What authenticity means these days.

1. "I am completely comfortable with having voted for Trump. It was my first time because of the apocalypse that was represented by the blue ticket. And so I just don't think there was any rational choice. We had an absolute emergency on our hands and this simple ability to vote for something that was in some way authentic made it the only game in town.... You know... President Biden was not the president in the meaningful sense.... And then at the point that that became implausible, to swap in an empty shirt is such a dire commentary on the state of the Republic" — said Bret Weinstein, in video at X.

2. "The beauty standards themselves are inauthentic — that is, unnatural and impossible to attain without surgical or technological intervention — but the open discussion around how to achieve them has been praised as a form of authenticity by fans, many of whom felt they had previously been gaslit by celebrities claiming their perfect forms were the result of diet and exercise.... Despite an expressed desire to be true to themselves, members of [Generation Z] have said they care less and less about authenticity from influencers — perhaps because the efforts to appear relatable have fallen flat" — from "An Era of Authenticity (or Something Like It)/Celebrities are being praised for openly discussing plastic surgery and Photoshop. Are they raging against a machine they created?" (NYT).

3. "Obviously, we’ve talked about authenticity, and if you watch Mamdani, he’s just electric, which [Kansas Governor Laura] Kelly is not. But they are authentically of their place"/"Her image in Kansas — she’s really leaned into the idea that she’s not a partisan figure. She grew up Republican. She is a moderate Democrat" — said Michelle Cottle, quoted in "There Is Hope for Democrats. Look to Kansas. Two Opinion writers on the Democratic governors who might just save the party" (NYT). 

4. "To say I know how our environment affects people? I have no idea. I really don't. And I don't want to know. I don't want it evaluated. I just want to keep trying to make the environment healthy and good and better — and authentic" — said Pat Murphy, manager of the Milwaukee Brewers, quoted in "MLB-leading Brewers cap best 60-game stretch in club history" (MLB.com).

"The wax lips is my statement against plastic surgery. I’ve been very vocal about the genocide of a generation of women..."

"...  by the cosmeceutical industrial complex who’ve disfigured themselves. The wax lips really sends it home.”

Said Jamie Lee Curtis, posing in wax lips and quoted in "'Generations of women have been disfigured': Jamie Lee Curtis lets rip on plastic surgery, power, and Hollywood’s age problem" (Guardian).

Obviously, the word “genocide” is very strong and risks causing offence, given its proper meaning. To Curtis, however, it is accurate. “I’ve used that word for a long time and I use it specifically because it’s a strong word. I believe that we have wiped out a generation or two of natural human [appearance]. The concept that you can alter the way you look through chemicals, surgical procedures, fillers – there’s a disfigurement of generations of predominantly women who are altering their appearances...."

And yet: 

Curtis’s daughter Ruby, 29, is trans.... “I’m an outspoken advocate for the right of human beings to be who they are.... I’m a John Steinbeck student... and there’s a beautiful piece of writing from East of Eden about the freedom of people to be who they are. Any government, religion, institution trying to limit that freedom is what I need to fight against.””

I guess those Hollywood actresses with their chemicals and surgical procedures are not trying to "be who they are" but to be what they feel others want them to be. How "against plastic surgery" is Curtis? When is it "disfigurement"? When does she feel motivated to use the word "genocide"? One might feel inclined to say that each person is free to make their own decision, but when do onlookers judge them harshly? How do we know who is truly finding their real self in these medical cuttings and who is straining to conform to real or imagined societal expectations?

ADDED: Here's the question I was motivated to ask Grok: "Are trans women mostly attempting to look like beautiful women or is the goal simply to look like an ordinary woman (and to 'read' as a woman)? Or is it enough merely to feel, from their own perspective, that they are expressing their own personal idea of womanliness (or femininity) and not focused on what other people think of what they are seeing?" 

I'm seeing a lot about the Jeff Bezos wedding, but how do we know he's really getting married?

There are motivations to put on this big show that are separate from any reasons to enter a marriage in the legal sense.

Consider this: "The embarrassing truth Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez haven't revealed about their $20m 'wedding'" (Daily Mail)(reporting that a Venetian official supposedly said no registrar had been appointed for the ceremony).

