Women have always tried to improve on what G-d gave 'em: Paint on the cheeks, hoops on the skirt, Kleenex in the bra. Fine.
But eyelash transplants? Actual, stick-a-needle-near-my-eye SURGERY when all you really have to do is glue on a pair of false ones and flounce around looking like Liza?
And who wants to look like Liza anyway? (Or flounce?)
Alas, sane readers, these transplants are the newest thing. Hair follicles are harvested from the back of the scalp and sewn to the eyelid, like fringe on a poncho. The new lashes look long, longer ... and longer still. In fact, they keep growing. So maybe don't think fringe on a poncho. Think REAL HAIR GROWING FROM YOUR EYELIDS LIKE A PONYTAIL! Aieee! And you have to trim it!
"We just don't recommend using a pointy scissors," chuckled Dr. Alan Bauman, the Boca Raton hair restoration specialist at the vanguard of this trend. After Bauman appeared on ABC last week, he says, he was overwhelmed with inquiries "from all over the world." Almost half were from fellow surgeons begging to learn how to do the procedure.
You know what that means. In a couple years, eyelash transplants — as "Saw III" as they sound now — will probably be as commonplace as tummy tucks and boob jobs.
Which, when you think about it, sound at least "Saw" or "Saw II." But we've gotten so used to slicing and dicing that those operations just seem like nice, normal options for self-improvement. And that's when you know we've gone nuts.
As Americans suck out their fat and fill in their lips and blow up their breasts like microwave popcorn bags, beauty grows impossible to attain — except by more plastic surgery.
A doctor on Long Island told me she has young women coming to her for breast implants because they want to look more "natural." They don't get how insane that sounds.
Maybe they're just surrounded by so many fake body parts they don't know what's real anymore. Last year, almost half a million women had breast augmentations — up 9% from the year before. And it's not just the beautiful people becoming beautiful people. Two-thirds of plastic surgery patients make less than $50,000 a year.
In another 10 years, they'll probably be saving up for eyelash transplants — or for some work on their cankles.
"That's the area between your calf and ankle," explains Adeena Colbert at the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, and it's about to become the next, big body part. Doctors whittle stolid-looking cankles into something curvier. The goal is to make them look better, but natural.
As if that's not the nut of the problem. Better is NOT natural when it requires surgery. It's creepy. And that's as plain as the eyelash hanging down the new nose on your Botoxed face.
