Awful Plastic Surgery

If you enjoy looking at Western culture from a sociological point of view, check out Awful Plastic Surgery. The blogmaster posts to it regularly, so you can keep up with the most recent size of Britney's boobs. It can be a little unpleasant to see what human beings do to themselves--especially when you consider that much of the damage is pretty much irreparable. America's obsession with appearances is making plastic surgeons rich these days. Ever since I started looking at this site, and catching a few episodes of Nip/Tuck, I look a lot more closely at actors. Recently I saw Claire Bloom on a Law & Order rerun. She was almost unrecognizable. Her surgery actually looked pretty good, but the overall effect is still unnatural. Whatever happened to the notion of growing old gracefully? I saw an exhibition of Alfred Stieglitz's nude photos of Georgia O'Keefe at the Cleveland Museum of Art a few years ago. I think our definition of physical beauty is getting too narrow. Or fake. Or something.