but you don't see too many Sharon Stone movies coming out these days, do you? So maybe Britney Spears should just concentrate on looking like a normal, healthy woman, growing up, finding better friends, getting to know her kids, seeing a good therapist and living a happy life. Even if she starved herself into a size 2 and decided to get serious about a comeback, she'd have to realize that untalented pop stars have an even shorter shelf life than Hollywood actresses.

Redheads & African Greys

2007-09-14T07:46:00.000-05:00

With all the appearance-related issues thrown at us every day, there's one I didn't even know existed until now. And it applies to me.

My unofficial British correspondent, Paul, informed me a few days ago that the British have a "thing" about redheads. It seems they fear them. The next day, the Dallas Morning News ran an article (by Shelley Emling, Cox Newspapers) about this very thing! According to Emling, Simon Cheetham, founder of http://www.redandproud.com/, is working to counter discrimination against redheads. "In the politically-correct world, you can't say anything about people's religion or sexuality, but it's still okay here in Britain to portray redheads in a negative manner," he says.

I was shocked. This is the same observation I've made many times about age. Race, religion, sexual orientation are off-limits, while someone who's "aging" - in Hollywood, that's over 30 -- is fair game. Now, I see that having red hair can spark the same kind of criticism. But why?

There are theories. In the Middle Ages, redheads were often thought to be witches. In Elizabethan times, Shakespeare used red wigs to denote menacing characters. Redhead-hate could also have something to do with British hostility toward Scotland, where about 13 percent of the population has red hair, compared to about 1 percent of the entire world. In England, a redhead is referred to condescendingly as a "ginger."

The article cites several examples of extreme, violent and just plain nutty attacks on redheads. Embling says that the disdain for redheads can be so great that one of the first questions asked of new parents is whether or not their baby is a ginger.

If I take "My Ship" to England, there will have to be a special segment of the monologue devoted to this issue. I go to a lot of trouble to turn my blond hair red, because the red looks great and suits me so well. There are numerous natural redheads on my mom's side of the family, and my skin and eyes fit the redhead template. My little niece has precious apricot-colored hair. So I wrote a poem that would make Ogden Nash proud:

In not making me ginger-haired,
Nature erred.

Hmm...I've just realized that my poem rhymes only if "erred" is said the way I pronounce it. For those of you who pronounce it the other way, here's another poem:

In not making me a ginger bird,
Nature erred.

Hmm...that works only if you know that "bird" is British slang for "girl." And I'm not sure that "bird" is even used any more. But I wanted to use the word "bird" because it allows me to segue into the next story...

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I have to warn you, it's a sad story, maybe sadder for me than for you, but sad nonetheless. You may wonder what it's doing in a blog about age and beauty, but trust me - I'll get to that.

The story is about Alex, the famous African grey parrot who showed through his use of words his ability to conceptualize. Under the longtime tutelage of Dr. Irene Pepperberg, Ph.D, Alex learned many things that most people would think are beyond the ability of a bird - or any nonhuman -- to understand. Say you had a tray with a small red key, a large green key, and a yellow square. If you asked Alex what the objects were, he'd say, "Key, key, and 'four-corner.'" If you asked him what color the four-corner was, he'd say, "Yellow." If you showed him the two keys and asked, "Which color bigger, he'd answer, "Green." He could tell you what each object was made of. After every correct answer, he would tell you what he wanted as a reward. Dr. Pepperberg even gave him his own "computer" with which to select his favorite music and games.

Alex died last week; the cause is still not known. He was 31.

Now, you may think, "He was 31? Wow! Parrots sure live a long time!" But 31 is young for an African grey parrot. These birds can easily live twice that long in captivity. They're trying to find out why a seemingly healthy bird - he'd had a routine vet check two weeks before -- just suddenly died.

I have my own 18-year-old African grey, named Dorian Gray. Yes, I know; it's appropriate that I have a bird named after someone who never ages. I named him Dorian Gray for two reasons: (1) for the play on words, and (2) because as I grow older, he's always going to look pretty much the same, like Oscar Wilde's fictional character with the aging portrait in his attic. There's even a short segment in my show about parrots - a picture of me with Dorian comes up behind me - in which I mention that one reason I love having parrots as pets is that they can be with me for a long, long time.

But now I hear that Alex has died, and I'm stunned. I've shed quite a few tears over this loss. I'm reminded once again that age means so little, and that timetables are all in our heads.

Fortunately, there's quite a lot of video documentation of Alex; I hope you'll watch him in this short clip and this longer one with Alan Alda on PBS.

Alex's abilities come as no surprise to me after living with my own African grey and interacting with him every day. I write a regular column for the Companion Parrot Quarterly in which I've detailed much of what Dorian can do. I even wrote to Marilyn Vos Savant about him during a discussion of whether animals understand the concept of "name" when they respond to their names; she posted it on her website here.

I can't find the words to express how sad Alex's passing is to me. I'm sure Dr. Pepperberg must be in shock; I know I'd be inconsolable. But at least there was an "Alex." If there hadn't been, I'd be telling people stories about Dorian and they'd be rolling their eyes or patting me on the head and saying, "Sure, sure, of course he does that."

If I live for 50 more years (and that's the plan), that would put Dorian at 68, certainly within the normal lifespan of a healthy companion grey. So I hope we'll be old and gray together. I'll crack his seeds for him if he needs me to.

A Report From The Dallas Plastic Surgery Expo

2007-09-13T05:19:00.000-05:00

(Sorry to go for a while without a blog post, but it's been a very hectic week. More will coming very soon. In the meantime, I'm reposting something from the copious archives of my blog at my personal website. It's from my visit last October to the big (and I do mean BIG) Dallas Plastic Surgery Expo. Since it will probably be rolling around again soon, this will help get you prepared if you're planning to drop by and explore all the latest breakthroughs in epidermis peeling, organ inflating and botulism injecting. Enjoy!...)

SPECIAL REPORT! A VISIT TO THE DALLAS PLASTIC SURGERY EXPO!
(Or “Into the Beauty Jungle with Botox Gun and Camera”)

Whew! I almost missed the first-ever Dallas Plastic Surgery Expo, held a few weekends ago at the cavernous Market Hall. A large newspaper ad alerted me to this phenomenon just in time, and, of course, I immediately cleared my calendar, as it was time to set aside the frivolity for some serious research.

What a concept! I'd been to similar expos for home improvement and design, landscaping ideas, and even pet birds (I take in parrots in need of a home), but the idea of having one for midface rejuvenation and microdermabrasion seemed a bit surreal (although not dissimilar to the renovation expo). In retrospect, it appears to have been an inevitable development, at least for Dallas.

The most elaborate booths were for cosmetic surgery clinics. Huge monitors showed before-and-after pictures of noses, jawlines and breasts (some discreetly covering the nipples with black bars, others not). Dermatologists were also well represented. Surgeons and skin docs gave seminars throughout the day on such topics as breast augmentation (the most popular topic – with both women and men), rhinoplasty and Restylane. To his credit, one cosmetic surgeon even held a seminar on the things that can go wrong during a procedure.

There were surprised looks on the faces of some of the women working the booths, so I looked around to find out what was spooking them. Immediately, I realized that these women had seen absolutely nothing to warrant their looks of astonishment, which had instead been created and frozen into place by exaggerated browlifts and numerous syringes of Botox. If they had hoped to be living billboards for the miracle of cosmetic enhancement, they were just the opposite.

It's hard to know how much blame to give the doctors in such cases, at least for the Botox. I've discussed Botox with my dermatologist (though I haven't used it – honestly, and I say that with a completely straight face), and she tells me some patients say, "I want you to freeze everything!" This line is delivered not as a suggestion but as a command. She knows that if she doesn't make her clients happy, there are plenty of dermatologists who will. She explains to me that she does have some control over the level of paralysis - and that's what it is: PARALYSIS -- because it's partially determined by the placement of the needle. Fortunately, Botox does wear off, so, unlike a plastic surgeon doing an extreme browlift, she's not creating permanent disfigurement.

Still, with these perfectionist patients, the moment there's even the tiniest movement in the treated area, they're back for more injections. They have to spend every moment looking like a PhotoShopped picture - frozen in time, and just frozen, period. Some of these are very young people, too, and increasing numbers are men. My doctor told me about one very strange stepmom-and-stepson "couple" (?) who came in together and received thousands of dollars worth of Botox and fillers, leaving with perfectly smooth but totally immobile faces. I'm guessing they looked so much alike at that point that people would think not only that they were biologically mother and son, but that she had passed on some freakish genetic condition to him.

But I digress. There were other women working the booths who looked quite natural and lovely; it was only in the context of the event that I suspected they'd been somewhat lifted and Botoxed. Some would say that even this kinder-and-gentler improvement is somehow dishonest, but I have no problem with subtly softening nature's onslaughts. It's no more dishonest than whitening your teeth, getting highlights, lasering off that old tattoo of your ex-husband's name or using concealer to cover a pimple. As I try to convey in my show, we live in a world where people are evaluated and categorized by their youth and beauty, or lack thereof. Each of us has to decide how far we should reasonably go to deal with that reality. And any cosmetic procedure, along with one's choice of the doctor who performs it, should be very, very carefully considered. With surgical alteration, you can't go back.

