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St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Debra D. Bass column: Image is everything: 'Good Hair,' Miss Plastic and facial exercise
Oct 31, 2009 (St. Louis Post-Dispatch - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
In case you haven't been able to join me on Deb's Style File, STLtoday.com/stylefile, here's a sample of the daily content. These selections have been updated and shortened for space.
Exercise your face, maintain your youth (Oct. 20)
Making funny faces may seem childish, but it turns out that maybe kids are smarter than we thought. And they do look awfully good for their age.
Cynthia Rowland, a facial exercise expert, recently visited St. Louis to expound on her favorite topic, "The Facial Fountain of Youth." You can check out snippets of her impassioned presentations on YouTube, but be warned only the serious need apply.
Although she reminds me a little of Tom Cruise's character in "Magnolia," she makes an interesting point in encouraging us to exercise all of our muscles, not just the obvious biceps, abs and glutes.
If you Google "facial exercise," you'll find that there are many facial fitness advocates. It's the new personal training frontier.
The concept is simple: If you force the key muscles in your face to exert resistance -- for example, pushing your eyebrows down against your fingers, then those muscles will respond by tightening and therefore decrease wrinkle lines and saggy jaw skin.
Personally, I tend to think that a smile is the best anti-aging exercise, but I've been called naive before.
World celebrates and abuses natural beauty (Oct. 13)
A 22-year-old woman recently won the title of Miss Plastic Hungary 2009 in Budapest. Contrary to other beauty contests, plastic surgery was a requirement and not a disqualifier.
Contestants showed off breast implants, nose jobs, face-lifts and even surgically "corrected" toes as they competed for the crown. (Video footage of the competition is available on the blog.)
One of the stated purposes of the event was to show that plastic surgery can look natural -- as opposed to just being naturally natural. The fact that the winner was a young 20-something who will probably endure many more surgeries during her lifetime to keep up her illusion of natural beauty just makes me sad.
It's something that's easy to deplore, but we are a civilized world that prefers quick fixes. Hungary has a rising overweight/obesity problem as well. And in a world where fewer and fewer people can sustain an "ideal" weight or embody an "ideal" image of beauty, we'll probably see more unreal displays attempting to imitate natural beauty.
Thankfully, there's a flip-side. "Brigitte," a top German women's magazine, instituted a "real women" only policy.
Last week, the publication said that starting next year, they will no longer employ professional models in their fashion spreads.
Unfortunately, this seems to imply that models by definition aren't "real" people. Yet some people are naturally thin, some people are naturally fuller and a lot of us just really like to eat. That doesn't make being overweight pious or being slim perverse.
But we can all agree that rampant digital photo distortion is reprehensible. The recent controversy over Filippa Hamilton's Ralph Lauren ad crystallized the ridiculousness, when a blogger at Boing Boing succinctly pointed out that "Dude, her head's bigger than her pelvis."
"Good Hair," bad hair, let the dumb questions begin (Oct. 9)
A lot of confusion and intrigue surrounds black women's hair, and Chris Rock is a brave soul for trying to demystify the phenomenon for the masses with his new documentary, "Good Hair."
As a black woman, I'm worried.
I've had more hairstyles over the years than I can count -- surely enough to fill a page-a-day desktop calendar year.
I've worn my hair long and straight, shaved to within a millimeter of my scalp, braided down to my butt and forked out in an afro. And probably anything you could imagine in between.
This is usually shocking to people who are not black women. There will be lots of theories and lots of discussions thanks to Rock's movie, but I'm not necessarily looking forward to it. I saw the film, and I'm thankful that it didn't put my hair on trial. It did, however, paint an interesting picture of the cultural landscape that surrounds black hair care. The view was sometimes troubling, sometimes ridiculous and a little liberating.
I like my hair. In fact, I love my hair, and it has nothing to do with any defiant streak. I simply prefer the texture earned by heredity. I hate that some people equate natural hair on a black woman as something revolutionary, or worse, militant.
I love the title of Rock's documentary "Good Hair," because that's where it all starts. Even though I don't believe in "good hair," I know it when I see it. Or rather, I know what people mean when they use that label. And for the record, most people would say that I don't have it, but I beg to differ.
To see more of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go
to http://www.stltoday.com. Copyright (c) 2009, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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