And here's the NYT: "What to Know About the Wedding of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez/The second marriage for both is taking place in Venice, Italy, under a shroud of secrecy and amid a swarm of speculation": "Italy has a variety of rules surrounding marriage rites, which can involve religious ceremonies, often performed in Roman Catholic churches. The Sánchez-Bezos wedding, however, will be nondenominational, likely of a ceremonial nature."

What I want to know about that couple is why, with all their money, they have, both of them, engineered their face into that post-human fright mask?

Why would the wedding be any less fake than the faces?

And here's Tina Brown: 

The Jeff Bezos-Lauren Sánchez (circa $56 million) Venice-sinking nuptials, tying up every tender on the Grand Canal (and 90 private jets expected), is the big beautiful buster bomb of high-net-worth exhibitionism. Now that the 55- year-old bride Sánchez has proved that landing the fourth richest man in the world requires the permanent display of breasts like genetically modified grapefruit and behemoth buttocks bursting from a leopard-print thong bikini, she’s exuberantly and unapologetically shown that the route to power and glory for women hasn't changed since the first Venetian Republic.

*** 

Sailin’ round the world in a dirty gondola/Oh, to be back in the land of Coca-Cola!

"I know this might come as a shock, because my whole page used to be about loving my flat chest and being confident with it."

"I literally built my entire career around that. Was everything a lie? Was I secretly insecure this whole time, and just using body positivity to make money so I could finally afford a boob job? No."

Said Clara Dao, on TikTok, quoted in "When Beauty Standards and Body Positivity Collide/A new cultural ideal for women is ultrathin and cloaked in the language of inclusivity and self-acceptance" (NYT).

Dao got the implants for “fun,” she explained. After six years and more than 900 videos of “flat-chest content,” she “got bored.”... Dao’s followers are flooding her comments with anger and disappointment, but all the analytics show is that the engagement is through the roof....

I don't understand the choice of the word "but." The "flooding" of comments is engagement. It's a bad use of the human capacity for emotion to get angry at someone like this and to reward her with the attention she sought by doing the thing that made you angry. When will we ever learn?

"It felt like such an invasion — such a bizarre, rape of some kind. Nothing pointed toward this need to be tighter or smaller or firmer or younger, especially there."

Said Brooke Shields, quoted in "Brooke Shields Received a Vaginal Rejuvenation Without Consent" (NY Magazine).

The revelation comes on the occasion of a new memoir — called "Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old: Thoughts on Aging as a Woman." Shields is 59 years old, and the surgery happened when she was in her 40s and sought labia reduction surgery. We're told that afterwards the surgeon told her he "threw in a little bonus." Shields chose not to sue at the time and is choosing to work through what she calls "shame" by writing about it.

"On certain days — mainly when I feel broke — I wish I had it all back. Although it was money I never expected to have, $19,000 is an awful lot of money."

"It’s impossible for me not to wonder if I might be happier now had I saved it and continued to live with my body as it was. Like most people who pursue cosmetic surgery, I believed I’d made a decision for and by myself. But what if no one had ever commented on my breasts, or the prior lack thereof? What if I hadn’t seen 50 million TikTok videos of young women with flat chests in baggy T-shirts? What if my doctor had told me that I might be depressed for a month and my scars might look much worse than the pictures in his portfolio? Would I still have done it? Less often, and less practically, I worry, too, that by giving up breast tissue, I’ve sacrificed some future, as-yet-discovered version of myself: What if one day I want to dress like Sydney Sweeney but no longer have the rack for it? Never mind that I’m a homebody writer and almost 40. Never mind that I stopped showing any cleavage 15 years ago. I’m more than capable of feeling regret for not doing things I never wanted to do in the first place; I do it all the time."

Writes Katie Heaney, in "My Breast Reduction From Hell/After my divorce, I wanted to make a change. Then the complications started" (New York Magazine).

Asking AI to make a beautiful face more and more beautiful ends up in the same place as a person who gets too much plastic surgery.

But you'll have to go to TikTok to see it: here.

"[Elle] Macpherson, 60, says she rented a house in Phoenix, Arizona, for eight months, where she 'holistically treated' her cancer..."