The expo also included booths for vein therapy, antioxidant drinks, a variety of treatments such as Thermage and different types of lasers, a vibrating machine that's supposed to exercise and tone the body (used by Madonna! Write your own giant vibrator joke), and numerous new skincare lines. Yes, every week there are new skincare lines. If these products did what they claimed, why would we keep needing new ones? I think that, at this point, there must be enough skincare lines for each woman in America to have two or three of her very own, but still they come. Several skincare booths at the expo had samples for me to take home and try.

But I'm a hard sell. As you know if you've seen my show, I worship Dr. Perricone. Literally -- I sing an aria in his praise. Of course, Dr. Perricone does have some very expensive products, but I use only a few of the basic ones. (I'll have to reach my goal of becoming an international superstar - any day now! -- before I can afford the neuropeptide serum.) My advice to you: instead of buying every pricey new "anti-aging" cream that comes along, go with the beauty-from-the-inside approach. Eat lots of wild salmon and fresh vegetables, and avoid sugar and the other carbs that send blood glucose levels soaring. Put junk food into some other category that isn't food at all. Buy industrial-strength sunscreen by the case and use it all the time. Drink water or tea instead of diet soda. I also recommend weight training, which I've been doing for about a year now, and trying to avoid stress (yeah, I know, but try). Also, you should discourage wrinkle-formation by refusing to wear painful shoes no matter how hot-looking they are. Also, I've finally realized that's it's necessary to get enough sleep. Try it!

Okay, that's my book of beauty secrets, which I guess is really more of a pamphlet. But they work; my body is in better shape now than it was when I was 25, I have much more energy -- including mental energy -- than before, my friends say I'm "thriving," and my skin, though not flawless, has a radiance that is absolutely not achievable with some $300 "Botox-In-A-Tube."

Important note: "Botox-In-A-Tube" doesn't fulfill its claims even if the tube is shaped like a syringe. Marketers package their products like this because they think you have the I.Q. of a lawn chair. I have tested some of these products myself and have read research on their active ingredients. If any topical skincare product promises to do what Botox and Restylane do, it is a sham, a scam and a total ripoff of money better spent on, well, Botox and Restylane, as long as they're done very sparingly and you don't mind pain. If you prefer to avoid pain, as I generally do, spend the money on wild salmon and the best sunscreen you can find. Then, relax a bit about the whole thing. I think the injection we'd benefit from the most would be the one that immunizes us against the tactics of professional marketers.

Anyway, there were LOTS of new products at the expo. Afterwards, I tried a sample of one new line for three days -- the trial was supposed to go for four days -- before running back to Perricone. The skin around my eyes was looking a little less firm (egad!) and I had a large zit in the chin-jawline area. Also, the full regimen was very involved - six steps in the morning, six at night! Are they kidding?

The expo seemed to be well attended, so I anticipate an even bigger one next year. If you ever go, remember that having a fancy booth and sophisticated marketing does not mean a doctor or product is the right or healthy choice for you. In fact, there was one person at this event about whom a plastic surgeon friend of mine confided to me once...Well, I'd better not repeat what he said. I might get sued, and then I really wouldn't be able to afford Perricone products.

It's The "Age" Of Insane Fashion Magazines

2007-09-06T05:58:00.000-05:00

Just got home from the hair salon, where, in addition to enhancing the fabulosity of my trademark red mane, I typically spend time researching the treatment of age and beauty in various women’s magazines. Today I struck the mother lode – or should I say “load” – with the September issue of Glamour.

The headline reads “LOOK & FEEL YOUR SEXIEST AT 20, 30, 40 – The hair, the skin, the body, the secrets!” Three beautiful babes are on the cover, identified as “Hot At Every Age! Claire Danes, 28; Queen Latifah, 37; and Mariska Hargitay, 43.” Inside, there are headlines such as “20? 30? 40? Who Cares?,” while the very existence of this issue shows that the editors of Glamour, their advertisers and their presumed readership care very much. In fact, they seem pathologically obsessed with it.

There’s a whole section called the “20, 30, 40 Special – Inspiration for every age” that includes features such as “What Will You Look Like In 20 Years?,” “Look And Feel Your Sexiest at 20, 30, 40” and (my personal favorite) “Everything You Need To Know About Being 20, 30, 40.”

Spread throughout the magazine are pages such as “Look-great ideas at 20, 30, 40.” I learn on this page that the 20s are a great time to live out a travel fantasy (like Claire Danes), the 30s are when you make time for a cause (like Queen Latifah), and the 40s are the time to “be proud! ‘I’m aging like a fine wine and showing young women, look at what you can grow into'” (like Mariska Hargitay). Okay, thinking of yourself as a role model is great, but can’t you travel, work for a cause, or be proud of yourself at any age? What’s with all the categories?

And while we’re at it, what are the 50s the time for? Apparently, they’re the time for death, because there is nary a mention of anyone in this magazine who’s over 49. Yet they keep repeating the mantra, “at every age…at every age…,” as if there were no women over 49. Many women I know who have the digit “5” in their ages, not to mention “6,” “7” or even “8” (one of my dearest friends is a very current 80), might legitimately wonder what the editors of Glamour mean by “every age.”

Of course, they’re not going to target women that old, because their advertisers obviously want to reach the – you guessed it – 20s, 30s and 40s. This is why so many magazines make a point of specifying these decades over and over, month after month. Their advertisers want to sell clothes and skincare products to 20-year-olds and 40-year-olds. My guess is that demographic research has convinced the editors that this is about as wide a net as they can cast and still keep those valued 20-year-olds, who are also – surprise -- turning into a big new market for anti-aging products. So Glamour can have a full-page ad for Aveeno “clear complexion foaming cleanser” (to fight acne) and also one for Neutrogena “anti-oxidant age reverse day lotion” (to fight aging). Gosh, there’s even one full-page ad, for Revlon Age-Defying Makeup, that screams “DEFY AGE” in huge red letters.

More magazine, in contrast, covets advertisers who are selling to women 40-plus, and they try – again, way too hard -- to define themselves in terms of that particular golden demographic. In this magazine, it’s the 20s and 30s who don’t exist. Virtually everything in More is devoted to reminding one of one’s age; I can hardly get through an issue without throwing it across the room. Jeez, give me a break! I’ve ranted about More magazine before and will do so again; for now, let me just say that, although it often contains wonderful writing from insightful contributors (all over 40, of course), it’s based on a concept at odds with my philosophy of truly “ageless living.” Sure, it puts a positive spin on aging, but it also puts a not-so-positive spin on my head by obsessing relentlessly over everybody’s age.

This particular issue of Glamour is just about as bad. I say “just about” because there’s still quite a bit of content that’s more like their usual thing, with no reference to age. They have a spread on “the best fall clothes for your body type” as opposed to “for your age,” and another one on “a power look at every price” as opposed to “for every age.” They include tips for making more money, losing weight and enhancing one’s understanding of the male animal – things women in general truly are interested in. (Aside: I listed those three things according to relative difficulty.)

But then we get to page 253, and the headline: “20, 30, 40…Hot at every age!” Here, we get to see which decade of life all our favorite Hollywood stars (under 50) are currently enjoying. Superimposed in a little circle over each star’s picture is – you guessed it – her age. Who’s 20? Who’s 30? Who’s 40? We have to know! Who’s younger than we would’ve guessed? Who’s older, but passing for younger? Who’s had plastic surgery? (My guess: virtually all.) Have you had enough? Ready to throw the magazine across the room yet?

But then, turn the page, and there’s something that, in spite of the “20, 30, 40” in the headline, I actually like: “Doing it all wrong at 20, 30, 40. Women explain the value of throwing out your timeline.”

All right! We hear from a woman who moved back in with her parents at 31, graduated college at 37, had a baby at 45. No, these are not the same woman. Three different women made choices that ignore the traditional timetable, and they’re glad they did. It’s a great message -- although the parents of the 31-year-old might disagree.

On the very same page, though, is another groaner: “The Perfect Woman In Each Decade.” This pushes me towards the precipice of violent rage, for so many reasons. But here it is: According to a Glamour poll, the perfect woman in her 20s is (for men) Jessica Alba, 26, and (for women) America Ferrera, 23. Men and women agreed on the perfect woman in her 30s; that would be (ugh) Angelina Jolie, 32. Wow, they sure didn’t ask me. They also agreed that the perfect 40-something woman is Salma Hayek, 40.

Does everything have to be broken down into decades? Is our view of ourselves based entirely on the fact that we use a base-10 numerical system?

I turn the page in frustration, and there’s more: “Celebs at 20, 30, 40,” which shows how 40-something stars have changed their looks through the decades, and “We asked guys, what do you love about women in their 20s, in their 30s, in their 40s?” I don’t even want to hear it.

