Cut to a bandaged figure. Marnie is in
pain, and desperate to remove her uncomfortable chin strap. She seems
depressed, and after three days without leaving her room she is visited
by the show’s ‘life coach’ – a small producer named Nely Galan, who says
she is very disappointed in Marnie, who is expected to be in the gym
two hours a day, six days a week. The programme makers have given her
all this wonderful free surgery, and this is how she behaves?
Months
later (or minutes, to a TV audience) Marnie has been perfected. Wearing
a fuchsia-pink evening gown, she is ushered into a gothically lit room,
where her creators stand in a circle. The surgeons voice their
approval. The therapist and dentist applaud. She is shown a mirror for
the first time, and, behind her timorously splayed fingers, she begins
to weep.
The Swan is one of three major reality-TV shows Americans
have witnessed in the past few months in which the patient-protagonists
undergo cosmetic surgery in order to improve their lives. All three are
due to be shown in Britain. Much like its sister programme, Home Front,
ABC’s Extreme Makeover is a kind of interior design programme.
Dilapidated women and men are knocked through and rebuilt before
receiving finishing touches that depersonalise them and increase their
apparent market value. They are then presented to their families, who
are delighted with the new product to variously convincing degrees. In
MTV’s I Want A Famous Face, people are surgically made over to look like
a particular celebrity. There have been dark-haired, acne-scarred twins
who want to look like Brad Pitt, a pre-op transsexual who dreams of
resembling J-Lo, an Elvis impersonator who feels the competition in
Vegas is getting tougher. Only Fox’s The Swan, which is currently in
casting calls for a second season, has its patients compete in a final
beauty pageant, with swimsuits, lingerie and evening wear, pitting even
the ‘new improved’ versions against each other.
The programmes
vaunt the idea that they are helping these people find their ‘true
selves’, and yet the winner on The Swan is the woman who is thought to
have undergone the greatest ‘overall transformation’ – in other words,
the one who appears least like her former self. It’s reminiscent of a
line in the incisive plastic surgery drama Nip/Tuck: ‘Be yourself. You
know you can look better.’ Or perhaps of Lily Tomlin’s old gag: ‘When I
was little I wanted to be somebody. Now I wish I’d been more specific.’
These
shows have provided some of the most popular and controversial viewing
of recent times. Up to 12 million Americans watched them every week;
talk-show host Rosie O’Donnell said they had put women back 30 years.
One weekly news magazine carried the cover line: ‘Makeover Nation: Why
America’s obsession with plastic surgery is going dangerously out of
control’, and even People magazine, which has embraced these sewn-up
celebrities, asked: ‘Has TV Plastic Surgery Gone Too Far?’ Indeed, few
recipes for cultural anxiety could be more inspired than the marriage of
two of the most inflammatory contemporary phenomena: cosmetic surgery
and reality TV.
Yet these surgical scenarios are truly gripping,
both for the reasons their creators hope – the transformations are
extreme, the family reunions can be strangely emotional, desperate
people seem to become happier before our eyes – and in more nefarious
ways: the surgeons are laddish and overly prescriptive, the procedures
are risky and irreversible, and there is always the sadistic hope that
this week, someone will regret it.
It is 14 years since Naomi Wolf
wrote in The Beauty Myth that we were living in ‘the Modern Surgical
Age’. What this historical phase was doing to us, she argued, was ‘an
overt re-enactment of what 19th-century medicine did to make well women
sick and active women passive’. Indeed, cosmetic surgery is the only
form of surgery in which the patient is healthy beforehand. Now there
are so many layers of simulation involved – televisual surgery as
opposed to the real thing, the act of being turned into a copy of
someone else – that you might say we have left the Modern Surgical Age
and entered the Postmodern one.
‘When I wrote The Beauty Myth,’
Wolf says now, ‘plastic surgery was an extreme choice for the few. Now
it has become so normative that people will look odd in the near future
if they aren’t surgically altered. The reality shows I feel have a fair
dose of sadism involved – really we have reached the point of creating
cyborgs.’
Elaine Showalter, author of The Female Malady, among
other distinguished feminist tomes, disagrees. ‘It doesn’t seem to me
like it’s something sadistic that doctors practise on women,’ she says.