"... under the guidance of her primary doctor, a doctor of naturopathy, holistic dentist, osteopath, chiropractor and two therapists. She said: 'It was a shock, it was unexpected, it was confusing, it was daunting in so many ways and it really gave me an opportunity to dig deep in my inner sense to find a solution that worked for me.... Saying no to standard medical solutions was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. But saying no to my own inner sense would have been even harder,' later adding she thought chemotherapy and surgery were too extreme."

From "Elle Macpherson refused chemotherapy after secret breast cancer diagnosis/Supermodel says she is in remission after being diagnosed seven years ago and rejecting traditional medicine" (The Guardian).

ADDED: The idea that surgery is extreme is subjective. How aversive to it should we be? It made me think of the newly normalized gender affirmation surgery, bariatric surgery, and the plastic surgery done to fight the perfectly ordinary effects of age.

And I happened to see this earlier today:

Amazing Mom

pic.twitter.com/lGXL89E6xR

— The Best (@ThebestFigen) September 1, 2024

"Until recently, standard liposuction didn’t deliver the definition many men desired. To gain more, one possible solution..."

"... had been to inject fat directly into the abdominal muscles to enlarge and enhance them. But performing the procedure without precision was seen as too dangerous. Then Rio de Janeiro plastic surgeon Alvaro Cansanção had an idea. In 2019, he began using ultrasound technology to pinpoint the exact location where the fat should be injected to inflate the abs. 'We have created an evolution,' Cansanção told The Washington Post. 'Now they can have a six-pack without renouncing the pleasures of life.'"

From "'VANITY IS A VIRTUE'/Chasing the perfect abs, men flock to plastic surgery" (WaPo)(that's a free-access link, because it's the last day of the month, and I still have 3 gift links left and because you've got to see all the carved-out-of-fat abs).

Now, I understand the photos I've been seeing of men with protruding bellies that somehow have what looks like ab definition. It's bumps of relocated fat! There is a renouncement of a pleasure of life: the pleasure of authenticity. If you see something that you perceive as beautiful because it represents health and fitness, but then learn or feel that it is something else, that is a loss of pleasure. This entire procedure is a testament to the desire to be looked at but not touched and not understood. That is the renouncement of pleasure, other than the pleasure of being admired from a distance.

"The new Trump movie has his campaign in an uproar...."

 

Apparently, the Cannes audience gasped at the brutality of the rape scene. The victim: Ivana.

Here's the Guardian article, "'This garbage is pure fiction': when subjects hit back at their biopics Trump has spoken out against The Apprentice, but he’s not the first celebrity to attack an unflattering big-screen portrait":

"This acceptance of the value of cosmetic work is not limited to zoomers. When I brought up this story... hands flew to necks, foreheads and eyes."

"Fingers pinched at sags, wrinkles and droops. Their owners — people in their late 20s to their 50s, mostly women, but some men, too — made clear-eyed assertions about all the things they planned to change as they got older or when they had more money and time to spare. At no point in these conversations did anyone suggest that we were fine the way we were, or that aging was a privilege instead of a humiliating process of degradation that is to be resisted at all costs. These were, as [one Gen Z influencer] puts it, 'supportive' conversations: We were supporting each other’s aesthetic aspirations. Supporting our bodily autonomy. Supporting our right to use our time and money to bend reality to our will."

Writes Madeleine Aggeler at "Gen Z has had work done — and they’ll tell you all about it/Plastic surgery used to be hush-hush. Now it’s good content" (WaPo). 

"Beyond the question of what she’d had done, however, lay the more interesting question of why she had done it."

"Did Madonna get sucked so deep into the vortex of beauty culture that she came out the other side? Had the pressure to appear younger somehow made her think she ought to look like some kind of excessively contoured baby? Perhaps so, but I’d like to think that our era’s greatest chameleon, a woman who has always been intentional about her reinvention, was doing something slyer, more subversive, by serving us both a new — if not necessarily improved — face and a side of critique about the work of beauty, the inevitability of aging, and the impossible bind in which older female celebrities find themselves.... [W]hatever her intentions, the superstar has gotten us talking about how good looks are subjective and how ageism is pervasive. In the end, whether she meant to make a statement or just to look younger, better, 'refreshed,' almost doesn’t matter. If beauty is a construct, Madonna’s the one who put its scaffolding on display."