I turn the page again, and this is the worst part of all! “Guess the star’s age! 20? 30? 40? A good outfit never tells. (Bonus points if you can spot the 61-year-old!)” Yes, it actually says this! We see six fashionably-dressed celebrities, but only from the shoulders down. You check a key to see if you guessed right; it turns out that 61-year-old Jaclyn Smith is third from the left.

So, okay, I have to admit, one woman over 49 does appear in this magazine. But does the picture of a headless woman thrown into the mix as a novelty in an age-guessing game really count?

It just goes on and on. In “The Secrets To A Happy Life, three generations of smart, successful women mouth off about what happens to your head and your heart (and your knees!) as you grow from 20, to 30, to 40 and beyond.”

Oh, wait! I’ve spotted someone else over 49! It’s Kathleen Turner, identified as 53, saying, “I had a great time being young, but I have no desire to look the same now.” I find it meaningful that the picture of her they chose to run was taken when she was much younger. It even says, “Turner in her thirties.” Apparently, the editors desire that she look the same.

Even the feature story, “It Took Three Women To Make This Baby,” leads off this way: “When a couple in their forties, an egg donor in her twenties and a surrogate in her thirties used science to create a child…” Normally, I’d find a story like this interesting, but in this context, I’m thinking, “Enough already!”

Towards the back of the magazine, after some luscious fashion spreads, there’s “Look And Feel Your Sexiest At 20, 30, 40!” We learn that Claire Danes thinks her metabolism is slowing down at 28, that Queen Latifah has lost her sexual hangups and is now happily enjoying the “dirty thirties” at 37, and that 43-year-old Mariska Hargitay says, “You hit your forties, and you’re fearless, you’re just unstoppable.”

Okay…

If my blog about this magazine seems unusually long, remember: it did say that it would tell you EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW about being 20, 30 and 40. So, hey, I had to cover a lot of ground! Now, it’s time to sum up with what I think is wrong with this whole approach.

When I see a magazine like this one, I know I’m on the right track with my beliefs about age. It’s why I write this blog, and one big reason why I perform “My Ship Has Sailed.” My dream is for one’s age to be thought of as essentially meaningless, like one’s shoe size. Maybe someday we’ll get there, but, judging from this magazine, I think it may have to get worse before it gets better. I hope that twenty years from now, my nieces -- for the record, now in their twenties -- will find this old copy of Glamour in a garage sale somewhere and just laugh and laugh.

What does it mean to be in a particular decade of life? This question was on my mind this past weekend, because it was the fourth anniversary of my mom’s death. Mom died of something totally unrelated to her age; the hospital was never forthcoming, but I think she developed an infection there that shut her organs down two days after a routine appendectomy. She’d been in great health all her life, and I think she would’ve lived many years longer. Over the past few days, I’ve been thinking back to where my mom was in her life when she was in “my decade.”

It was totally different. She was dealing with the personal problems of a husband and two daughters; I’m married but have no kids, unless 16 parrots count. (Mom would never have had parrots!) She had a great head for business but no career. I’ve worked all my life as a writer and performer and am only now shifting the career into high gear. Mom and I were so different; she didn’t really share my interests in the arts or theatre or humor. She hadn’t taken care of herself well and in “my decade” underwent a complete facelift; something I wouldn’t need at all and can’t even imagine contemplating for many years. In “my decade,” mom even became widowed; my father died tragically at a young age. She lived for two more decades as a widow, spending most of her time taking care of her grandchildren as they arrived and, as far as I know, not going on even one date for the rest of her life.

So what does it mean to be 20, 30, 40? I say there’s no way to answer that question. I say it’s a stupid question. I can only conclude that it’s a stupid question that sells magazines.

Men: The Good, The Bad and the Bald

2007-09-05T05:57:00.000-05:00

Every day, I see stories in the news relating to The Big Age And Beauty Thing, but today it's an embarrassment of riches - mostly embarrassing to men, I'm sorry to say. Where to start?

First of all, did you know that when choosing women to date, men look almost exclusively at appearance? It's true! Let me tell you, I was shocked. Researchers from Indiana University who studied speed daters in Germany found that while women considered such things as wealth and status, commitment to family, good health and, yes, physical appearance, men kept it simple and concentrated on physical appearance. I'm guessing that by "physical appearance" they meant "breast size."

To be fair, women were looking at attractiveness, too. Interestingly, even though they said they were looking at numerous traits, the men they picked tended to match their own self-assessed level of attractiveness. Coincidence? The researchers think not; their report speculates that women know what they can get and aim for men who are about as attractive as themselves. They don't "overshoot" by picking men who are more attractive because a gorgeous man might run off with someone hotter.

This is called "the Jennifer Aniston Principle."

Personally, I think women hesitate to choose men more attractive than themselves because they hate to have to share the bathroom mirror.

Men have always been open about their tendency to rate women by appearance; in fact, I've always hated it when a man would say that a particular woman was "out of his league." Of course, this means that beautiful women will most often get asked out by men who think of themselves as outrageously attractive. Ever date a man like that? Ever want to again?

So the man and the woman are both thinking about relative hotness, but at different levels of awareness and for different reasons. The woman is thinking long term: would he stick around?? The man is thinking in the moment: can I get her to go out with me and sleep with me on this date??

Sometimes I think it's amazing that most of us remain heterosexual.

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It gets worse. Did you know that women are pickier about whom they'll kiss than men are? (I know, another shocker.) A New York State University team surveyed over 1,000 students and learned that women use kissing as a way to assess a man as a potential partner and increase bonding, then later to maintain intimacy and check the status of the relationship. Men, on the other hand, kiss to increase the likelihood of sex, and they're willing to have sex with someone whom they don't find attractive or think is a bad kisser or whom they haven't even kissed at all.

Especially at closing time, after many beers.

It seems that men are driven to have sex with virtually anyone, even someone they would never kiss! Of course, there are women with this attitude; they are called "hookers."

And, to think, women agonize over what flavor of lip gloss to wear.

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Here's another study about men, sex and age that'll make you cringe: Researchers at Stanford University believe that humans live as long as we do because of horny old men. They say that generally, living beings die soon after their reproductive stage ends, but human males are able to continue reproducing long past the age at which females go through menopause. Because men in their 70s are still able to impregnate younger women, and often do, humans have evolved to live well past the age at which women lose their fertility. The implication: we women should be grateful!

The researchers stopped short of saying that post-menopausal women had no real reason to keep on living. Perhaps there are reasons for non-fertile women to exist: for example, to care for the grandchildren if their own daughters run off to live with Hugh Hefner.

Just think, now that we have Viagra, soon we'll all be living for 300 years.

I'm wondering if evolution is perhaps lengthening the time of a woman's fertility as well. I recently heard of a record-setting birth that took place when the woman was 59. The conception was completely natural; she'd taken no fertility treatments. It only makes sense that, as human lifespan increases, the span of fertility will increase as well.

But men will still be chasing 18-year-olds.

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Okay, I've bashed men enough for one day. Though you might not be able to tell so far, this blog is actually for both women and men as we all deal with issues relating to age and attractiveness.

So let's talk about something men typically face with either resignation or blinding fear. That's right: baldness! Humorist Matt Wixon (mwixon@dallasnews.com) has a column about his hair, or lack thereof, in the September 3 issue of The Dallas Morning News. It was inspired by the fact that after using the same photo in the paper for six years, he now has a current one -- one that shows him with a different shirt and, by the way, with decidedly less hair. Wixon's column, besides being really funny, testifies to the pressure men as well as women face to keep looking young and, uh, beautiful.

I love his speculation about where his hair went, especially that a bird might have picked up some of it and used it in a nest. (Birds love our hair; some of my pet parrots like to gently preen and "style" my long locks, while others don't know their own strength and can end up snipping off a strand!) Perhaps his hair is just trapped inside a vacuum cleaner bag, he writes, but maybe it's in an exotic part of the world.

I'm reminded of what Charlie Brown says of Pig Pen's dirt in "A Charlie Brown Christmas": "Think of it as maybe the soil from some great past civilization. Maybe the soil of Ancient Babylon. It staggers the imagination..."

"I'm OK with balding," Wixon continues. "It was a difficult adjustment, however. How could it not be? Our superficial culture values appearance, especially youthful appearance, over just about everything. There is no "aging gracefully" anymore. Nips, tucks and facelifts are the way to go, even if some people eventually look like an off-brand knockoff of a human."

He describes a commercial for Rogaine that ran a few years ago (I never saw this one!): "A man steps up to the camera and, with his wife or girlfriend in the background, asks, 'Will she still feel the same way if I lose my hair?' 'Sure,' he answers to himself. 'She'll just feel it about somebody else.'

"Classic!" Wixon remarks. "I'm not sure if that's more demeaning to men or women."

What a great comment. I swear to God I did not ghostwrite his column. And this is coming from a man. I've got to get a tape to him of my song parody "My Man"; it's about the way women still love their men as they (the men) grow bald and flabby -- at least when they don't resort to those ridiculous combovers.

