I won't have what she's having

I'd like to take a moment and talk about Meg Ryan. Humor me.

Remember this Meg? The pouty, long-faced, imperfect-yet-somehow-impossibly-cute-as-a-button Meg? The one from back in her When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless In Seattle, You've Got Mail heyday? Back when she looked, errm, normal and a human being of this planet earth ?

Yeah well things have rapidly gone south from that, I'm afraid.

I started thinking about Meg Ryan at some point this past weekend, upon reading in a magazine that her most recent on-screen work was a flimsy direct-to-DVD comedy entitled  "My Mom's New Boyfriend" co-starring Spain's de-animated answer to Pepe Le Pew, Antonio Banderas. Here's a clip from the movie (if you can call it a movie) -- which I refuse to embed on my site, for fear that it might give my blog cooties. Or an STD. Or, you know, eye leprosy or something.

Anyway, I come not to mock Meg Ryan (no, really!), but instead to try to understand just how all of this happened. How exactly do you go from being Meg Motherfucking America's Sweetheart Ryan of the 1980s-90s, to, well, THAT?

I have a few theories, and I'm sure you have a few as well. But what I keep returning to in my mind is that regardless of whatever personal tragedies might have befallen poor Meg (cough-RussellCrowe-cough), and the ravages of time on one's girlish appearance, there is one truth these images speak that cannot be denied: Girlfriend had some seriously fucked up plastic surgery work done.

And why? Why did she do it, you ask? Well, I'll tell you why. Because she thought we'd like her better. That's the truly heartbreaking part. See that second photo above? See those bulge-y fish lips, the botoxed-all-to-hell forehead, the oddly incongruous tauntness of her entire facial area? She did that for YOU. Because she thought you'd think she was prettier, fresher, and more worthy of your movie-going dollar. She thought you didn't want her to age, so she tried not to. For you.

It almost makes me want to cry, honestly.

And it makes me want to cry not because I'm some huge closet Meg Ryan romantic comedy fan. No, what gets me is that someone who was so downright objectively lovely just as she was was made to feel insecure enough about her appearance and her inevitable aging that she willingly chose to do this to herself. She CHOSE to fuck her face the hell up (and, as a result, mangle her own career).

It's sad. It makes me feel horrible for her. And for US. For women.

Because listen, I don't care what anyone says about the pressure in Hollywood specifically to be thin and beautiful and forever young, to aspire to some ideal that most women on planet earth had no hand in concocting and could never possibly achieve, even if they had access to all the packaged pre-made and pre-measured dietetic meals and personal trainers in the whole wide universe. Because let's be real: it isn't just Hollywood, and that particular pressure isn't reserved just for actresses -- it's everywhere, bearing down on all of us. And how we respond to that pressure has more to do with how we feel about ourselves -- about our self-esteem and the strength of our character -- than it does about our chosen profession and whether it is entertainment-based or not.

That any woman, seeing as we all have just how often plastic surgery goes horribly wrong (or at minimum produces much-less-than-hoped-for results), would still volunteer themselves for something like lip implants boggles my fucking mind. It borders on masochistic, doesn't it?  I mean, just how desperate for approval and attention do you have to be to reach that point -- the Hells yeah, sign me up for Trout Lips! point? And shouldn't there be some kind of strenuously objecting intervention on the part of caring friends and family members before you reach that dark, dark place?

Obviously this strikes at my insides deeply because I too am someone who struggles regularly with body-image issues (and okay, for serious, do I even need to declare that up-front anymore? As a western woman between the ages of, like, zero and DEAD, is that not goes-with-the-territory type material for ALL of us?). Honestly, I don't know a single, solitary woman who wouldn't like to be thinner or more toned, or have a different nose or eyebrows, or who doesn't fret endlessly about some other perceived failing in her own physique, however vague/obscure it might appear to others. We look at ourselves in the mirror and see flaws and defects staring back at us. We each believe ourselves to be inadequate and in need of fixing to some degree or other. Even if nothing could be farther from the truth, we persist in believing that.

Perhaps there's something in our biology that forces us to focus on imperfections, to always be on the lookout for ways to refine and correct our own physicality, to be better, stronger, faster. Perhaps. Or maybe it's just that women in our society are, by and large, made to feel like complete and total shit about how they look, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Maybe it's that women are pitted against ideals that aren't realistic or achievable (the idealized models and actresses being so artificially sculpted and tweaked and photoshopped all to hell that even The Ideal isn't ideal until it's fudged), and made to feel that any sacrifice is acceptable in pursuit of that ideal, including one's own self-esteem, principles, and dignity. Maybe it is that everywhere women go there is an unrelenting, skull-crushing hum put directly into our ears -- a hum generated by film, tv, radio, print, and yes, other women -- that chatters to us non-stop about how unacceptable we are, about how our skin will never be clear enough, how our hair will never be shiny enough, and how our clothes will never be never stylish and hip enough to conceal the lumpen horror of our true selves. Maybe that's it. Maybe.

And so it comes to pass that you end up with Meg Ryan going from sweet girl-next-door to alien pufferfish in what seems like the blink of an eye.*poof!*

What happened to her? The same thing that's happening to you. To me. To all of us as women. She just happened to have a whole lot more disposable income and, sadly, used it.