Keep The Nightlight On, Please

There was no sport on the TV this afternoon but I needed a break from NPR's Planet Money so I went channel surfing and happened upon BBCAmerica on Demand.  Hmm, "Super Botox Me".  Well, I did watch Supersize Me and that was interesting so let me see what this is about.  There is a journalist, Kate Spicer, who is talking about how she has decided to enter the world of, I don't know, let's call it 'extreme beauty'.  I'm thinking, it's 4pm on a Thursday, I can't do much worse than this.

First she goes to a celebrity photographer and has him take untouched photos of her, sans makeup.  Post photos, they sit a sixteen year old girl next to Kate and three beauty professionals, who have been sitting in the audience, come forward to answer the journalist's question, "What does she have that I don't?"

Oooh, let me take a stab in the dark and say, well, she is young enough to be your daughter, but apparently that is not it.  I hear talk about necks and lips and small faces, which is odd to me because a lot of celebrities have huge heads (ahem, Larry King).  But, moving on.

Ms Spicer decides then to travel to America, cosmetic surgery Mecca, and makes an appointment with, and I'm not making this up, a "Knife Coach."  People pay this coach $500 to get advice on plastic surgery.  Honestly, she is the plastic surgery of a hair dresser with a bad perm that is falling out - I would not trust her with my face (a thought that recurs throughout the show).  She talks casually about starting off by injecting toxins in ones face.  Toxins?  Do we no longer know what the word toxin means?  I'm horrified because her face doesn't move even though she claims that she's raising her eyebrows.  I'm horrified because she is pleased.  I'm horrified because we are only ten minutes into this programme.

Well, this show is not called Super Botox Me for nothing.  While an allegedly conflicted is chatting happily with a consultant about Botoxing her toes and I am wondering why she doesn't just wear more comfortable shoes, a surgeon slips into the room to talk to her about the wonders Botox can do for her face.  He has a sense of humour and that's all it takes to convince her to have multiple shots of poison in her face.  Holy hell!  People do this willingly?  Just to make the face lifeless. 

Before I can take a calming breath, she is off to meet with the doctor who does Madonna's face.  It's like I'm watching a horror movie - I am terrified yet I can't look away.  The doctor is talking about looking the best he can and he looks scary.  I am not sure I could look him in the face while having a conversation with him.  He doesn't look human and yet he is proudly stating that he does his own face.  

And I can't help thinking through all of this that these doctors are the devil's minions.  They really know how to break a person.  After talking to them, one really needs Dodo's ego pump.  Only one doctor in this whole thing that she is beautiful and still he found lots of things he could do to "improve" her.  So Kate ends up being injected in the face, with poison, over 75 times, having the skin around her eyes lasered off and still not feeling much better yet needing more, more, more.

Finally, with a frozen face, filled out cheekbones and substantially less skin protecting her eyes, she returns to have her photo taken and her ego picked apart.  Did I mention that one of these beauty experts has obviously had a plastic surgeon work on her face.  She is the one to rave about how Kate looks as though she just took a fortnight off at a spa and now looks naturally rested.  The male beauty pro says Kate looks great but feels she went a little overboard with the Botox - her face from the cheeks up just doesn't move anymore.  But plastic-surgeoned expert disagrees vehemently.  "you look natural."  As though she even knows what natural looks like anymore.  Could she know a furrowed brow if it kicked her in her toxined behind?  

I fear soon that none of us will.