Thanksgiving, Nicole Kidman, and Plastic Surgery

So, there I was in the supermarket, doing some Thanksgiving shopping. We are hosting the feast for eighteen adults and ten children. It might sound like a lot of effort, but it isn’t that bad. We do a pot luck meal, which means there is a lot less preparation for us. Being vegetarians, we are not obliged to cook the turkey - some friends will do that and haul it over for the final basting and roasting. However, I wanted to cook something for the festivities, something which could be a culinary centerpiece for vegetarians, just as the turkey is to meat-eaters. One Thanksgiving, several years back, I found myself at a friend’s house celebrating a vegetarian Thanksgiving. The main dish was a delicious, pastry encrusted nut roast, drowning in fragrant, spicy, veggie gravy. I decided I would attempt this. Thus, cookbooks were dusted off, opened, and a recipe procured. The end result was me wandering the aisles of our local supermarket last Saturday, shopping for the ingredients, complete with our youngest tethered to the shopping trolley, trying to get his chubby little collagen-laden hands on anything within arm's reach.

However, that’s not what I want to write about - Nicole Kidman's face is the subject of this entry. While wandering among the morning shoppers, I stopped at the magazine rack. I couldn’t help but notice Ms. Kidman’s waxy, stretched visage staring at me from the cover of Marie Claire magazine (it was racked beside Vintage Guitar Enthusiast – I swear). The night previously, whiskey in one hand, remote control in the other, I had been rambling through our 750 channels, looking for something remotely worth watching, when I came across Far and Away. Having never seen this travesty, but having often heard how awful it is, I decided to give it a few minutes of my time. Maybe it would be one of those so-bad-it’s-good movies. It isn’t. It is truly atrocious, and racist. After a few minutes of begorrahs, we have ascertained that the English are bastards, and the Irish, although down trodden, are happy, voluble, drunk, stupid, and prone to fisticuffs at the slightest provocation. As most people know, the stars of the movie were the then-married Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Whatever you may think of their relative skills as actors (I dislike Cruise, but I think he's good in narrow roles a la Collateral or Minority Report, while Kidman is a fine actress), this is a steaming turd of a movie. I gave up after thirty minutes. Life is too short.

So, there I was 12 hours later, staring at her face on a magazine. Truly, I normally don’t pay attention to this stuff, but the contrast between the natural redhead in the previous night's movie, and the wax doll on the cover, blew me away. Arched eyebrows, inflated lips, chiseled nose, and molded cheeks, nary a freckly in sight. Why? I thought she was pretty cute to begin with (by begin with, I mean the natural, freckled, frizzy haired Dead Calm era Kidman). What's up when someone beautiful, talented, and acclaimed feels insecure enough to do this? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t really see anything wrong with plastic surgery per se. Fuck it, if you don’t like something, be my guest. One of my wife’s friends had a chin and nose job years ago, and it changed her life. I read somewhere that the fastest growing demographic volunteering for a nip and tuck, are older people. With medical improvements, exercise and diet, many feel a lot younger than they look, and want to narrow that gap. I understand wanting to look good for your age (I will hold off judgment until I find myself staring in the mirror at the double chin that resists exercise and diet), but this constant effort to stay looking like a twenty five year old baffles me. If you are going to get it done, look good for your age. A forty year old trying to look twenty years younger is just sad.