(Yeah, I know you never expected to see a bunch of celebrity photos on my blog, but there’s a first time for everything.)

Do you remember the scene in the movie LA Story where Rick Moranis, playing a grave digger in an uncredited cameo, riffs on the Bard’s Hamlet?   As he talks with Steve Martin’s character, he explains how it takes the bodies of Beverly Hills women so long to decompose because their skin has been tan for so long that it resists the water.  That and all those unnatural implants help preserve them.

MSNBC Senior Health Editor Julia Sommerfeld has something to say about the artificial changes people make to their bodies, particularly their faces, in the online article Pursuit of Youth Isn’t Always Pretty.  The title continues, “Reality check on the war on wrinkles: Looking younger or just weirder?”  Which pretty much says it all.

I’m skeptical about cosmetic surgery.  “To each his own,” my grandmother would say, and I fundamentally agree.  I’m not about to march out and protest in front of plastic surgery clinics in the same way that anti-choice activists do.  But I’m concerned when people tie their self-esteem so much to their looks.  Yeah, I know that society (easy target, let’s blame “Society” for everything) bombards us with images and messages that equate looks with happiness, but aren’t we all heading to the same end?  What if we spent the time, money, and mental energy on something more satisfying and more impactful?

Above: Clint Eastwood, left, and Wayne Newton, right.

This article illustrates my point rather nicely.  In a slide show, Dr. Tony Youn, a Michigan-based certified plastic surgeon, reviewed before and after photos of twenty-one celebrities to evaluate who has had what done to them (or not) and with what results.  Interesting and instructive.  The people who haven’t had anything done really have aged nicely, wrinkles and all.  No doubt they’ve followed a regimen of skincare, but no signs of any implants, injections, lifts, nips or tucks.  The people who have had some work done look okay at best, frightening at worst, and oddly unnatural for the most part.

I know the pressure on women in Hollywood is greater than on men.  Men get “handsome” and “dignified” as they age whereas women are perceived to just look “old”.  But looking at Susan Sarandon (above left) and Joan Van Ark (above right), I think that by just about any measure, Susan has aged much more beautifully au naturel than Joan has at the hands of her doctors.  And I don’t mean any disrespect to Joan or Wayne.  We all make our choices and I respect your right to do that. 

Makeup artist Bobbi Brown really makes the point when she says, near the conclusion of the article, that we’re confusing the issues of youth and beauty.  I fully agree.

Of course should there be any doubt, we can always use Michael Jackson as the perfect example of why cosmetic surgery is a slippery and downwards slope at the bottom of which neither youth nor beauty lies.