In spite of that ad campaign, Wixon did try Rogaine, but he stopped using it; it's for mild-to-moderate balding, not Yul-Brynner-style balding. Plus, you have to use it all the time or the hair just falls out. "It's like you're paying protection money to a neighborhood thug," he says. LOVE IT!

Wixon also had to consider that his self-assessment of attractiveness (see today's previous stories) was not high, with or without hair. "It's not as though lack of hair was the only element keeping me from being stunningly handsome," he says.

The picture in the paper is small and didn't print sharply, but I think he looks good. I can't see the very top of his head, though; the photo cuts it off.

********************

Finally, a sad note about a very funny and talented lady who sang cabaret in Manhattan. Dottie Burman, who wrote and performed humorous songs and also worked as a motivational speaker, helping people get past the "age thing" to do what they wanted at any stage of life, has died. I only just found out, though she died last November.

Dottie was a late bloomer herself. She seems never to have considered her age an obstacle. More of a personality than a trained singer, she nevertheless graced some of Manhattan's most well-known cabaret venues with hilarious songs such as “Age Discrimination,” “Let’s Have A P.C. Holiday” and "When The Palm Trees Grow In Central Park," about the bright side of global warming.

Though we had never met in person, we were mutual fans via phone and e-mail, and I had hoped to visit her the next time I was in New York. She wanted to take me around to her favorite cabaret open mic nights and have me sing for her friends there. But it is not to be.

At least I can remember her by her wonderful songs. Her website is still up, and it's still possible to see some of her performances, read her lyrics - perhaps even to order some CDs.

Your Botox Or Your Life!

2007-09-03T05:42:00.000-05:00

Did you know that, in Boston, it takes on average just 13 days to get in to see the dermatologist for Botox injections, but to get a worrisome mole examined, you'll wait - gasp - NINE WEEKS??

A study by a UC-San Francisco dermatology professor found that in the US, it takes a patient an average of about 26 days to have an appointment with a dermatologist to examine a possibly cancerous mole, yet only eight days for an appointment for Botox injections.

Now, the way I'm thinking, spending up to nine weeks worrying about your mole is going to give you big-time forehead lines, so you could always make the Botox appointment, just to get in. Then, if you're like me and prefer to let your eyebrows roam free, you can feign squeamishness at the sight of the needle (maybe you won't have to feign!) and "change your mind" at the last minute. On your way out the door, you can say, "As long as I'm here, doctor, I've got this mole that really needs to be checked...."

This tactic will work only once -- at least with that doctor -- but it's worth a try. Of course, you could always just think of your possibly cancerous mole as a beauty mark and keep it as long as possible.

The researcher didn't know why Botox patients got preference but speculated that it was because of the higher relative payments for Botox. It's a huge profit center for clinics. My dermatologist told me she's had patients come in for thousands of dollars worth of Botox and other cosmetic treatments in just one session, yet I know from personal experience that the mole screening is just the cost of an office visit, with other payment going to the lab.

And I was surprised when they didn't just say, "Come in tomorrow," when I said I had a suspicious mole. Melanoma is serious business; an acquaintance of mine died of it a couple of years ago, and it's possible to get it at a very young age. I have that pale-pale skin that's highly susceptible, and the small, rough patch was on a part of my body that had suffered a severe sunburn during those carefree (read "stupid") college days. But the receptionist wanted to set up the appointment for about five weeks later. "Wow, is there any way I can get in sooner?" I asked. "We do have a nurse practitioner on staff," she replied, "and she's available this Friday. Would you like to come in then?"

That's what I chose to do, and I did end up seeing the doctor briefly; she came in and also checked out the mole. It did turn out to be cancer, but not melanoma. Basal cell carcinoma doesn't metastasize into surrounding tissue, so it wouldn't have killed me, but it did need to be removed before it got bigger to keep it from disfiguring my gorgeous bod.

There's one other reason why it might take longer for a medical exam. Many dermatologists' offices set aside certain days of the week for cosmetic procedures, because so much of their business is for Botox and the like, so all other appointments are made for the days that are left. A dermatologist will always advise that, once a year, you make a routine appointment to have every square inch of your glorious body checked for suspicious moles.

That sounds like a good idea. As for Botox, if you're in Beverly Hills, you can call 911 and a team of dermatologists will rush over in an ambulance to administer it.

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As long as we're on the subject of cancer, there's a story I just read in the Wall Street Journal that needs to be mentioned here, if only because it illustrates so well my beliefs that "life doesn't happen on a timetable" and that one's numerical age means next to nothing.

Chef Grant Achatz, whose restaurant Alinea was named the best in the country in 2005 by Gourmet magazine, has recently been given a devastating diagnosis: stage 4 cancer of the tongue. With his cancer so far advanced, he's been told by three doctors that the only way he can possibly survive is to have part of his tongue cut out. Imagine being one of the world's most celebrated and creative chefs and having to anticipate life without the ability to taste.

Achatz is 33 years old.

"Well," you may say, after the initial shock, "he's probably spent years smoking!" Achatz, who's described as "skinny and boyish," says he's never had a cigarette in his mouth in his life. Knowing the damage smoking can do to the sense of taste, you believe him.

Not surprisingly, Achatz has been looking for alternative treatments that might let him keep his tongue along with his life. He'll soon begin an intensive combination of chemotherapy and radiation treatments; these may dull his sense of taste slightly as they destroy cancer cells, but not ruin them permanently. His doctor says the sense of taste will slowly return after treatment.

Achatz could end up losing his tongue after all, and, of course, he could die. When I look in the obituaries, I see people of all ages there. This is why I think concepts such as "middle age" are essentially pointless. A twenty-year-old who laughs at "middle-aged" people may be middle-aged himself, and just not know it.

Those who know Achatz are confident that with his talent, he'll go on with or without his tongue. So much of what he does comes from his deep well of visual artistry and conceptual genius. "You could take out his tongue and eyes," says Nick Kokonas, his partner in Alinea. "I can't imagine that he wouldn't be able to overcome any limitations."

May good health come to Grant Achatz. And remember, whatever decade you're in, taste life while you can.

"Never Perfect": The Eyes Have It

2007-09-01T04:55:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, I was able to attend the Asian Film Festival here in Dallas and see Regina Park’s excellent new documentary, Never Perfect, about the quest by Asian women to achieve their beauty ideal, particularly by having their features changed surgically.

But what is “ideal”? Can one ever really attain it? And just how Asian is it, as opposed to European? These are the central questions of Never Perfect.

The film introduces us to a young woman of Vietnamese heritage, the baby of the family, still living with her mom in a house that she herself owns – she’s successful at an early age and also owns a number of rental properties -- as she eagerly anticipates moving to Los Angeles and being on her own. Mom is nonplussed, but her daughter wants something new! A new city, she says. And along with her big life change, she has finally decided to get “bigger eyes.” This is something she’s thought about for a long time.

One of the first things I notice about her, aside from her strained relationship with mom, is that she’s had her dark hair highlighted with thick, blond streaks.

It turns out that she has grown up with messages from her mother that she’s not attractive with her Asian eyes, the heavy-lidded kind that don’t have a crease. They look too small. Most of the images she sees in TV and movies show women with more European-looking eyes, and most of her friends have them, too. Eyelid surgery seems almost a rite of passage for them. (The movie doesn’t point this out, but non-Asian girls have these rites too – think rhinoplasty in Beverly Hills and breast augmentation in Dallas.)

Commentary within the film addresses the belief that certain features go along with a particular personality. I suspect that, subconsciously, most of us share this belief to some degree. That’s right, deep within us is some stupid little part of the brain that actually thinks people with weak chins are weak-willed, those with close-set eyes are dishonest, and those with high foreheads are smart. Character flaws are revealed to us through physical flaws. This belief is a holdover from the Middle Ages. If you don’t think it’s still in force, talk with a casting director about it. (I’m always pleased when a casting director “casts against type.”)

So what do almond-shaped, Asian eyes mean? Young girls grow up seeing them as part of an “Asian mystique,” with highly sexualized depictions of Eastern women. Some of the images depict mysterious, stiletto-heeled sexual dynamos, the kind James Bond would take to bed and say “don’t taste like European girls”; others show delicate, traditional “China dolls” who are soft-spoken and submissive to men.

(An aside: I may have unintentionally played into this sexual stereotype in my first blog about this movie; I mentioned that many Western men prefer the look of Asian women to that of European women. I meant this as a good thing, to show that Westerners are open to different standards of beauty. After seeing the film, though, I wonder whether the preferences of those men are primarily a response to the hypersexualized and/or submissive stereotypes of Asian girls.)

The movie doesn’t mention this, but I should point out that the preference for larger, more open eyes may indeed be hard-wired into all of us, and it seems to transcend race. Studies have shown that open eyes are considered more attractive; researchers speculate that this is because they make it easier to see the pupils. Large pupils are interpreted as a sign of attraction.

