BEAUTY WARS - “Natural Beauty” Takes A Lot Of Cutting And Pasting

We were having a little crisis of conscience about our newest series Basement Fashion, a celebration fashion victims in the public eye. While the series promises the fun of great fontrum (embarrassment on behalf of people who don’t have the sense to be embarrassed for themselves), it is of course fun that comes at someone else’s expense. So in order to offset any potential karmic debt, we’re launching another series.

Welcome to BEAUTY WARS… a series dedicated to spotlighting the phenomenon of denigration by aestheticism. The ideal of “Beauty” can be used as a weapon - and a very powerful one at that. If you haven’t seen the evidence of this, then stick around. Rather than try to define the process in one post, we hope this series will illustrate the ways in which the demand for beauty can become so powerful as to disable both the seeker’s and the observer’s other inherent strengths.

Today we’d like to protest how the beauty ideal holds Hollywood hostage. Although hotties have always been used to sell, studios used to place a certain amount of importance on the ability to tell a story as well. Recently it seems as if modeling and acting are treated as the same skill. Famous actors who don’t fit the bill… well, they get folded to fit. And as if that weren’t sad enough (can you imagine Bogie with hair plugs? Bette Davis with a lid lift?) we’re supposed to believe the looks come as easily as Britney running over another foot. So here’s a little testament to the “natural beauty” of our celebrity superstars. Money may not buy love, but it certainly can buy noses, cheekbones, lips, hips… you get the picture. At least, you get it after it’s been extensively photoshopped to erase all signs of any natural beauty that might accidentally remain.

watch video of celebrities' before and after shots on Lazlo's blog