Reading Between the Linelessness

Here's a must-read today for anyone with a TV, or a face. The LA Times' Mary McNamara discusses the epidemic of Botox and cosmetic surgery in Hollywood, its effect on the viewing experience and the difficulties of writing about it:

For a critic, this poses a dilemma -- while it is appropriate, indeed, necessary to point out technical things like disruptive camera work or shoddy set design, what exactly are you supposed to say about an older actor's strange shininess, newly bee-stung lips or eyes that seem to have changed shape and placement? Especially since no one in Hollywood but Joan [Rivers], Dolly Parton, and Kathy Griffin owns up to having work done.

Google the name of almost any female actor older than 20 and the term "cosmetic surgery," and you will deluged with blogs and websites devoted to deconstructing famous faces and figures, often in the most clinical terms -- several of the sites are run, apparently, by actual surgeons who offer their expert analysis. But among those who are being analyzed, plastic surgery has become like gambling in Las Vegas -- a billion-dollar industry that no one admits to paying for.

So to avoid those angry denials through publicists, and to appear above the prole- tariat fixation with appearance, mostly we in the mainstream press say nothing. Or rather we say nothing in print and then run into our editor's office to say what everyone else across the country is saying: "Oh, my Lord, did you see what she did to her face?"

Before you ask: I just use a good moisturizer. That's all. Yet I don't look a day over 60.