According to the movie, the first article about the operation called “double eyelid surgery” was published in – surprise -- 1896. It grew in popularity when America put military bases in the Pacific; red light districts grew up around the bases, and the women who were considered most attractive to American G.I.s got the most work and made more money. In the 1950s, during the Korean War, plastic surgeons actually did free work for the prostitutes, though I’m speculating that there was more of a barter system in force.

The film points out that Asian eyes aren’t really slanted; that’s a bizarre stereotype. During times of war, “Japs” were categorized as subhuman and caricatured mercilessly, including those slanted eyes.

Of course, today, actresses such as Sandra Oh portray smart, accomplished women, albeit with some serious psychological issues in the case of her character on Grey’s Anatomy but without the relentless sexual overtones. That’s a big step forward. Still, I wonder if the brilliant, hard-driven, antisocial doctor exemplifies yet a different stereotype of the Asian woman.

here’s also a discussion in the film of mixed-race beauty. One young woman says she’s had the message, “Mixed girls are hot!” An increasingly popular opinion among Asian girls is that the ideal of beauty is a racial composite.

In an extremely moving scene – and the one that will linger with me the longest -- the camera stays in close-up on an Asian mom, relating sadly that her “mixed” daughter has made it clear that she rejects the “yellow” side of her genetic heritage. Tears finally come as she realizes her daughter is rejecting her.

Back to our main character, and more mom issues. “I love my mom more than anyone else in the world,” she says, “but she’s done a lot of damage to me.” She says she’s fed up with her mom’s expectation that everything must be perfect. As for changing the appearance of her eyes, she says, “This is what I was cultivated to believe.”

Our main character has put off getting her eyelid surgery because she didn’t want to let her mom think she “got to her,” but finally she goes, and part of the operation is shown onscreen. There aren’t rivers of blood or anything, but it’s still the eye, and this is definitely not for the squeamish. The patient is thoroughly medicated and feels nothing, or else there would be a lot of screaming, but come on, it’s THE EYE.

A surgeon tells us that there are different surgeries for different ethnic looks; Taiwan, Japan, etc., are different. Apparently, some ethnicities can get away with doing a larger, more open eye than others. He says you don’t have to lose your ethnic identity – that you’re not creating a non-Asian eye but a more beautiful eye. This relates to another comment made later in the film: “It’s not taking away ethnicity – we’re emulating other Asians.”

Several sets of “before” and “after” pictures are shown; I notice that the “after” eyes don’t look much different but appear to be wearing false lashes. (I wonder if applying false lashes to the heavier-lidded eye would be painstaking if not impossible.) Overall, the change is very subtle, sometimes so slight that an ignorant Westerner might wonder what all the fuss is about.

I worry a little about our patient when she says things such as “It’ll temporarily make me happier” and “My taste in beauty may change.” She does understand that, unlike breast implants, this alteration is something that can’t be undone. But what if she decides in a few months or years that she’s not as happy as she had wanted to be; will she need to have something else done in her quest for perfection? She observes, “You can always be unhappy no matter how perfect things are.” But what is “perfect,” and where does it end? For some women, this can be the start of plastic surgery addiction.

Fortunately, we learn that (so far) she has had no more surgeries. She examines her eyes in a hand mirror; again, the effect is very subtle. She laughs, “I saw my mom, and she said, ‘You should’ve gotten them bigger!’”

On the way out of the theater, I overheard an Asian woman tell her friend, “My mom used to pinch my nose like this and tell me it needed to be smaller.”

Dear mothers, whatever your race, if you are reading this, please realize that your attitudes about attractiveness will affect your daughter’s self-image for the rest of her life. She listens to everything you say. She’ll carry those messages about her nose and her weight and her lips forever. (It can happen with sons, too; Michael Jackson’s father used to call him “Big Nose,” and we’ve seen where that led!) Maybe you’re uncomfortable with your daughter’s eyes or her ankles because they remind you of your awful ex-husband; if so, KEEP IT TO YOURSELF.

Your daughter could react to your comments by developing an eating disorder, or finding a man who reinforces her poor opinion of herself, or simply distancing herself from you, as the young woman in this film did with her own mom. Please find ways to help your daughter feel positive about her looks.

I still feel a rush of sadness when I remember how my mom, who died four years ago, used to criticize my long fingers and long legs. “Don’t talk with your hands,” she’d admonish, or she’d just give me "The Look" when I’d start gesturing. “Don’t take such big steps.” The message was clear; she thought I was too tall. “Your sister is the perfect height,” she once said of my 5-foot-7-inch sibling. She also said my face was thin and that I needed to gain weight in my face. How was I supposed to gain weight in my face? How was I supposed to subtract height?

Fortunately, I was able to keep in mind that this was the same mom who told me not to raise my hand in algebra class so often if I wanted boys to like me. So I stand tall and wear high heels. And, yes, I love my mom…but I still talk with my hands.

Trophy Wives: They're FOR THE CHILDREN!!

2007-08-30T06:01:00.000-05:00

When I was a very little girl, just trying to figure things out, I developed numerous misconceptions about the way the world works. Here are just a few of them:

For some reason, I thought wars lasted about four years, and then whoever was “ahead” was declared the winner.

I thought that once a woman was married and had sex one time, her body went through some sort of transformation that made her capable of – surprise ! -- automatically becoming pregnant at any moment. (Whew! Glad that one wasn’t true.)

I thought that old people made grammatical errors as part of a kind of “old person’s accent.” In other words, that was just the way old people talked. (This must have been because we lived in a semi-rural area with lots of older people who hadn’t had much education.)

And I thought that the husband was always older than the wife, usually by one or two years. (After all, my daddy was about 1 ½ years older than my mommy.)

On that last one, I turned out to be almost right! The typical husband is indeed older than the wife, though there can be much more of an age difference than my parents had. Ashton and Demi aside, why is it that most unions happen to fall into this pattern? Why are most variations regarded with curiosity? Researchers at Vienna University were wondering the same thing, and now they say that men have evolved to seek younger women to maximize their chances of reproducing, while women seek slightly older men.

In examining people who had changed partners after having their first child, they found that women looked for men with more resources and status, so they chose someone a little older than themselves. Men picked someone younger than their first partner. (Really???) Researchers also found that a couple were most likely to have a greater number of children if the man was about six years older than the woman. Their conclusion: the age difference is a trait acquired through evolution by both men and women to help create more children.

Question: how come so many men will say that their ideal woman looks 18 and is on the pill?

Men seem to have a curious dichotomy between what their evolution-programmed loins tell them and what their conscious minds do. (We could have a discussion right now about the special gift many men have of compartmentalizing EVERYTHING IN THEIR LIVES, but I’ll save that for a future rant.) Here are their loins, whispering to the men, “We must make babies…we must make babies…as many babies as possible…” (Men also tend to quantify everything, don’t they?)

And, except in the case of rap musicians, here also are their conscious minds, warning, “We must not make babies…no babies…too much commitment…too much child support…”

You’d think that, consciously, the man would be on the prowl for an attractive babe who’s coming to the end of her childbearing years. But the loins still win out. This is why humans – with the possible exception of the Europeans and Japanese -- are still being fruitful and multiplying even though the world’s population is over 5 billion and counting! It also explains the staggering backlog of child support cases.

On the other hand, loins can be fooled. The right sexy clothes and strategically-designed lingerie can enhance a woman’s curves and help create the bountiful breasts and youthful proportions that suggest fertility. If the breasts still aren’t bountiful, a plastic surgeon can transform them, and virtually everything else, to suggest that this woman is a genetically-perfect baby machine. Everything from body lotions to hair thickeners to lip plumpers is designed to create the lusciousness associated with a young, fertile hottie.

Thus, the loins are satisfied. Still, the conscious mind, completely at odds with the loins but helpless to oppose them, always makes sure the man is carrying condoms.

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The other day, I wrote about the pressure on Asian girls to have their eyes “westernized” through plastic surgery. Well, last night I saw “Never Perfect,” the documentary about a woman who must decide whether “to crease or not to crease.” I hope you’ll look for my commentary in tomorrow’s blog!

Have You Heard? Baby Boomers Are "Aging!"

2007-08-29T06:18:00.000-05:00

As we hear over and over in the news every day, the baby boomers are "AGING." Here's the Aging Baby Boomer Story Of The Day:

Orthopedic surgeons in New York report that they are seeing a growing number of baby boomers who suffer such severe knee pain and other discomforts that they can't even walk up stairs any more. (Related Aging Baby Boomer Story: the trend towards all-on-one-floor living.)

The arthritic finger points to one person: Jane Fonda! Whether you're a flower child who admired her anti-war protests during Vietnam or a patriot who condemned her for them, Jane has brought you all together in communal misery. She is to blame for your creaky joints and limited range of motion.

As the reasoning goes, those wildly popular aerobics videos she made in the '80s caused people to plunge into high-impact exercise, pounding their joints on three-tiered steps. (Of course, today, we know better; we pound our joints on treadmills.) Some of today's sore, arthritic baby boomers have blamed Jane for their pain, although I'm thinking it might just be related to a lack of circulation caused by too-tight leg warmers.

