Frankly it's Frankenstein

Today the agenda is a continuation of the 'aesthetic cosmetic' theme, with less of a tangerine twist than my last colorful contribution. For this entry, let us say, I prefer to refer to the potential consequences of the face and body-perfect obsession of the familial now. Observations would suggest that from the extensive multi-media to the everyday salon trip, we are fast becoming consumed by the joker-smiling, snipped and trimmed superficial age. The plump injected lips spouting the 'perfected pout' is today a given. Alas,the botox-brow frozen to an infinite state of surprise is a common place must have. We may now purchase wrinkle smoothers, fillers and all manner of facial grouting tools to rebuild, reconstruct and erase, for now, the unthinkable suggestion of age. One questions, in all this beautifying madness, who the very being may be that hides, resides and masquerades behind the man-made sutured walls of such a mask. The deceivingly perfect exterior of such a face, hence, a product of a society that evaluates much these days on face value, continues to partake in the unreliable and somewhat disjointed painful race to achieve the youngest look.

So to question this miraculous youth fluid extraordinaire i.e snake venom, (which, for those of you who do not know is the ace-base of Botox). Surely this frightful 'tox-in face' (or otherwise paralysis inducer), is a tad unreliable as a cosmetic procedure. Further, to staple one's brows and wear a look emulous of a 'Ronald McDonaldesque' arch is positively none other than a very dubious suggestive look of happy.

Of course, amidst many of the questions we should not ask, lurks the burning desire to know how the rest of the body 'fits' in? With an ever-youthful fixed face what is to become of the 'failing to comply neck' propping up the plastic happy smile? What of the aged parts of covered flesh suffering the gravitational pull? The once pert body mode passing over to the other side can surely not be patched up with all of the artifice above? If so this sounds frightfully expensive.

A good friend of mine echoed a similar viewpoint in relation to the ambivalent advantages of beauty, plasticity and the body. For example, should you happen, perchance to find yourself stumbling googly-eyed towards a display of aesthetic cosmetic appeal; say the poutier pout, the surgeon-smoothe face , the ample chest, the generally younger looking Type, how do you respond when not just the clothing drops in the bedroom? Does Mary Shelley's Frankenstein sound familiar I wonder...and yes whether woman/man has, once again, made a monster? One arguably may recognize the faint undertones of similar issues raised by Victor at the beginning of chapter 5 in Shelley's novel as he abhors/ observes his creation:

"How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate this wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I endeavoured to form? [...] limbs were in proportion, and I had selected [...] features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! [The] hair was of lustrous black, and flowing; [...] teeth of pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with [...] watery eyes [...] and straight black lips".

A New Year is the Future Still Orange?

Of course it is a New Year, yes undoubtedly. All the signifiers tell me so. It has snowed, the numbers on the top right have altered to 2010/ twenty ten; yes pronounced like that I note by those in the swinging know. Sounds rather Americanized in my view. Regardless of that undeniable numerical change, call it procrastination, writer's malaise (or any other term that would sufficiently describe absence of entry), there are things that I still have to execute from my little black book regarding 2009. Those of you that know me well, few I hasten to add, will be aware of my avid need to scribble, capture and consider 'the way of things'. A blissfully vague term I know, but wholly convenient. This woolly term, one understands, encapsulates all manners of observation. Given that there are a selection of choice topics to discuss from dated leafs of the late year, the following additions will be consumed with 'past musts'; to explain, I must write about them before they become simply pasts or too passe.

Teenage Dream - Tangerine Cream

I take my inspiration for the given title from the everyday street-scene; possible pretty young things smothered with the aesthetic slick. In short, a look of 'ever-glow orange' is fast becoming ingrained as the acceptable norm within contemporary culture and its streaky band of female youths. Albeit not a direct reference to Edgar Froese and the 1967 German electronic group, the band's namesake seemed to be a recurrent theme in my mind whilst sighting this hegemonic cosmetic wave. I wave not. Sad is the need to daub, lose complexions or clarity of individuality. Sadder still seems the inescapable dilemma for those who simply cannot go out without facial bottled orange. So one, this one, observes a surreal layered on sense of security, and perhaps a more sinister understanding of what 'lipstick, powder and paint' now evokes. For those teens who can afford the time, expense and skin scare the 'spray tan' or cancer booth may accompany the 'ever-glow' look. The orange-faced Oompa Loompa's in the more Deppian version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory thus stand to look less like Wonkers than the young girls entrenched in this blanket beauty faux pas. The compulsory coiffure, straighten and spray further enhanced by lashes that emulate a look of 'dead-leg tarantula' accompanied by 'the glow' surely wards off rather than rewards with the admiring eye of other. Perhaps the message portrayed by this image should thus read " back off should you dare to catch a glimpse of something natural!"Should the future foetal scan be child equipped with mascara wand in hand preparing to be seen looking 'the look' at the premiere, the birth? Does the tan become an imperative spray to accompany deodorant? Or does one simply look at our consumerist culture as a blind, oblivious happy contender of the ridiculous? Arguable, peppered with pity for the young impressionables on one hand, and a good dose of Lacanian 'Lack' on the other.