Jack & Hill: A Beauty Blog - make-up, cosmetics, perfume, and the substance of style

PhotoChop

I had to teach myself some new PhotoShop tricks today for a project, which led to some noodling around for fun.  Here I've given myself a nose job.  You can see the original, in which I now think I look a lot like Danny Kaye, after the jump.  Whaddy'all think, should I do it for real?

Dove Evolution

This Dove ad may be annoyingly PC, but it's fascinating.  I'm not sure there's anything immoral about the analog and then digital modification/transformation of a model and her subsequent photographic image.  In fact, what strikes me most is how conservative the goals are when compared to what the available technology could do--why, they're just trying to make her look like a prettier model.  How dull.  Why not give her leopard spots, or make her skin glow blue, or some really awesome special effect?  Pretty is so ordinary....

Gen X Gets Lifted

So Hillary asks me to write about health but what I'm really obsessed about today is the fact that people my age are already getting plastic surgery--preemptive, perhaps, which seems both more and less shocking, but knife jobs nonetheless. I scoured the web for evidence that Jennifer Jason Leigh has recently undergone some temple tightening and found only one other suspicious soul on the always extra-crunchy "Go Fug Yourself" blog (note the first comment in the link).

Now, I'm not opposed to plastic surgery, and everyone knows that no one talks about either money or "work," but I, ever the idealist, would expect someone as famously iconoclastic as Jennifer Jason Leigh to at least admit it in the press with a sort of punk-rock aplomb. Those who worship the alternative are loath to see them sullied by mainstream fads, though--I even found an article by Manohla Dargis about how all the old Hollywood hacks and hags are succumbing to face work while the radical chicks with integrity, like Leigh (ha ha), remain pristinely unaltered. It's disturbingly funny to hear and see how universally reviled face lifts and boob jobs are, while celebrities like Roseanne, Queen Latifah and Janeane Garofolo (okay, does anyone else think she's had a little face work done, too?) reverently make the talk show rounds to talk about their breast reduction operations as if they were saintly acts.

I've been on unofficial plastic surgery watch ever since I heard the famous rumor that both Isabelle Adjani (the unnamed European beauty that Dargis talks about in the opening of the article linked above, by the way) and Catherine Deneuve started getting tiny tweaks as early as 30. And I've watched with wonder as the great beauties of the world have tightened their grips on their most valuable assets.

Now it's my generation's turn to get lifted, tucked, nipped, filled, puffed, pulled, planed and contoured, and it feels like one of life's important markers, like when the music of your young adulthood starts showing up on nostalgic compilations and car commercials: depressing, yes, but empowering all the same. And it would be all the more empowering if we could stand up as a collectively aging market and say: Hey -- hell yeah, we want plastic surgery, and we want it better and less painful and faster than ever before, and anyone who wants to make a stink about it can go off somewhere and grow old gracefully on their own, thank you very much!

Jack & Hill meet Toni & Guy

Or at least Jack meets Toni & Guy, anyway. Actually, though, that headline is not quite true: I've been a fan of the Toni & Guy (WARNING: Terribly user unfriendly Flash site) chain of salons here in Britain for several years. This was based not on a wide range of experience at several different Toni & Guy locations, but on word of mouth and my own positive results after multiple visits to the Toni & Guy branch in Sevenoaks, Kent. That outlet is consistently good, with the time they gave me brick red streaks through chocolate brown hair being a particularly happy memory.

It had been seven weeks since my last cut, at U/Umberto in Los Angeles, and - as you can see at left - things were getting a little out of control. So last week I paid a visit to the Kensington branch of Toni & Guy, for a cut and style by Gary France, who co-owns the salon with his wife Kirsten. Gary has won loads of awards for his work, and is known for working successfully in the mainstream while creating cutting-edge looks for runway shows and fashion shoots. I wasn't inspired by any of the brave styles in the Toni & Guy book that Gary had me peruse for ideas, so he agreed to work to my comparatively rather boring request - "Keep most of the length, but please do thin it out so that I can hold my head up without neck strain".

After a glorious head massage (which I am tempted to say is always the best part of any hair appointment), Gary got to work. Ninety minutes after I'd arrived, this was the result:

As you can see, he did a brilliant job. I find that the test of a really good cut, though, is what you can do with it once you get home and have to style it yourself. Gary spent a good 20+ minutes just blow-drying my hair, which has a lot to do with why it looks so fantastic. Not being an octopus, it's difficult to recreate this look myself - and I don't think my scalp or hair could take it anyway, as the blow out involved tons of product and a lot of tugging and holding the nozzle of the drier directly against my fine but thick hair. How celebrities go through this on a regular basis without going bald is beyond me.

I went to a party as soon as I left the salon, and directed my boyfriend not to tell anyone I'd just had my hair cut. "I don't want people to feel they have to offer a positive comment," I said...which was true. But I also wanted them to think I hadn't needed the help of a professional to have such nice hair. As soon as I walked in, my friend Amanda exclaimed, "Wow, you look great!" My boyfriend and I exchanged looks. "Oh, thanks," I replied. "Looks like my hair hasn't suffered too much in the rain..." (Yes, it started raining as soon as I left the salon. Of course I had no umbrella with me - that would have made far too much sense.)

Several days later, my hair is holding up nicely. Someday soon, I'll venture beyond the updated Rachel look, but for now, functional and easy suits me fine.

A cut and style with Gary France costs from £62. Toni & Guy Kensington is located at 28 Kensington Church Street, London W8 4EP (tel: 020 7937 0033).

Stone cold fug

Dear Matt Drudge,

Why the shock over Sharon Stone's "transformation"? It's called self-tanner, extensions, and no expense (of time or money) spared. She's still ugly, thanks to her horrible disposition, derived from what we can only guess is a(n alleged!) crippling lack of self-esteem. (You'd be right for thinking we're basing this only on that incident when she scowled at us at the Four Seasons, but a Hollywood producer we know says she is nasty - allegedly! - to everyone she meets.)

Okay, bye.

--Jack