I wonder if their knees hurt more when it rains. Of course, even if the weather is a factor, sufferers will still insist that the pain in rain is mainly caused by Jane.

Jane herself might tell you that those videos were too extreme. She has said that at the time she made them, she was suffering from an eating disorder; it appears she had what we might call an "exercise addiction" as well. Over the years, she's softened her look considerably.

Of course, Jane can say from personal experience that it's easier on the knees to just sit on the turret of a communist anti-aircraft gun, yet even that can cause strain in the lower back.

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This story appears just as more studies tell us that people of all ages are getting fatter and fatter and will eventually pop after finally eating one too many chicken wings. Mississippi - ironically, the home of the most beauty pageant winners - is the fattest state of all. Hardly anyone seems capable of pushing away from the table any more, let alone exercising. What on earth happened to change "Let's Get Physical" to "Let's Get Liposuction"? When did "lean and mean" become "gross and adipose"?

It seems that this problem will only get worse until people can't get through their front doors to go get more food. Of course, there's always delivery. But when even the Dominos drivers are no longer able to fit into their cars, obesity will be halted in its tracks.

By the way, the State Fair Of Texas opens in a few weeks - I happen to live in Dallas, home of the fair - and the news is full of all the deep fried fattiness that's going to be served up. Here are this year's Seven Deadly Sins: fried Frito pie, fried guacamole, fried peach cobbler on a stick, fried sweet potato pie, fried banana pudding, fried cookie dough, and the most talked about, the deep fried latte. This is a fried pastry topped with cappuccino ice cream, caramel sauce, whipped cream and instant coffee powder.

Of course, the deep fried latte is at its best when served with a donut.

To my relief, my husband has said he won't be eating this overpriced glob of sugar, fat and fried gunk at the fair. But only because he doesn't like coffee.

Great news for everyone who eats it: the oil it's fried in is TRANS-FAT FREE!

Coincidentally, today's "Oprah" featured her favorite physician, Dr. Oz, talking about how to eat healthy. He first looked at portion control, comparing today's typical serving sizes with those from 20 years ago. No wonder our clothes are straining at the seams! We're used to seeing supersized food, and if, as our moms used to say, our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, we solve that problem by gradually stretching our stomachs.

Dr. Oz then looked at the bad ingredients in processed foods: sugar, trans-fats (hydrogenated oils), high fructose corn syrup, enriched products (this means they've been refined), and saturated fats "from four-legged animals." He cleaned out one woman's fridge and pantry, taught her how to read a nutrition label and put her on a "diet makeover" that dramatically changed her appearance, health and outlook. Dr. Oz's regimen was similar to Dr. Perricone's; he had this woman throwing out her "fake," sugary, artery-clogging processed foods and eating salmon, olive oil and fresh vegetables instead. After a few months on this program, she seemed like a different - and much happier -- person.

(This might be a good time to mention that taking fish oil often works wonders on those joints ravaged by Jane Fonda's exercise routines.)

You may wonder why I'm spending so much time talking about weight; isn't this blog about age and looking young? Yes, but when I say that "age is the last big culturally-acceptable bias," I'm talking about the age one is and the age one looks. We associate a slim, healthy body with youth. With few exceptions, a woman who carries extra weight is judged to be considerably older than she would if she were slender and fit. She's dubbed "matronly" and placed in the same category with women who have wrinkles or gray hair. (Of course, it's also possible to go too far the other way; the starving, sinewy, anorexic look - think Victoria Beckham - is unhealthy, unflattering and extremely aging.) Yes, the overall issue here is age and ageism, but I consider age, beauty and weight to be just different sides of the same three-sided coin.

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Well, enough on that weighty subject. Here's still more on "aging rockers."

According to the Reuters news service, German music fans are being subjected this year to a deluge of older acts from America: Aerosmith, Genesis, The Stones, The Who, Black Sabbath, Lou Reed, Meat Loaf, the Police, and more. Critics admit that some are still making good music but say that others should give it up and retire. They say Peter Gabriel needed a TelePrompter to remember the words to his own songs, and one critic complains that Ozzy Osbourne kept screaming, "I can't (bleeping) hear you!" over and over. He writes, "You felt like shouting back, 'Buy a (bleep) hearing aid, and maybe you'll realize you're singing everything off-key!"

Of course, younger singers don't sing off-key; the tracks they lip-synch to are always perfectly in tune. And you know, that critic wasn't being fair; Ozzy couldn't hear the audience not because his ears are shot but because there wasn't one.

Fans were especially upset that Steven Tyler of Aerosmith had lost his boyish good looks.

Better Loving Through Science

2007-08-28T05:53:00.000-05:00

No long essays today, just two silly news items and a video from my show, "My Ship Has Sailed."

First up, a team of obviously very lonely mathematicians at Cambridge University determined that Jessica Alba has the perfect sexy wiggle when she walks. They claim they calculated that what makes a woman sway when she walks is the ratio of hips to waist size, and the perfect ratio for a sexy walk is 0.7. (This just gets more and more scientific as it goes along.) That would be, for instance, 36 inch hips and a 25 inch waist. Marilyn Monroe was very close with a 0.69 ratio, but after a no-doubt intensive study of photos of Jessica Alba on the Internet, the mathematicians said Alba is a perfect 0.7.

Okay, so explain Beyonce.

I have a feeling there is much more to learn in this vital field of study, such as the impact on the walk caused by the length of the legs or the height of the stiletto heels; but that would require advanced calculus and possibly quantum mechanics, so they'll need a few more years to work on it.

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Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that Viagra not only improves a man's sexual performance, it can also boost levels of oxytocin, the so-called "cuddle chemical" produced by the brain that promotes bonding and romantic feelings. They say this means Viagra not only can help men get erections but also make them more loving.

This must be why gobbling all that Viagra has made Hugh Hefner stop sleeping with five girlfriends and bond to only three. And they're all virtually identical, so it's practically like he's monogamous!

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Finally, speaking of all the ways that science has enhanced our attractiveness, I thought I'd share this with you so newcomers can learn what I'm all about. It's a clip from one of my live performances of "My Ship Has Sailed," a song I wrote that marries a popular melody to the names of some of the many, many anti-aging products that promise us the glow of eternal youth. Enjoy!

Review The Show, Not The Age of the Band...Or the Crowd!

2007-08-27T06:01:00.000-05:00

(This is a recent post from my long-running blog at LauraAinsworth.com. This subject annoys me so much, I want to shout it from the top of every possible mountain, so forgive me if you already read it over there. It bears repeating.)

Here's a pet peeve that many undoubtedly share: the "boomer rock" concert review that dwells as much on the aging fans in the audience as it does on the band.

And when it does talk about the band, it not only tells us how young or old the music seems now, but also how well or poorly the band members have aged. The critic apparently expects them to look like their own grandparents, and sometimes they fulfill that expectation. If they do, he smugly points this out to us, and if they don't, he speaks of them as if they're shocking freaks of nature.

Example (and inspiration for today's blog): the review of Patty Smyth's concert in the August 17 edition of The Dallas Morning News, written by staff critic Mario Tarradell. Mr. Tarradell simply cannot believe that Patty Smyth, at 50, can look so youthful! He writes, "She's almost criminal, that Patty Smyth...(after 23 years) the New York native looks and sounds as if not a day has gone by. Surely she's made a devious plot for eternal youth with somebody."

And, "Ms. Smyth sang with such joyful abandon. She may be 50, but she moves like she's 30."

Overall, it was a glowing review of both her and her band, Scandal, and she should feel complimented and proud. At the same time, is it not possible to compliment a 50-year-old woman on her performance without giving the back of one's hand to the idea of being 50? What was he expecting, for her to hobble out on her artificial knees and try to recreate some approximation of her former glory?

How does a 30-year-old move, by the way? I've seen many who couldn't dance a lick and some who could hardly get up from a reclining chair. That goes for some 10-year-olds, too.

And the idea that a performer has to make some sort of pact with Satan to remain attractive and current really chafes me. You see, this is why, as a performer, I don't tell people my age. I don't want people telling me I look great on stage "for my age." I don't want them to have "the number" in their heads constantly and to be filtering everything I say through their idea of what a person "that age" is. People do this. It's a culturally-acceptable bias. I'm sick of it, and I refuse to play the numbers game.

A female performer doesn't have to be very old to get sucked into it. I've heard disparaging age-related comments about the Dixie Chicks (in their 30s, aren't they?) and the Spice Girls (likewise?), among many others. Forget Madonna; these are the new old ladies of pop music. It's the rare review of Sheryl Crow that doesn't make an issue of her age (early 40s, I think). She looks great not because of any pact with Beelzebub but because she takes good care of herself and follows the advice of Dr. Perricone, as do I.

Here's one more example of ageist music criticism, another review from The Dallas Morning News, this one by staff writer Mike Daniel on August 13. Now, we have to stipulate that Rush goes back a long time; indeed, the review tells us that Rush is 39 years old. Not the musicians, the band. So, of course, the audience is going to be all grown up. Some - not me - call them "baby boomers," or just "boomers."

