Whose Chin is That Anyway?

I saw Barry Manilow last weekend in Vegas, and he was terrific.

Even if you don't like him, the man knows how to enterain.  Writer, composer, arranger, and singer, he kept the show flowing.

Except...

Except I hadn’t seen him on TV in awhile, and although he looked great, I couldn’t put my finger on how he had changed.

No, it wasn’t age.  Not that.  So what about him that was driving me nuts?


Not till a flat screen dropped down from the ceiling showing a video of Dick Clark interviewing Uncle Barry in 1975, did it hit me.

It was his face.

That chin, that nose, the entire shape.

Plastic surgery.   How come I didn't realize it before?

After the show, my husband and I drifted around the Paris Hotel and made our way into a gift store. We chatted with the manager who said she refused to see anymore headliners who'd been under the knife.

I stared a moment. “You know any puppets performing?”

“You got a point," she said. "Guess I’m cutting myself a little short.”

“A little?”  I thought about Cher.  She was coming back to Vegas in another week, and there were posters of her all over town.   Her daughter Chastity might have turned herself into a man, but her mother barely looked twenty-five.

Lately all the stars are getting facial tune-ups.   Brows and eyelids lifted, boobs enlarged, tummys tucked, and tushes redesigned.

It’s become my latest quiz game. As soon as the celeb appears, I calculate what they had "fixed", listing every possibilty and then keep reevaluating as the star continues to perform.

Definitely eyes, I think, but was it her forehead too?

And those lips. Jesus.   They looked like the red waxy kind I’d stick in my mouth for Halloween.

Wasn’t that what ruined Meg Ryan?

Born beautiful, she got lip injections and then funny implants.  Fans were aghast at the unnatural results.  Who would think to fiddle with God's perfection?

Maybe most of us want to change something, but a few of us remain real.

Al Pacino enters a scene—intense, contemplative, combative, caustic. An inherently gifted actor, his energy flows from depths many of us will never dig deep enough to recognize.

Still, he used to be so gorgeous in The Godfather. Couldn’t the guy get those bags sucked away from under his lids? I mean it’ll only take a minute or two.

And Tommy Lee Jones.                                                                       

When was the last time he passed a mirror?

But the real question is, why am I even playing this game?

Have I become so swept away by the fake that I can no longer accept what the real?

Do I want to grow up like Joan Rivers?  She's a 76 year old freak whose face has been stretched from here to Timbuktu.  If she hadn't created her own spotlight, she’d be locked into some circus train heading for the next country town.

Remember the talk about inner beauty?

There is certainly facial loveliness, but the truth is always hidden beneath the façade, and it takes some work and a little time to find it.  Maybe all of us would do well to get past the velvety jowls and start searching.