Allure’s April issue is all about anti-aging, which one would expect would consist of a laundry list of facial, eye and neck creams ranging between $10-500 that have been imbued with some new, special, space-age technology to keep you from looking wrinkly and old. And it’s certainly chock full of that, but they also strangely praise the benefits of plastic surgery – notably botox and Restaylan – by featuring a page with a photo of Demi Moore with arrows sticking out of various parts of her face, each explaining which plastic surgery technique …
… an expert who has never treated her believes she may have had done.
What is surprising is the fact that the magazine – which, to the best of my memory usually frowns on plastic surgery – has entitled the article “How to Age Like Demi Moore” and praises the star on knowing how to age with graceful amounts of fillers and injections. The surgeon who has not treated her believes her list of surgeries includes eye fillers, nostril botox, cheek fillers, lip fillers, veneers, neck botox, chin Restaylane, intense light therapy skin treatments, smile line injections, crow’s feet injections, brow injections and forehead injections. Essentially, her entire face – their surgeon thinks – is a buffet of Botox that they estimate would cost just under $50,000 a year to maintain.
So not only is that price tag completely unrealistic for the average woman who can’t afford to buy a luxury car’s worth of plastic surgery every year, it’s also glorifying a trend that has caused stars in their early 20s, like Amanda Seyfreid, to begin botoxing the hell out of their face to achieve or the horrifying concept of “Mommy and Me Nosejobs.”
Supposedly discussing and praising plastic surgery is normal in countries like Brazil, but I feel like this obsession with keeping age at bay is creepy and, not to knock Ms. Moore, but it doesn’t seem to make them any more likely to land an acting job. The trouble is: what do you do with an actress aged 45 who’s trying to look 25? The only role they could really play is one that reflects that lifestyle – and Hollywood self-mockery movies are few and far between.
But it would be helpful if $5 drug store beauty magazines wouldn’t act as though Botox and Restaylane treatments are a great way to stay looking “fresh” and youthful. Any Real Housewives show is like a walking PSA ad about the dangers of too much surgery and bleach – it’s so easy to overdo and rarely looks natural. Moreover, I certainly have no plans to inject my face with spoiled pig fat in the future and I imagine many women are in the same boat, but any 16-year-old picking up a magazine is more likely to be affected by what they perceive as not only a growing beauty standard, but a strangely necessary trend toward achieving anti-aging through extreme measures at increasingly younger ages.
What’s your take? Does encouraging plastic surgery news and information belong in beauty magazines? Would you get botox to try to rid yourself of wrinkles?