Mr. Daniel writes: "Baby boomers dominating the crowd of 15,000 at Smirnoff Music Centre on Saturday night may not have looked broad-minded, but in spirit and action, they were."

Jeez, another backhanded compliment. You wouldn't have thought people their age would be broad-minded.

Mr. Daniel, please tell me, what does a broad-minded person look like? Do you assume he's the young, edgy-looking guy? I'm thinking he might look more like Drew Carey.

Mr. Daniel goes on: "Guitarist Alex Lifeson looked the most like he's in his mid-50s (all members are, in fact, there), but sonically, he was the most distant from it."

Another backhanded compliment. He doesn't look as well-preserved as the other band members, but his playing, in contrast, sounded like that OF A YOUNGER PERSON. The quality of the performance, once again, is associated with some arbitrary age in the critic's head.

If the guy were of a really advanced age or had come back from some debilitating neuromuscular disease or something, I could see relating the quality of his playing to that. Tony Bennett's singing prowess at 80 does amaze, because it's rare; there are simply not many fabulous 80-year-old tenors around. But critics need to stop talking about musicians over 35 or so as if they're making their last stop before checking in at the nursing home.

I'm sure these critics think of themselves as extremely broad-minded people, but they're just showing some age-old prejudices.

At least they look broad-minded.

(BTW, to see how music critics ought to handle this issue, check out what Patrick Williams had to say about Rush in the Calendar section of the Dallas Observer. Kudos to him!)

Nightclubs And Other Foreign Cultures

2007-08-25T23:51:00.000-05:00

If ageism is so much a part of our culture that it simply doesn't seem all that bad, check out a few nightclub reviews and see how they hit you. These reviews, in addition to rating the quality of the sound system, the strength of the drinks and the general vibe, typically go on to describe the clientele in terms of looks, fashion sense and, of course, age. This is necessary so that people can be with others at the same level of coolness. If a club "skews old," it's automatically less hip. In fact, its hipness rating varies inversely with the average age of the patrons - the lower the age, the higher the rating.

I've just learned that this attitude may be primarily an American phenomenon. The following excerpt from a review by Lesley Tellez of a downtown Dallas club called the Mambo Café speaks volumes:

"This isn't strictly a young person's club - we saw patrons who looked like they could be 60. That's common in Latin cultures..."

See, it has to be explained to us that in some places, older people actually go dancing in nightclubs patronized by younger people! Who woulda thunk it? Normally, we just wouldn't expect to see that. We're talking about one o'clock in the morning here, and it's common knowledge that everybody over about 35 is asleep by nine. Strange, those Latinos! If you're a non-Latino in your 20s, and you're uncomfortable with seeing 60-year-old couples dancing, you've been duly warned.

I've experienced a little of this prejudice myself as a performer in nightclubs, not towards myself, but towards some of the older members of my audience. Of course, my philosophy is to do a show that's enjoyed by people of all ages, especially women, but one club manager told me she hoped My Ship Has Sailed wouldn't "skew too old." She explained that most of their acts draw a younger crowd, and older people - particularly older women - don't drink. (The bar is their main source of revenue.) I'm not sure where she got this notion; maybe she hasn't shared a Happy Hour with some of the "older" women I know, but that was her perception.

And, wouldn't you know, that particular night's performance was attended by a huge crowd of Red Hats. They were a fantastic audience, but the manager had to notice that they brought the average age up considerably. She told me afterwards that most of them ordered iced tea.

The rest asked for water.

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Let's move on to another cultural issue, this one involving Asian women.

The Asian Film Festival, going on in Dallas from the 23rd to the 30th of August, features the premiere (Wed., 7:30, Magnolia Theatre) of a documentary by Regina Park called "Never Perfect," which examines the struggle of a young Vietnamese woman as she decides whether or not to get blepharoplasty, or eyelid plastic surgery.

This apparently is a huge issue for Asian girls, but one that hasn't often been discussed. After the screening, a panel discussion will be held on "beauty and the Asian woman." According to Ms. Park, "there is a question why more and more women subject themselves to time-consuming, expensive and sometimes painful processes in their quest for physical perfection. Yet this constant striving to reach a beauty ideal to accompany their other academic, career, material and personal achievements is steeped in a profoundly fundamental question of identity and is not simply a matter of an individual's personal aesthetic choice."

The film's main character has been told by her mother that she can't be beautiful without bigger eyes. How very sad. (I do think that, even within their wider culture, the biggest message girls around the world get about their own attractiveness is from their mothers.) This girl has grown up in the United States, with the American image of beauty all around her, but she also is proud of her Vietnamese heritage. What to do?

I don't know what she decides, but I'll try to get to the screening - and the discussion - next Wednesday to find out.

The ironic thing, to me, is that I think the "Asian" eye is exotic and lovely. Many, many Western people agree. I know men who think a petite Asian woman with almond eyes and straight, black hair is more beautiful than a tall, blue-eyed American blonde. An Asian woman, even here in America, does not have to have 'the crease" to be considered beautiful. This is something that has become an issue within the Asian community.

The other irony, as a personal note: my grandmother on my father's side had eyelids without creases; she was of German descent and my mom called it "the Germanic eye." My dad's eyelids were a little puffy, too; as he got older, he probably could have benefited from very conservative eyelid surgery, just to see better. When I was a kid, I thought maybe I'd grow up to have "the Germanic eye," too, and I really didn't want it, not because it isn't pretty - it certainly can be; consider Ava Gardner - but mostly because I just didn't want to mimic that particular grandmother in any way (long story). As luck would have it, though, my eyes developed such well-defined lids and such a deep crease that the other day, a makeup artist highlighted the crease to de-emphasize it.

It seemed I had too much crease.

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Finally, here's a cool item from the news....

Mike Flynt got into a fight and was kicked off the football team of Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas, before his senior year in 1971. He's regretted it ever since, even as he became a strength and conditioning coach and invented the Powerbase training system. He's now 59, in great shape (I can vouch for strength training as being one of the best age-fighting methods), and he's convinced his wife to move back to Alpine, where he is about to become the oldest college football player on record.

Former teammates told him he's an idiot and will get killed, and his wife said she feels like she's married to Peter Pan (that can be creepy; ask Lisa Marie Presley). But Flynt, a man after my own heart, believes that age is just a number. He has a surprisingly tight end, and unlike many men his age, is not an extremely wide receiver. He said he wants to show others that with the right physical training, you're only as old as you feel.

Until you get killed.

Anyway, I say three cheers for Mike Flynt! Let's all hope he isn't sacked by a bunch of 300-pound 20-year-olds, which can make you feel about 110.

The Numbers Game

2007-08-24T05:57:00.000-05:00

Okay, so many of us are playing "the numbers game." We think, "I'm 43, but if I use this product and do this and this and dress like this, I can pass for 38." Of course, the 38-year-old is thinking, "I'm 38, but I can pass for 29." Those of you who are single take this strategy into the dating arena.

But what about online dating? What if a prospective date isn't looking at you in person, but only in a digitized photo, which can be enhanced in any number of ways? Do you go ahead and give your correct age, or do you fudge it?

A recent article in the New York Post (sorry, can’t find it online) addresses the issue of age and online dating. Stacy Kravetz, author of The Dating Race: An Undercover Report from the Front Lines of Modern-Day Romance, explains why age is even more important in the online world: "Online dating only magnifies the issue, because we're given the option of pre-selecting for all the characteristics we find important, including age. And we get all this information about a potential date before we've even decided whether to meet them. So age becomes even more important, because we're using it as a criterion before a date, rather than a piece of information we learn on the date itself."

It seems to me that, in a way, online dating is similar to the idea of "designer babies." Chances are overwhelming that once her baby is born, a mother is going to love that baby exactly the same whether it has dark hair, red hair or blond. But if she has the chance to pre-select her baby's hair color, she most likely will choose blond hair...along with big blue eyes, fair skin and a tall, slender build. People looking for a mate do the same thing with characteristics such as age.

In the old-fashioned, face-to-face world, youthfulness will definitely be assessed, but there's at least a chance for something to "click" -- maybe it's pheromones, or a quick sense of humor -- and for the couple to start getting to know each other before the question, "How old are you?" is asked.

So, online dating is very different from the other kind. The New York Post article asks several online daters how they cope with the age issue. For example, when asked how many years she shaves off her age, 38-year-old Cozette says this:

"I delete four years. It's closer to the age most people guess I am, and it's closer to the age I feel."

Interestingly, she goes on to say, "When I posted my real age, I didn't get any emails for the first two months. Not one. So I changed it to 34 and within days I had literally hundreds of responses. So far, no one has ever questioned it."

We learn from this that 34 is okay, but that 38 is too old, even though a 38-year-old is dating people who are fine with her just as she is, as long as they think she's 34. Four little years can apparently be a very big deal.

Debbie, 53, answers, "I say I'm 47 because that's around the age I'm looking for in a date. I've had a lot more emails since I adjusted my age. Now people I'm interested in - and the ones who are interested in me - are actually finding me."

