“After all, a woman’s charm is 50 percent illusion.” ~ Blanche Dubois
By Elissa Frittaion
Age happens to all of us. Even before we are born, we are aging. Physical youth is fleeting, despite all our attempts to stop it. Old age is inevitable, except for those who die young. Some would say that old age can be stalled by cosmetics and lotions and the skilled hand of a plastic surgeon, but I beg to differ. Joan Rivers is 76 and has more work done than most, but does she look young? No, she certainly does not. She looks like an old lady who’s a lot of plastic surgery, at best, and at worst she barely looks human anymore.
As a makeup artist, my job is to create an illusion – I can make you look younger or older, healthy or sick, hairy or bald, glamorous or hideous. But please don’t ask me “Can you make me look like this?” and then show me a picture of a singer/model/actress ripped out of a magazine. When asked this question, yes men and others greedy for your money will always say “Of course I can!” and desperate people will believe the boldest of lies.
The truth is that there is nothing, nothing that will make you look like that picture in the magazine, because it is not real.
Everything is retouched. Even the paparazzi shots are retouched. The amount of digital manipulation done to photographs is staggering and also, just like plastic surgery, nothing new. Megan Fox does not have the nose she was born with, but neither did Greta Garbo. Kate Winslet was featured on the cover of Time magazine last spring, her pretty skin carefully retouched so that it was pore less and line free, save for an attractive smile line near her mouth. Bad retouching of the Ms Winslet on a recent cover of less prestigious magazine resulted in all character and personality being erased from her face, so she was like a frozen wax replica of herself. But Joan Crawford, of whom a billion photographs were taken over the course of her pre-HD, pre-Photoshop career, was covered in freckles and no one ever knew, because of makeup and filters and because all photos of her were painstakingly retouched by hand.
Waists are whittled, necks are thinned, teeth are whitened and pores erased. Eyes are brightened, breasts are enlarged, hair is made thicker. No pimples, wrinkles, stray hairs or blood vessels are allowed. Magazine photos are truly a glamour, in the original sense of the word, and we are all under their spell.
The answer to “Can you make me look like this?” will always be no. But that’s ok. There is no way to apply digital trickery in the real world, thankfully, so we will continue to look lined, freckled, and blotchy. And occasionally tired, blemished, and bleary eyed.
In short, flawed. And completely, perfectly, human.