Jack & Hill: A Beauty Blog - make-up, cosmetics, perfume, and the substance of style

Janeane Garofalo

What the hell did she do to herself? And WHY?

PhotoChop

I had to teach myself some new PhotoShop tricks today for a project, which led to some noodling around for fun.  Here I've given myself a nose job.  You can see the original, in which I now think I look a lot like Danny Kaye, after the jump.  Whaddy'all think, should I do it for real?

Cindy Crawford in plastic surgery shock!

Except I don't think many people will be shocked to learn that she's been relying on a plastic surgeon for 11 years. I'm more shocked that she's admitting it.

I'm not going to lie to myself: past a certain age, creams work on the texture of your skin but, in order to restore elasticity, all I can really count on is vitamin injections, Botox and collagen.

I have a very simple, healthy life, which works miracles. I drink a lot of water, watch what I eat and exercise. But I owe the quality of my skin to my cosmetic surgeon.

I wonder what she and Dr Jean-Louis Sebagh will have to say to all of the suckers who were gullible enough to shell out for the pair's Meaningful Beauty range. I'd suggest something along the lines of, "When we told you our products worked because of ingredients taken from a 'rare French melon,' and showed you a picture of a plain old cantaloupe as proof, you believed us? Really?"

Bad plastic surgery: Fergie

Is anyone - anyone at all - of the opinion that she looks better now than she did before she had God knows what done to her face?

Diane Keaton and Jane Fonda for L'Oreal

Are Jane Fonda and Diane Keaton the best L'Oreal can do? Surely there are other female celebrities in their age group who haven't been relying for too long on cosmetic surgery (Fonda) or wearing totally hideous clothes (Keaton) to be considered worthy of these deals. I mean, aren't there?

(As for Scarlett Johannsen, I am indifferent.)

Earned laugh lines better than a lumpy face

Lately, I have noticed that even when I'm not smiling, I've got visible lines between my nose and the corners of my mouth. I'm 28, so either my adolescent tanning has come back to haunt me, or this is the consequence of being so darned happy all the time. More realistically, it's just something that happens.

My boyfriend, who's the international editor of a weekly pharmaceuticals magazine, sent me a link to a story about a permanent facial line filler injection which is up for FDA approval. Although I often contemplate what I'd have done if I were to go under the needle or knife...I'm thinking this isn't it. Thanks for the huge hint, though, honey. (Just kidding. It's not that big a hint.)

Kenny Rogers: The anti-plastic surgery poster child

Now I've got quite a few friends who have had various forms of cosmetic surgery - eye jobs, nose jobs, boob jobs, lipo - and I'd be lying if I said I haven't considered what I'd have done to myself if I were to go under the knife. That said, I think Kenny Rogers now makes for a very good statement against letting a surgeon go NEAR one's face. (I'm not even posting a preview photo here, such is the horror. Do not click the link if you're at all squeamish.)

And now for something completely gross...

Via Amy Alkon, I found this horrifying article about a practice that I was aware of, but tried not to think about too much: women having cosmetic surgery on their genitals.

Now obviously women and men should be able to do anything to their bodies that they damn well please - be it eating themselves to death, smoking like chimneys, self-mutilation, or whatever they please. It might not be clever or pretty, but it's also nobody's business but theirs.

That said...

Cosmetic surgery is not the pretty picnic that many people seem to think it is. I have friends who have had it, and their stories of what the surgery and recovery periods entailed were enough to turn this girl's stomach. A friend of mine - a slim, gorgeous, intelligent woman who no more needed plastic surgery than she needed a brain transplant - told me about being wrapped so tightly in bandages after her liposuction that she would wake up in the middle of the night, unable to breathe. Her mother had to help her in and out of her skin-tight body wrappings every day (she could only take them off to bathe), and she was in excruciating pain for weeks.

But that's liposuction. I can kinda see the temptation there.

When it comes to genital reconstruction, I do not understand the reasoning at all. Is there anyone willing to put forward the argument that it's possible to undergo this surgery and not suffer from a crippling lack of confidence and no sense of self-worth?