Has she considered that many of the men who find her are also 53 but passing for 47? Does she realize that when she says, "That's around the age I'm looking for in a date," she's doing the same thing the men are? Is the meaninglessness of "the number" starting to sink in?

Fifty-year-old Pamela reduces her age by three years. "We all discount our ages - you have to since people are using age ranges as part of their search criteria. If you're fit, attractive and hoping to meet the same, you have to lower your age."

I can understand why she doesn't want to say she's 50. We can talk all we want about 50 being "the new 30," but that's only true if you pass for 30. One 50-year-old single friend of mine told me she sits with her dates over coffee and watches the expression in their eyes change when she tells them she's 50. These are men her own age and up. It seems to be something about the sound of the word, and the weight people give to it when they say it. I'm reminded of Molly Shannon's horrifying comedy sketch on "Saturday Night Live," in which she plays the frazzled, potbellied lady in the red jumpsuit who screams, "I'M FIFTY YEARS OLD! FIFTY! FIFTY YEARS OLD!"

Rita Rudner told me she's writing a book about turning 50 called "I'm Filthy," which is as close as she can come to saying the word. And I've heard from many women that once people know you're 50, it's all about how old you are. If you look great, you look great "for 50" or "for someone your age."

If you're proud of your age and want to tell it, fine. I'm proud of mine, but I still don't tell it, simply because I refuse to play along with the stupid "numbers game." (Hey, I'm proud of my fabulous bod, too, but I don't walk down the street naked.) In fact, I've come to believe that when a woman insists on telling you her age within thirty seconds of meeting her, it's for one of two reasons. Either she looks considerably older than she really is and doesn't want you to think she's that old, or she looks considerably younger than most women her age and is fishing for compliments. It also suggests to me that she's been reading too many issues of More magazine and is absolutely obsessed with the whole age thing.

As the model in a current commercial for Roc skin products says, "When you look ten years younger than you are, you're proud to tell your age." How confused a message is that??

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And now, a little something from the news:

Dawn Brooke of Guernsey, England, set a new world record by giving birth to a son at 59, becoming the oldest known natural mother who got pregnant without fertility treatment or any drugs (does that include Viagra?) Brooke gave birth in 1997, and her son is now 10, but she and her husband Raymond kept it quiet until now to shield him from publicity. Raymond, who was 64 when his wife got pregnant at 59, said they're overjoyed to have their son, but the pregnancy was unplanned and came as a shock to them both. And, I'll bet, to their grandchildren.

This is all very heartwarming, but we all know it’s just not natural for men in their 60s to be impregnating women in their 50s. According to all the showbiz news outlets, men in their 60s are supposed to be impregnating women in their 20s.

"Age Of Love": Relive The Madness

2007-08-23T08:53:00.000-05:00

If you suffered through NBC's "Age of Love," the ageism-soaked "Bachelor" rip-off, or if you missed it and wondered what it was all about, my pointed and detailed recaps of all the episodes are now combined onto one page at my website. A good way to learn quickly what my show, "My Ship Has Sailed," and my philosophy on aging and ageism are all about is to pour yourself a stiff drink and click away...

NOT MUCH HAS CHANGED IN THREE CENTURIES

2007-08-21T21:22:00.000-05:00

I wonder if there's anyone reading this who has not yet started receiving those catalogs -- obviously targeted to women 35-plus -- with names like "Time For Me," "My Time" and "It's Long Past Time To Take A Little Time For Myself, Dammit!"

They feature dreamy bedding, exotic caftans and novel accessories. They also hawk a numbing array of anti-aging treatments, with ridiculously unlikely before-and-after pictures of eyes, lips and jawlines; a variety of Spandex figure-tamers; easy-fitting shoes and padded shoe inserts; lacy incontinence briefs (these do look pretty sexy!); and even some very creative and colorful vibrators.

The message: you're getting older by the minute, every square inch of your face and neck needs serious and targeted help, your body's starting to fall apart, you have a bladder control problem, and you're probably alone.

I've seen some comforter sets and a few long, imported skirts that were really pretty, but I have to wonder: if I actually order anything from one of these catalogs, what other mailing lists will I be put on? Even now, for some reason, I'm on the mailing list for the Lane Bryant catalog, when I'm so skinny that friends are always trying to feed me. I called and asked them to remove me from the list, and they said they would, but they never did, so I just keep tossing it in the trash. Another poor tree lost its life for nothing.

But the main reason I don't order from those catalogs is my enormous skepticism regarding many of the products they sell. I know that those creams that "eliminate cellulite" and "erase spider veins" absolutely do not work, so why should I believe the claims made about any of the other products, and why should I respect the company enough to buy anything at all, even a duvet cover?

You know, as I turn the pages and examine those anti-aging "cures," which I'm sure many women believe in and buy (and when the latest one doesn't work, try another one), I wonder how a publication such as this might be viewed in 20 years or so. People will probably roll their eyes at the phony claims, virtually all of them by then conclusively proven false. They might consider today's examples of snake-oil-in-a-jar the same way we look at the skin treatments, female cures and other "medicinals" in the 1905 Sears catalog, or even in the 1694 manual, "The Ladies Dictionary: being a General Entertainment for the Fair Sex," an edition of which is going on the auction block on September 11, according to Britain's Daily Mail.

This book, described by book specialist Matthew Haley as "the Cosmopolitan magazine of its day," devotes much of its content to beauty advice. I'm not sure how much of this relates to anti-aging, as the average life expectancy in the 17th Century was probably about 35, but women had the same concerns about weight, flabby flesh and rough skin.

Regarding weight, being too skinny was ill-advised, as one can probably discern from the full-figured portraits of the day. I love the way this is expressed in the book: "Bodies that are very Lean and Scragged, we must own, cannot be very Comely. It is a contrary Extream to Corpulency and the Parties Face always seems to carry Lent in it." You'd think they'd been looking at a picture of Victoria Beckham! Poor starving little wretch. But instead of feeding her, I'll bet Victoria's friends are having a contest to see who can be the most scragged.

Plumpness was in fashion in the 1600s, but even then, there was such a thing as "too fat." (In other words, they'd think Kirstie Alley used to be too fat, but is perfect now.) To lose weight quickly, women were advised to bathe in claret wine infused with wormwood, calamint, chamomile, sage and squinath (the flowers of a kind of rush). Now, before you laugh, think of all those lavish spa treatments that are supposed to banish inches, remove cellulite, etc. They're incredibly expensive - a "series" of them is always prescribed -- and are very relaxing but do nothing to solve the cellulite problem! You may feel smoother and perhaps a little energized for a time, but your cellulite has NOT gone away. I'll bet those 17th Century women felt better after bathing in claret, too, especially if they drank a little of it. Before adding the wormwood, of course.

Today's spas offer an array of "mineral" baths and facials. A dermatologist will tell you (as she told me) that the skin does not absorb minerals. As for "flushing toxins out of the body," those treatments don't do that, either. If you want to get rid of toxins, try eating purer food in the first place and drinking a lot of water. And, remember, many bottled waters are really just tap water. "PWS" on the label means "public water source." In twenty years, people will regard old bottles of Aquafina as quaint, humorous collectibles.

Well, back to the 17th Century. Women in those days had the same concerns we do about "wobbly bits" - those flabby or saggy areas. They were told to apply "to the place that Languishes, or does not equally Thrive" a disgusting mixture of chicken and goose grease, pine, rosin, pitch and turpentine, mixed in an earthenware pot. Then, they were to wait until it hardened into a plaster. This might take all afternoon; maybe girlfriends would meet for "plaster" parties, drink a little claret, and sign each others' casts!

Of course, this procedure did nothing but make the woman smell like rancid fat and gasoline, compounding her lack of attractiveness to the opposite sex. If Juliet's nurse had treated her with this, Romeo would've stayed far, far away.

The book also describes a similar remedy for breasts: "Breasts hanging down or large; how to make them Plump and Round." No plastic surgery necessary - and in 1694, going under the knife was not a good idea!

Science has come a long way in the past 300 years or so, but in many ways, our wishes keep us willfully mired in the ignorant past. Some of the priciest spa treatments and face creams offered today are no more "anti-aging" than goose grease was in the days of yore. If you really want to feel better and soften those fine lines, take a walk, enjoy some wild salmon and fresh vegetables, read a good book, and drink a little claret.

Or if you just want to feel better, drink a lot of claret.

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Since this is the first post at the new place, I'd like to invite my fellow late-bloomers to surf over to my website, LauraAinsworth.com, and check out some of the previous posts. Recent ones have included manically detailed, episode-by-episode disembowelings of NBC's "Age Of Love;" a rip on one of my biggest pet peeves (rock critics who review the age of the audience rather than the music); and much more, including comments on hundreds of provocative and/or hilarious stories related to anti-aging potions, beauty products, fashion, plastic surgery addiction and all the other colorful aspects of this age- and looks-obsessed circus parade we call Modern Life.