 
Writes Jennifer Weiner in "Madonna’s New Face Is a Brilliant Provocation" (NYT).

If you don't know what Weiner is talking about, see "Fans 'so confused' by Madonna’s ‘new face’ at Grammys 2023" (with photos).

"Because breasts are highly visible, they can make transitioning difficult and cause intense distress for these teenagers, fueling the demand for top surgeries."

"Small studies have shown that many transgender adolescents report significant discomfort related to their breasts, including difficulty showering, sleeping and dating. As the population of these adolescents has grown, top surgery has been offered at younger ages....  As demand has grown, Dr. Gallagher... has built a thriving top surgery specialty. The doctor frequently posts photos, FAQs and memes on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, proudly flouting professional mores in favor of connecting with hundreds of thousands of followers. Her feeds often fill with photos tagged #NipRevealFriday, highlighting patients like Michael whose bandages were just removed. On her office windowsill sits a framed nameplate with one of her best-known catchphrases on TikTok: 'Yeet the Teet,' slang for removing breasts."

From "More Trans Teens Are Choosing ‘Top Surgery’/Small studies suggest that breast removal surgery improves transgender teenagers’ well-being, but data is sparse. Some state leaders oppose such procedures for minors" (NYT).

"It’s all really interlinked, choosing a pair of leggings which causes discomfort and which in turn draws attention to the labia and the need for surgery."

Said plastic surgeon Dr. Richard Swift, quoted in "'Designer vagina' surgery doubles in 2022 thanks to tight leggings" (NY Post).

The article repeatedly uses the word "vagina" for "vulva," with ludicrous lines like: "Called a labiaplasty, the procedure shrinks the labia minora — otherwise known as the flaps on the inside of the vagina — with a price tag of more than $4,000."

"I don’t think that the women who are staunchly against plastic surgery are worried about women’s health or self-esteem..."

"... I think they are motivated by fear that their pretty privilege — the benefits they get to enjoy for meeting those standards without the help of a doctor — is at risk. If beauty becomes democratized by more people simply paying surgeons for it, the proverbial finish line gets pushed further away. But upholding a limited body ideal and rewarding the cluster of folks closest to it isn’t the solution. Embracing autonomy and a variety of body aesthetics is. The notion of beauty is fueled, in part, by exclusivity. Those relatively few who have it are revered.... People with marginalized bodies are acutely aware of the consequences of not meeting the standards of physical beauty.... Fatphobia, transphobia and ableism are part of our daily realities, especially for women of color.... A 'natural body' movement that doesn’t include all of us is the real danger. We need to make room for weave, highlight and contour alongside wheelchairs, fatness and full 360 liposuction with Brazilian butt lifts."

From "What Women Who Criticize Plastic Surgery Don’t See/The 'natural' body movement is unfairly exclusive" by Sesali Bowen (NYT). 

This was published March 4, 2020. I'm blogging it this morning because of this earlier post, about black women getting Brazilian butt lifts. I wanted to add something about what I believed was the conventional wisdom — that surveys show that black women are generally happier with their bodies than white women are. 

I stumbled into this essay, and I wanted to make it a separate post, mainly because it's critical of the position I tend to take and I wanted to discuss it separately. I think people who want to look better ought to adopt wholesome, healthy habits and pursue physical and mental health, and feel free to express themselves individualistically. Don't spend money and go under the knife and strive to look more like some lady who has provoked your envy!

"Most recovery houses offer transportation services following surgery, often a minivan with the passenger seats reclined to make space for an inflatable mattress..."

"... where patients, who are not supposed to sit down or lie on their backsides for at least two to four weeks, can lie on their stomachs during the ride. When they arrive, the beds they’ve booked — usually two to a room — can cost anywhere from $80 to $400 a night. Some recovery houses have nurses on site who can check vitals and provide massages that they claim help with healing. But some women complain that they have experienced poor service and unsanitary conditions at recovery facilities, like toilets that don’t work and inedible meals.... A whole host of things can go wrong; most notably, the repurposed fat can travel through veins in the buttocks to pulmonary arteries and chambers of the heart, causing fat embolisms. Transferred fat can also migrate beneath the muscle, tearing gluteal veins. According to some recent surveys, for every 13,000 B.B.L.s performed in the United States, one results in death."

