JJ’s Journal: beauty strategy

A regular appointment with a girl’s best friend: her gay boyfriend

To go under the knife … or not?

I don’t care what anyone says – I love dividing the world up into two different types and making broad generalizations about all of humanity.

It’s endlessly fascinating and somehow, somewhere, no matter your position on an issue, or the group you fall into, you can be sure you’re right. At least to the people on your side of the equation.

Bless us; the human race – so obligingly divide-able and no more so than by those two famed groups: those who might choose youth-enhancing cosmetic procedures, and those who swear – at the age of 21 – that they know they will choose to grow old ‘naturally’ and are slightly saddened by the vanity of the elderly person so pathetic as to wish to look younger.

The friends and I always get a chuckle out of that particular one – because whether you would elect to nip and tuck yourself into the Bride of Wildenstein (Google the name if it’s unfamiliar – she’s well worth a look and a gasp) or age effortlessly into Helen Mirren territory, the only thing we can ever really know for sure is that at 21 it’s laughable to imagine for a moment such a fate could ever possibly happen to you.

But by the time one advances along the age continuum, the debate has shifted from the hypothetical to the increasingly noted instance of similarly age-advanced friends swapping doctor’s names like players in a fantasy football league. Not that everybody does it; my very best friend at the age of 50 (and just a shade more) hasn’t done a thing, but unlike the rest of us, who find it fun to daydream, is serenely silent on the topic. Not a peep out of her in favour of Juvederm versus Restylane… or even vice versa.

So how does she resist the lure of not only not experimenting, but not even speculating? I stumble across her secret during one recent Saturday afternoon latte-date when an idle conversation turned into a surprisingly well-researched dialogue on the inflated faces of the famous.

“… and they say Liz Hurley had her lips pumped up,” says the gf. “Why? She had a perfectly nice mouth before… I have to ask myself if these women even look at themselves in the mirror. I mean Lisa Rinna – those lips! And Madonna…”

“Those cheeks!” I interject. “I mean, she’s no Joan Rivers, but she’s starting to look like…”

“Priscilla Presley!” my well-informed friend adds.

“Well, I was going to say Cher, but I could just as easily have said Meg Ryan. What I want to know is how you know so much about it.”

She smiles and names one of my favourite guilty pleasures: awfulplasticsurgery.com – a website that more than delivers on the promise of its provocative name.

“It’s my secret weapon for resisting temptation,” she explains. “I don’t know what I’ll do in the future, but for the time being, just a few minutes online looking at a few celebrity train wrecks and suddenly I feel gorgeous just as I am.”

Okay – so there are three groups of people into which the world can be divided: Those who would choose to, those who would choose not to…and those who choose not to choose at least for now – choosing just to feel beautiful instead.

[It's not ALL bad! In April, Tempo Toronto will be featuring a story on eye surgery, well done, by Dr. Trevor Born Toronto's favourite cosmetic surgeon. Ed]

by Editor

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[Tags: 50 plus, beauty and aging, cosmetic surgery, gay boyfriend, girl's best friend, plastic surgery, tempo toronto]

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