‘I think women are choosing it. And that’s very different. I think that
we’re living in an intermediate era, where women are certainly made
aware of body image to a degree and with a degree of detail that they
never were – it seems to me every year there’s a new part of the body
that’s offered up for correction, and you never knew it had standards.
But I have the feeling that we’re moving towards a future in which these
things will be more routine, and safer, and less expensive. And it will
be normalised. Now, for many people this may seem like a horrible
world. But I kind of feel that if it were more normalised, it would be
just like anything else – that people could do it in moderation… Maybe
I’m wrong – maybe it’s just a step into the barbaric, or the downfall
of civilisation, but I don’t think so.’
Terry Dubrow, one of the
surgeons on The Swan, has asserted: ‘Plastic surgery as entertainment is
here to stay.’ But the reality shows have not just made a spectacle out
of plastic surgery, they have turned it into something ordinary people
feel comfortable having in their living rooms. Unlike many other reality
shows here – American Idol, The Bachelor – Extreme Makeover and The
Swan are aimed at a slightly older generation, one that has had time to
brew some world-weariness and low-grade self-hatred. As a result, TV
plastic surgery has become more than entertainment – it has become a
kind of blueprint.
Dr Rod Rohrich, president of the American
Society of Plastic Surgeons, says: ‘The growth of plastic surgery has
been nothing short of phenomenal. With all these reality shows, the
interest has sky-rocketed. I think they’ve increased the awareness that
plastic surgery isn’t just for the wealthy and for the famous – it can
be for everybody, for anybody that wants it if they want to save for
it.’
ASPS statistics for 2003 show that its members performed 8.7
million procedures last year, a 33 per cent increase on those performed
in 2002, and that nearly eight and half billion dollars were spent.
Banks now offer loans for plastic surgery, and credit cards render many
procedures affordable (the average cost of a breast augmentation is
$3,375. One divorcee I met recently is selling her engagement ring on
eBay in order to have a ‘Brazilian butt lift’. And families with annual
incomes under $25,000 now account for an astonishing 30 per cent of all
cosmetic surgery patients. Only 23 per cent earn more than $50,000
(£27,000).
Since the advent of ‘reality surgery’, Rohrich has
seen two things happen: ‘One is that patients now want to have a lot
more done – they want this “extreme makeover” – everything done in one
sitting, which is not realistic, nor is it safe, in many cases. And it’s
also spurred a whole new industry of people who call themselves
cosmetic surgeons and aren’t real plastic surgeons, because the interest
and growth has been so high. In America, if you have an MD, you can
call yourself anything you want. So plastic surgery has become a
“buyer-beware” speciality. Not a day goes by where I don’t get a call or
an email or see a patient who’s had a problem or has been misguided by a
non-plastic surgeon.’
Liposuction, the most popular invasive
procedure, is also the most dangerous. Complications include blood
clots, organ puncture and infection, all of which can be fatal. The most
recent information puts the average death rate for liposuction at 20 in
100,000 (deaths from hernia operations, by comparison, stand at 2 per
100,000). Combining liposuction with a tummy tuck increases the risk
14-fold.
On 14 May, as The Swan was nearing its bikini-clad
finale, the prestigious Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital was fined
$20,000 for ‘egregious violations’ of safety procedures during cosmetic
surgery which led to the deaths of two women, including the 54-year-old
writer Olivia Goldsmith. The fine is equivalent to about four tummy
tucks, or veneers on a mere 10 teeth. In Florida, a ban has been imposed
on combined liposuction and tummy tucks after the deaths of eight
patients in 18 months. The ban is only three months long. In February,
the body of a 35-year-old investment banker was discovered in a
suitcase, encased in cement, under the home of an unlicensed cosmetic
surgeon. Her body was identified by the serial numbers on her breast
implants.
Back at home in Chesterfield, Michigan, Marnie Rygiewicz
has started her new life as a stunning blonde. She is selling her
house, taking her kids to school again, and looking through the paper to
try to pick up a job until something else comes along. She has called a
couple of plastic surgeons’ offices looking for work, and she wouldn’t
mind doing some modelling – just until she works out what it is she
really wants to do.