From "Butt Lifts Are Booming. Healing Is No Joke. Beauty, pain, race and money play out in Miami’s post-surgical recovery houses" (NYT).

Lots of photographs at the link. All of the women pictured appear to be black, and the reader is assumed to find this puzzling, because we are offered this explanation: "For Black women, many of whom have always possessed a version of the B.B.L. body, it is difficult to square this popularity with the fact that their natural bodies have been denigrated for generations." But "the B.B.L. body" is in style and seen on social media, and "Black women aren’t immune to wanting a seemingly quick way of acquiring the figure that defines desire today." 

We're not told if white women are getting this gruesome surgery in the same proportion, so it's hard to think in terms of feminism, but I see that the top-rated comment blames men: "Yet another example of how men convince women to engage in body dysmorphia to meet their approval." Can women take some responsibility for their approval-seeking... if that's what's happening here? And isn't this approval-seeking a matter of women trying to get the jump on other women? I'd say more, but since the article is exclusively about black women going for this horrible surgery, the present-day convention is to mind one's own business. 

And yet, if I'm supposed to butt out of this butt butchery, why is The New York Times presenting all these close-up color photos of the sliced-up, bloody butts of women of color? For titillation? To boost the egos of its white women readers? The article writer, Sandra E. Garcia, appears to be black, so I suppose it is not my place to detect systemic racism.

"My breasts were even bigger than I imagined them.... As the surgeon moved his computer mouse, they changed shape. With a twitch of his finger, they rose on the disembodied torso..."

"... and shrank into the breasts I had fantasized about for more than 25 years. Until age 11, I was a confident, athletic child.... Then, my breasts arrived.... I stopped playing sports, stopped playing outside altogether. Worse, I was dogged by boys and loathed by girls.... ... Kathy Davis, the foremost contemporary feminist theorist on the subject, wrote in a 1991 article in the journal 'Hypatia,' that cosmetic surgery was 'regarded as an extreme form of medical misogyny, producing and reproducing the pernicious and pervasive cultural themes of deficient femininity.' The woman who yielded to the desire to commit such violence to her body was a 'cultural dope,' afflicted by false consciousness, believing she made a personal choice while actually yielding to a system that controls and oppresses women.... My conception of feminism... permitted me to cover myself in tattoos, pierce just about every flap of skin on my body and stretch inch-wide holes in my earlobes.... [But t]o change my body through cosmetic surgery... was unnatural and irreversible, perverting my God-given form in too extreme a fashion.... It seems clear to me now that any feminist position on cosmetic surgery that doesn’t take women’s relationships to their own bodies into account actually objectifies them. I’d hated my body for years, felt both obscured and exposed by it, and subjected it to many acts that others wanted irrespective of my desires... The assumption about cosmetic surgery is that it will give the patient something she didn’t have before, but I’ve found the greater gift to be what it removes. My body’s meaning has consolidated and is less contingent on the perceptions of others."

From "The Feminist Case for Breast Reduction/My body had been objectified for as long as I could remember. So I decided to change it" by Melissa Febos(NYT).

This is a very long article, and I understand the motivations to write long articles about feminism and one's personal choices. But I don't think the question of breast reduction is difficult. If you have uncomfortably large breasts weighing you down and restricting your activity, go ahead and have the surgery. The author obsesses over the difference between "cosmetic" surgery and surgery to correct a "deformity," but I don't see why feminism should adopt that line. Improving your comfort and functionality is easily justifiable, and I don't see anyone out there objecting to this kind of surgery.

"I have a Rolls-Royce, I have three homes, I have everything I could possibly want, but I was still depressed. The way I look at this is: This is my face, and it’s going everywhere I go."

Words of semi-wisdom by Hilda Back, 63, quoted in "And Now, the $200,000 Face-Lift/Luxury cosmetic procedures reach next level prices" (NYT).

