Now I'm Following You
Star (February 25, 2008) was recently deemed a loser in sales for 2007, which may lead to cuts of some kind. Perhaps on Madonna's face, as illustrated by their reasonable "Just Asking..." column, which decides that Madonna's new face is due to Botox, fat injections in the cheeks (I hope it's fat and nothing more permanent because her cheeks are dead to me at the moment), an eye job (as I figured) and also a brow lift. I'm not sure I see the brow lift...those tend to really look bad to me:
What I don't get is...as altered as Madonna instantly looked to me at the UNICEF/Gucci gala, she didn't look terrible. Suddenly, she goes to Berlin with more makeup and looks far weirder. I can live with the eyes popped a bit, but the cheeks need to go. Even in this gorgeous Star picture, the left side (her right) looks slightly fuller, giving her a bit of a lopsided grin.
Just remembering when I loved her for not fixing the gap between her teeth...
I can't put my finger on it, but the nose has been reinvented too. It's not the same nose she had 15 years ago.
Posted by: Aaron Morrow | February 16, 2008 at 01:02 PM
Matt... you're beating a dead horse now. Get over it. She had some work done. She didn't get cheek implants (she's not insane, and she hasn't been absent from public life long enough to have had a major, invasive surgery like that...) but she probably DID have lipo injections in her face, botox, and a very good eye job. Let's face it: it's going to be perplexing enough hearing Madonna sing about shaking booty on the dance floor at 50; it makes sense she wants to at least LOOK age appropriate while doing it.
Posted by: David | February 16, 2008 at 07:41 PM
Don't worry, I'm aware most people either support plastic surgery or find it to be a given in the entertainment world. I'm not saying I necessarily am intellectually "against" it. But it has had a strange impact on me to see it in Madonna. Again, I just remember admiring her for various things, and some of them included her deliberately not fixing the gap in her teeth, not being a classic beauty but instead being a modern and edgy beauty, not being afraid to be seen in public with no makeup and unkempt if she wasn't working (which was a huge departure from the divas of yesteryear). So it will take some getting used to. I probably won't post about it extensively, but since it was the subject of a long piece in this tabloid and since some other fans have expressed this out-of-nowhere sense of disappointment or something regarding the topic, I posted it. You're right that her eyejob is not "terrible," it's just that it altered her eyes in a way that's terribly noticeable to someone who's studied her face over 25 years. The cheeks I hope will deflate, but again I do remember posting quite a while ago (a year or several months, time stood still...) about how her face had changed slightly over time without my noticing each movement and suddenly from the Confessions era on it was striking how taut she looked. I think it's fair game to be interested in it—she's very much a performance artist and has always used her body and face as part of her statement. But I know where you're coming from, too! :0)
Posted by: Matthew Rettenmund | February 17, 2008 at 09:47 AM
P.S. That's why I titled the post as I did...I'm aware it's almost like stalking her face.
Posted by: Matthew Rettenmund | February 17, 2008 at 09:50 AM
I don't think Madonna looks bad. What's most depressing is not that Madonna had plastic surgery, but she HAD to have it. She was definitely pressured. People may criticize her for her plastic surgery, but the same people (in the media) post pictures of her looking awful whenever she gets a new wrinkle.
Posted by: daryl d | February 17, 2008 at 11:52 AM
Exactly right, Daryl. She's not Melanie Griffith and Joan Rivers.
Posted by: Matthew Rettenmund | February 17, 2008 at 01:14 PM
I love it when you get dirty on Madge.
Bless you Mr Rettenmund.
x
Posted by: Lucky John | February 21, 2008 at 04:47 AM