‘I don’t think the surgery itself really
changed me,’ she reflects, two months after The Swan ‘s televised beauty
pageant. ‘I just feel like a more confident person. I never really
considered myself, like, ugly, but I would look in the mirror and feel
like I had wasted so much time, and I wished that I could somehow get
some time back.’
As it happens, Marnie only went to the Swan
audition in order to accompany her sister, who was trying out. She was
chosen, she believes, because she was clearly more of a ‘burn-out mom’,
and in the end her sister looked after her two boys for the four months
she was away. Now her sister is auditioning for the second season.
‘I
want her to go through what I went through,’ says Marnie, who plans to
reciprocate the childcare arrangements, ‘I would love for her to have
that experience.’
When Marnie speaks about the things she’s
looking forward to, I am surprised to find her laying stress on ‘ageing
naturally’, since she has been so recently filled with artificial
substances. I ask her to list the surgical procedures she has had. There
seem to be a crucial few missing. Did she not have a boob job? ‘Oh
yes,’ she recalls, ‘I had a breast augmentation. And I had my lips
done.’ ‘But,’ she adds, ‘I don’t think I would have needed all that had I
not let myself go. It was something that I did to myself.’
Which
single surgical procedure does she think made the biggest difference?
‘I
would say the one that took the tired bags under my eyes.’
So
far, I suggest, none of the symptoms she describes- tiredness, regret,
loss of identity – are things for which one might automatically
recommend cosmetic surgery.
‘Yeah,’ she agrees, ‘but I did look
bad because of the way my life was.’ Has she ever been diagnosed with
depression? ‘No.’ So she never thought of taking a drug like Prozac?
‘No,’ Marnie says quietly, ‘I feel a lot better now.’
Marnie has a
soft, monotonous, almost somnolent voice. I am reminded of a novel
called The Eve of the Future, in which the industrial wizard Thomas
Edison designs the perfect woman: her speech is recorded on golden
phonographs, and destined only to repeat pre ordained words of love.
It’s not that I think Marnie is unreal, it’s just that… well, if you
were to invent a sweet, docile, beautiful woman, how far would she be
from Marnie Rygiewicz? How did she get to be so perfect?
Dr Randal
Digby Haworth, the man who operated on Marnie, speaks to me between
mouthfuls from his Beverly Hills office (he is so busy lifting Hollywood
lovelies he needs to use these spare moments to catch up on lunch).
‘I
always say there are two types of plastic surgeons,’ Haworth explains,
‘doctors who become artists and artists who become doctors, and I am
pretty much among the latter.’
Plastic surgery, he says, is ‘a
tool. It can be used to customise your appearance in the same way you
customise your living environment through interior design, the same way
that you customise your car, or your pets, or the way you dress in Prada
versus Dolce. In the right practitioner’s hands, plastic surgery is an
extension of that – it can allow you to turn your physical fantasies
into realities.’
And in terms of his own fantasies, I ask
(thinking of the fact that the women on The Swan ended up looking so
alike), is there a type of woman he favours?
‘I’m more attracted
to brunettes,’ Haworth says, without hesitation.
I actually meant
in terms of surgical enhancement…
‘Oh, I see. Good plastic
surgery is invisible. It’s bad plastic surgery that gets the attention. I
mean, we live in LA, and I’ve oftentimes gone out with girls here on
whom I’ve noticed little discreet scars in more intimate moments. I’d
say about 80 per cent of people here have had plastic surgery, and yet
no one can deny that Los Angeles and Hollywood is the home to some of
the most beautiful women in the world.’
But let’s say good plastic
surgery as opposed to none at all.
‘OK, well, speaking as a man
here, if it’s a girl with a natural “A” versus a beautiful, er,
artificial “C”? I’d prefer an artificial “C”. If somebody’s got a nice
figure but has love handles here and there? Call me twisted but I’d
prefer a good figure versus one that’s less good.’
And has he
operated on women he has been in relationships with?
‘Oh,
absolutely. I have. It’ s generally repairing stuff that’s not very good
– they’ve had plastic surgery before. You know, the breasts don’t fall
as well.’
Many Americans would balk at the suggestion that reality
cosmetic surgery shows might offer any significant insights into their
culture. But the programmes do, I think, illustrate a fundamental
American belief: the belief in self-improvement, or self-invention.