The doctors touting their “designer” face-lifts insist that their advanced technique, elevated aesthetic sensibilities and experience allow them to charge these rates. Dr. Lara Devgan, a plastic surgeon in Manhattan, likened what she does to “commissioning an artist to make a very beautiful painting for you.” Dr. Devgan charges up to $200,000 for a face-lift.

“At first blush, it may seem like a big number, but I think of this as a question of value, not of cost,” Dr. Devgan said. “Your face is your job, it’s your love life, it’s your identity.”

I agree with the doctor. Skill levels vary, and there is scarcity. Why isn't it millions of dollars to get the best plastic surgeon to rearrange your face? How many times more would you have to pay to get Ed Sheeran to sing at your party as opposed to some random local singer?

As for rich people who are "still depressed"... who cares? Let them buy what they want. They're not purporting to tell you what you need to do to find happiness. One can easily infer that it's not to come up with $200,000 for a facelift, but maybe not to bother striving for the Rolls-Royce and three "homes."

ADDED: What does all that striving do to your face? If only you could buy happiness — would you pay $200,000 — it would probably make your face look pretty good. In a pinch: Smile!

BUT: Not a pinched smile:

Research shows the lines that arch above our cheeks from the corners of our eyes are viewed as a more sincere indicator of happiness. They come out when we are laughing or overjoyed. It's called a Duchenne smile, after French anatomist Guillaume Duchenne, who studied emotional expression by stimulating various facial muscles. Those lines put people more at ease than a quick pinched smile that doesn't shift other parts of the face.

"She recalls an airline employee who glanced at her driver’s license and said, 'Oh, Jennifer Grey, like the actress.'"

"When Grey said, 'Actually, it is me,' the woman responded: 'I’ve seen Dirty Dancing a dozen times. I know Jennifer Grey. And you are not her.'... In the two hours she sat on a blue banquette in a Beverly Hills restaurant, matter-of-factly scooping a soft-boiled egg, spreading butter on rye toast and chatting about her memoir, only one person appeared to recognize Grey. The woman’s face lit up, then softened as if she’d spotted an old friend who’d survived a terrible ordeal."

From "Don’t Call Her ‘Baby.’ At 62, Jennifer Grey is Taking the Lead. In her memoir, 'Out of the Corner,' the 'Dirty Dancing' star opens up about rhinoplasty gone wrong, the implosion of her career and why she’s telling her story now" (NYT).

What a terrible mistake it is to think that your off-the-norm feature is dragging down the rest of your good looks rather than what's making you stand out! I was just having a conversation about Gene Tierney, the 1940s actress with an overbite, who said it was in her contract that they couldn't make her get her teeth fixed. Here's her NYT obituary: 

"What happened next is that, once I figured out I was a male, I also realized I had always had a certain idea of what masculinity is."

"I thought that to be a man is to be a certain way. Now what I think about is different. What I ask myself all the time is, 'What is a man?'"

Said Edoardo Beniamin, quoted in "In Venice, a Young Boatman Steers a Course of His Own/'What I ask myself all the time is, "What is a man?"' says Edoardo Beniamin, a trans man training to join his father’s profession as a gondolier" (NYT). 

Singing and talking a lot is a job requirement. Beniamin's  speech therapist Eleonora Magnelli said he was "bothered" by his "very metallic" voice. You can't just rely on testosterone to lower the voice, she explained, because "pitch is not the only parameter." She notes that this speech therapy is different from other speech therapy, because they are dealing with speech that is "not affected by any pathology." They are changing a client's voice to help with "affirming their identity."

Beniamin says: “What brings me euphoria is feeling people see me as I see me.” 

And here's a quote from Dr. Giulia Lo Russo, "an aesthetic surgeon with a subspecialty in performing chest masculinization": "The point is not just to remove the breasts and reduce a female torso... You have to make a male torso.... My psychologist asked me why I do these surgeries... Why me? I’m not L.G.B.T.Q. But I am deeply anti-conformist. I have had three children with three different men."

Here's the highest rated comment at the NYT: "What a beautiful story to read this Easter morning. It's a kind of resurrection of identity that inspires me greatly."