Thursday, April 10, 2008 - Posts
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This excessive Botoxing and retouching has something to do with the collapse of the classes, or at least the shifting in what used to define the super-rich. "The 'luxury' experience has become thoroughly middle-class, even prole (two words: 'Gucci T-shirt')," Sandra Tsing Loh wrote a few years ago in the Atlantic, in a rare book review that did not reference her children's school. When I was in my 20s, my dermatologist was a product peddler, but in a sad pushcart kind of way, selling some kind of skin cream only he could provide (now Clinique sells it). I remember my mother once took me to Georgette Klinger, and I felt like I was in the Trump penthouse, and I in fact was so uncomfortable among the minks and lapdogs that I had to leave. Now Georgette Klinger is like the MacDonald's of spas; the super-rich go to these souped up urban spas where you can color your hair and get a face-lift in one session. I went with my post-mastectomy friend to the plastic surgeon once, and it was just how Melinda described—two doctors who looked identical, with absurd winter tans and actual golf ties. The place was gleaming, and they had their own chocolates! To me, the blending of boob job and cancer was very jarring. But they clearly considered both just facts of middle-class life. And they were just here to serve.
I'm sure there is no connection here, but since this is my latest obsession, I will try it out. If all classes have gotten bumped up a grade, does this explain why prostitutes are so middle-class now? In the escort service trial now unfolding in D.C., the latest call girl on the witness stand had a Ph.D. from the University of North Texas and held clinical and academic positions all over the world. She started working for the escort service when she was 56. Not a typo. She was caught serving a john at 63. Surely she must have had some work done.
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I'm afraid that blogging on "women's content" might bring out the bitch in me. After a Fray poster linked to the wowowow.com Web site in response to Rachael's Shine comments earlier this week, I cattily e-mailed my fellow XXers about Wowowow's co-founder Mary Wells, whom I have never met. I said, "she is probably a creative genius and model for women in the work place. but this helpful list of service providers (limousine drivers on St. Tropez and doctors in South of France) ... posted for fellow Mediterranean habitués makes it really hard [for me] to like her." I'm sure I was a bit jealous—not of the glam lifestyle, as frankly I would find her A-list activities exhausting—but I may have negatively overreacted to Wells' unrealistically glamorous bio photo.
With a Diane Sawyer kickoff on Good Morning America (Disclaimer: I once worked as a producer for Primetime Live when Diane was one of the show's anchors), Wowowow, a Web site for women over 40, launched a month ago. I am firmly in the site's target demographic, having been "over 40" for 18 years. In addition to posts written by the five over-50 Wowowow founders, Liz Smith, Joni Evans, Peggy Noonan, Leslie Stahl, and Wells (Liz Smith's memorial tribute to her lifelong friend Gov. Ann Richards is touching, but left me wondering if they had been a couple), we hear from their impressive group of women friends: Joan Ganz Cooney, Judith Martin, Candice Bergen, Lily Tomlin, Marlo Thomas, and, in a bit of women's-content overkill, The View co-host Whoppi Goldberg. These dames are all innovators, stars in their fields, and potential role models for my cohort of women now attempting to grow old elegantly.
Wells was already famous when I was in high school in 1966 for having the brilliant idea for Braniff Airlines to paint their silver plane exteriors in orange, yellow, and red. Which brings me back to her bio photo. Botox aside, Mary Wells' online portrait is so art directed and expertly lit that the talented, accomplished former CEO, though beautiful, doesn't look like a real woman of any age. As a TV producer, I quickly learned the value of a good lighting director when filming older-than-40 correspondents. But as part of my aging-gracefully agenda, I have been working on being less judgmental and more compassionate. And so I must note that Wells' photo reflects her particular history. After a lifetime in advertising, why not give herself awesome lighting? In her sneakers, I probably would, too. Also, reading her bio, I see she's a widow and may well have collected those French medical contact numbers because someone in her family was very ill, and I regret my snotty e-mail remark.
Wells calls her new venture "a rare and exciting place to meet and talk to women who know the answers." I'm glad to see the former copywriter "helps women with problems to overcome them." She's already helped me.
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Ah, yes, the unsolicited-Botox pitch. My experience wasn't nearly so harrowing or prolonged as Melinda's, but a couple of years ago I went to a dermatologist for a small, straightforward medical matter. It was hard not to notice the large photo on his examining room wall, showing him on vacation, trekking someplace exotic. At the end of our appointment, he took my file and looked at my birth date. "You're over 40," he pointed out, gratuitously. "Want to try some Botox?"
This was a mainstream medical doctor, seeing a patient for a medical matter, and here he was, peddling a pricey cosmetic sideline, doubtless as a way of paying his next sherpa. I declined his offer. He shrugged and assumed I was just offended. And in a way, I was; it's hard not to feel self-concious about your forehead when your doctor offers to correct some aspect of it. But mostly, I was shocked. I'd never had a doctor try to sell me something. It was no big deal to him. Some women resent the suggestion, he confided, but others don't. For that reason, he said, it's hard to know the best way to make the pitch. Next patient!
Cosmetic surgeons may be hurting in the current economy, but the pressures of managed care are also inspiring some some regular practioners to seek ways to augment their own income by performing—and proferring—cosmetic procedures. I was chatting about this recently with Kathryn Hinsch, founder of the Women's Bioethics Project, who has lots of concerns about physicians dabbling in lucrative cosmetic enhancements. The problems are manifold: It's cheesy, it commercializes medicine, and most of all, it corrupts doctor-patient trust. Hinsch pointed out in our conversation that general practitioners, family practitioners, and ob-gyns are all cashing in on the trend. And who are their primary targets? Well, women contribute by far the majority of cosmetic-procedure revenue.
And how are we paying for these procedures? On another topic, Melinda, just to tie up one loose end: That data set I mentioned last week, showing that one-third of all wives earn more than their husband? This may be a violation of the blogging ethos, but after your entry, I felt curious and made a call, to the Labor Department, to see if there were any caveats or backstory. It turns out that this statistic does not include families where the wife does not work. (The WSJ article was a little misleading that way.) But in families where the wife earns a paycheck, one third of the time she makes more than her husband. So she has even more $$$ with which to pay her GP for that liposuction!
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Elsewhere on Slate, Mark Gimein offers an intriguing theory to explain the seeming shortage of attractive, socially adept, well-employed, single, thirtysomething men—the class eligible-bachelor problem. The gist is that decisive women in their 20s snap up many of the best male prospects—even if the women aren't as hot as those men. These decisive women may be "weak bidders," in auction-theory lingo, in terms of their attributes. But because they know their relative weaknesses, they don't hold out, the men they want fall into line, and the apparent stronger women bidders end up with slim pickings. Interesting. But I'm not convinced, because I can't think of more than a few couples I know that feature a drab (if decisive) woman and a far suaver man. As a colleague puts it, 5s tend to marry 5s, and 8s tend to marry 8s. Whereas if Mark is right, wouldn't there be a lot of 5 women married to 7 and 8 men, and vice versa, eventually? Does anyone have a pet alternative explanation?
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