The big news in this week’s People Magazine is that Heidi Montag’s plastic surgery has successfully transformed her into the object she always aspired to be. She is now an “it.”
Heidi describes herself: “It’s a new face and a new energy. It’s a new person.”
Yet another People Magazine cover girl exuberantly refers to becoming a real life Cinderella.
(If you recall, the last reference was made by rock star virgin Kevin Jonas’ new wife who was given real glass slippers by her husband as a wedding gift. If you get one thing out of this blog, here it is: Cinderella is not a good movie for your kids **SSS*** Do not let them watch it unless they are 17 or over.)
Heidi goes on to tell People, “I feel like almost all of the things I don’t want to be…got chiseled away.”
When Heidi waxes effusively on the magic of plastic surgery, she refers to a universal fantasy: everyone has flaws they wish they could remove. Unfortunately, these are emotional or historical, not physical– duh.
Heidi seems to recognize she is addicted to the process of plastic surgery, the promise of perfection rather than the end product which only leaves her scheduling her next appointment. She says: “I’m just starting. As you get older, there are so many different treatments. Let’s just say nobody ages perfectly, so I plan to keep using surgery to make me as perfect as I can be. Because, for me, the surgery is always so rewarding.”
Like so many victims of plastic surgery, Heidi frames her surgeries as her own independent choice. She claims she was not under her Spencer’s influence—her controlling and Playboy bunny obsessed husband—who tells her she’s beautiful and to stop. Heidi responds: “I’m my own person. It’s my body.”
Her family, too, was “unsupportive” but she doesn’t care about that either. She’s “a married woman and at this time in my life, I can make my own decisions.”
Heidi was willing to listen to God, but he was OK with it. She prayed, promising if it was wrong, she wouldn’t go through with the surgeries, but she never got that feeling from him. “My body is just a shell; God doesn’t care. It’s what’s inside that God cares about.” (Though I still don’t get why Heidi cares so much about the shell when God doesn’t)
Throughout the long article, Heidi does fess up to some powerful influences on her decisions other than God. When she arrived in Hollywood, people made fun of her. Bloggers circled her “Jay Leno chin” and “Dumbo ears.” Heidi says she didn’t like being the “frumpy sidekick,” to the show’s star, Lauren Conrad. “Everyone from that show was rich. I was wearing Lauren’s leftovers.” But now, post-surgery, she feels like “a sexy, confident woman. That to me is a Cinderella story.” She explains, “looks matter. This is a superficial industry. “ Her dream, she says, is to be a pop star.
Who’s going to fault a girl for pursuing her dreams– so single-mindedly, obsessively, ambitiously, devoting mental energy, time, and upwards of $30,000 that she saved over three years? Clearly, Heidi is driven, a woman with a mission. She even risked death, saying that during surgery her breathing slowed, she lost oxygen, and “felt like I was gone.” Heidi had upwards of 20 meetings with her plastic surgeon just so they could get it right, carefully studying photos together and planning her look. For example, she wished for Angelina Jolie’s high eyebrows.
I wish Heidi Montag had been trained early on, rather than aspire to becoming a real life cartoon princess, to focus her incredible ambition, desire for success and power, and skill at competition into something other than her physical appearance. Too many young women are still taught their looks are the gateway to everything they could possibly want. And in this messed up world, just like Heidi says, the way a woman appears is, too often, indicative of how powerful and successful she can become.
Heidi’s plastic surgeon, Dr. Frank Ryan, says “She’s just doing what every celebrity does. They just don’t talk about it.”
It is, after all, Heidi, not all those other silent celebrities who scored People’s cover. Obviously, she led a carefully planned, manipulated, and successful PR campaign. She told no one about the surgery, except for magazine, which features photos of the whole process. She must have promised People an exclusive if they put her on the cover, because everyone knows, America loves a makeover.
Not one of Heidi’s “after” photos shows her smiling. Maybe that’s not because she’s unhappy, but that she just isn’t able too yet; she says her face feels fragile. There is a before/ after photo at the end of the article where you see the former Heidi smiling– yes, thin-lipped, low eye-browed, Dumbo-eared I suppose, if you know where to look, but her spirit and her brain and sense of humor are there too; there’s a real person in that photo; the girl next to her with dead eyes, puffy lips, platinum playboy bunny hair, has eyebrows raised in a look of disdain– just what she always wanted to be.
Lucy and I finally braved the crowds, motivated by a week of being trapped inside by storms, to visit the planetarium at the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. Lucy is obsessed with Saturn and has been begging me to take her for months.
