This Vain World...

So I read something on Facebook that upset me.  (I'm sure those of you who know me are shocked.  I'm cheesed off over some random internet thing!)

Shirley Manson asked her fans if it's possible that she's insane because she, unlike some of her friends and a large chunk of people in the entertainment industry, refuses to do the whole plastic surgery/Botox/"oh just go and pave your face already" thing.  Prior to this, Shirley has always come out strongly against that sort of physical tampering, at least for herself.  I suspect this sudden insecurity could be the result of a recent birthday, but it brings up a few important points for me.

I'm not against the idea of people changing themselves physically in any way that they find personally fulfilling.  Piercings, tattoos, nose jobs, body modification...whatever you're okay with, whatever you want, that's great.  However, I am against the way that the media continues to push a ridiculous and often impossible ideal of beauty, even with all of the backlash and outcry against such portrayals.

Once upon a time, it was all right for entertainers to look fairly like the selves they had been born as.  Oh, sure, someone like Fanny Brice might have a nose job, but a lot of the time, make-up and good lighting hid a multitude of "imperfections".  Then came Hollywood, and starlets had to be thinner, and thinner, and thinner...because the camera ads weight...and they've continued to get thinner and thinner until they look like a crop of starved urchins.  Now, I'll grant you that some people are naturally thin; but when you have to be so thin that you begin to look ill, that's too far.

After the jump: some photos of the way women in the entertainment industry were once allowed to look, along with commentary on how they might end up now.

Pearl Eaton, Marie Wallace and Leonore Baron, three Ziegfeld girls, rehearse on a fire escape in 1922.  Check out these real women: they have curves, hips, strong thighs, and they look confident in their own skins.  Today, they'd be reduced to insecure, silicon-breasted, collagen-lipped sticks in two minutes or less.

A young Barbara Stanwyck, still known as Ruby Stevens, poses for Alfred Cheney Johnston circa 1922-'24.  I can imagine what they'd do to her today: she'd have a major nose job, massive breast implants, and be made to diet or take other measures until she was skeletal.







Caryl Bergman, yet another Ziegfeld girl, circa the 1910s-'20s.  She's got a hint of a tummy; she looks like the type that the modern entertainment industry might let get away with massive drug use, as long as it kept her skinny and she wasn't a "problem child" about the whole thing...breast enlargement definitely.

Helen Morgan, one of the original torch singers.  She played Julie in both the original stage and film incarnations of the musical "Show Boat".  She always had a round face and a bit of plumpness to her and looked, well, healthy, at least until the alcohol really wrecked her in the last few years of her life.  Today?  Nose job, liposuction EVERYWHERE, stringent dieting on top of an industry ignored drug habit, and her voice would be auto-tuned right out of all its sweetness, warmth, and individuality.

 Mary Pickford was America's first cinematic sweetheart.  She started on the stage and broke into movies in her teens, but with her round and youthful face and small stature, she was able to play children and youngsters for a large chunk of her career.  Today, she'd have a nose job (catch her in profile sometime, she's got a bump) and diet all of the roundness and softness right off of her frame.  Also, they'd have her playing hookers instead of innocent girls in about five seconds.