The latest fad: filling in the lines of our lives

THOMPSON E-mail: Click here

© St. Petersburg Times
published April 6, 2002

Does she or doesn't she?

At a certain age that's a question we all ask, and it doesn't refer to hair color. Today everyone knows that if she's over 50, she does. Unless she has gray hair, and this is an era in which almost all grandmas are blonde. Now the question refers to something a little more complex and, sigh, pricey than Clairol: plastic surgery, or, the kinder gentler term, cosmetic surgery. Either way, the cut is still as deep, or as shallow.

Plastic surgeons exhort:

You owe it to yourself!

Increase your self-esteem!

Oh, please. We don't give a hoot about our self-esteem; we just don't want our breasts to sag. Or our eyelids or our jowls.

It's subtle, we're told in the ads. People will notice something different about you but won't be able to say just what. And next to the ad copy is a photo of a woman's profile. In "Before," she looks like your grandmother. In "After" she looks like a cheerleader at Plant High.

Over the holidays one Tampa surgeon actually hosted a botox party. Bring your friends! Enjoy refreshments while you have injected into your skin a substance that is actually so poisonous that if ingested it'll kill you. (Remember botulism?) But, hey, it smoothes out those wrinkles and makes your lips look like those of, oh, all those actresses who've had it done: Kim Basinger, Melanie Griffith (forgive her, she has to hang onto Antonio Banderas) and Barbara Hershey, who, if you saw her in Lantana, has had so much surgery her chin appears to occupy a different county from her neck.

It's disconcerting. I liked Barbara Hershey, and she had surgery really, really early, way before, as they say, she needed it. Which is pretty much the trend now, and Tampa is right up there following it.

How can you tell, a younger woman in my exercise class asked me.

Well, if her breasts don't move when she works out is one way.

If she comes back from a vacation and looks rested, I mean, really rested, is another. If people are saying, "That trip to Cancun took 10 years off you," trust me, she didn't go to Cancun.

If the skin under her eyes is perfectly tight and smooth. Several women I know have had their eyes done; even the husband of a woman I know has had his eyes done. I'd have my eyes done if someone else would pay for it and I could be 100 (not 99.9) percent assured I wouldn't go away blind.

Why are we doing this? It's not just rich women. It's all of us. A few years ago, after reading about new mini-facelifts where they don't have to hike all your facial skin up to the top of your head, I called a respected Tampa plastic surgeon and was told there was a three-month wait for a consultation. Which was a plenty long cooling-off period for me. Still, I'm not saying for certain I'll never have anything done even though my pain threshold is so low it hurts to have my teeth cleaned and I know surgery will bring me none of what I really want in my life.

I used to watch the Academy Awards to see how I compared to actresses my age, but this year I didn't watch. It was a good year for certain-age actresses -- Helen Mirren, Judi Dench and Maggie Smith were all nominated, but I already know what they look like. I also know how I look compared to, say, Uma Thurman.

As far as I know, Helen and Judi and Maggie haven't had any work done, but, if they have, it hasn't made them look like Uma either.

Liv Ullman, the Scandinavian actress, and now a director, once counted as one of the world's most beautiful women, has had no surgery. Her features are still beautiful, but her face is lined, really lined, with wrinkles. Diane Keaton has had no work done, the last I read. She has said of her Hollywood contemporaries something like this: Why do people want to look like they haven't lived a life?

-- Sandra Thompson is a writer living in Tampa. She can be reached at tampa@sptimes.com. City Life appears on Saturdays.

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