The
Stepford Wives remake, which is due out in Britain at the end of this
month, contains a troublesome new twist: Stepford, the town that turns
women into androids, was created by a woman. Perhaps the story, played
for laughs this time, is not so farcical after all. Why are women doing
this to themselves?
The United States, it might be remembered, is a
country founded on the pursuit of happiness, whereas Britain is a
country wedded – rhetorically, at least – to its failings.
Self-deprecation is our style. As a result, cosmetic surgery can be seen
as constructive in America, while meeting with more resistance
elsewhere. (It’s striking that liposuction, which was invented by a
French surgeon, is more popular in America than anywhere else, and that
cellulite, the problem it set out to combat, was a concept unknown to
Americans before 1973. Yet these words have been welcomed into a
perfectionist’s vocabulary with open arms.)
Happiness is a serious
business. Jim Holt, the author of a forthcoming book on the subject,
recently wrote an article for the New York Times in which he argued
dryly that happiness may be bad for you. A professor at the University
of Pennsylvania wrote in to complain that the article was a threat to
public health. ‘In countries where happiness is considered to be more
important you generally have higher divorce rates, and more suicides,’
Holt explains, ‘because people feel the ideal is that people should be
happy almost all the time, and so some radical change is necessary.’
One
way of seeing cosmetic surgery is as a new form of equal opportunity.
In 1993, two economists found that good looks increased hourly income by
five per cent. ‘It’s not just a matter of good-looking people going to
work in Hollywood and bad-looking people digging ditches,’ one of them,
Daniel Hamermesh, said. ‘Even within any given occupation, good-looking
people make more.’
Jim Holt thinks this is unlikely to dim the
optimism of a self-improver. ‘The distribution of beauty in America is
as imbalanced as the distribution of wealth,’ he says. ‘Americans don’t
mind the inequitable distribution of wealth very much because they all
feel that it’s possible to become rich here. And there’s something of
the same logic that might apply to the way you look.’
Janice
Dickinson, self-described ‘world’s first supermodel’ and a judge on
another reality-TV show, America’s Next Top Model, believes the
addiction to perfection is a disease. She has even given it a name:
‘perfliction’, and diagnosed herself as its inaugural victim. Her
symptoms are detailed in a new memoir, Everything About Me is Fake…
And I’m Perfect! When I compliment Dickinson on her coinage, she tells
me, by way of thanks: ‘”Perfliction” has been trademarked. I’m going to
use it for a cream – it comes out in September at Bendels department
store.’ It’s not clear how well a cream named after a problem might
sell, but there’s no doubting the joie de vivre in Dickinson’s
proclamations (‘I’m Dorian Gray!’ she was heard to screech at her book
launch, as if Dorian Gray were Cinderella), and who knows – as far as
the pursuit of perfection is concerned, she’s an expert.
‘Plastic
surgery is an epidemic in the States,’ Dickinson says. ‘But it’s
everywhere. They don’t talk about it in England – it’s more hush hush,
like everything else is. But it’s always been there. There have been
face lifts and botched boob jobs and great boob jobs, starting with… I
don’t know – Lady Diana had surgery!’
Did she?
‘Hell, yes –
look at her face! I mean, she had a boob job – she wasn’t that
well-endowed. I guarantee you that she pumped up the volume.’
What
about the pursuit of happiness? Does Dickinson think the women on The
Swan and Extreme Makeover will be happier?
‘I don’t know. I’m no
one to judge. I can only speak for myself.’
So has cosmetic
surgery made her happier?
‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’ She thinks for a
while, reminisces about her first boob job, and the trips to Tijuana
for illegal wrinkle fillers. ‘I think plastic surgery does not give you
fulfilment,’ she concludes, ‘true, godly, Zen contentment.’
A few
hours after our last conversation, Marnie Rygiewicz calls back. She
leaves a message on my answering machine which seems to hang in the air,
filled with its own kind of simple haunting. ‘Hi, Gaby. This is Marnie.
I just forgot to mention one thing. I wouldn’t have plastic surgery
again. I have had it this time, but I wouldn’t have it again. OK,
thanks. Bye.’
