Jessica Simpson is completely plastic fabulous!

Thursday, July 28th, 2005

The latest issue of In Touch features Jessica Simpson on the cover, promising to get to the bottom of the plastic surgery rumors that have been surrounding her for quite a while. The accompaning article is actually pretty good, featuring tons of those grainy, super-close, side-by-side shots that you can’t help but love. But every single photo—some of which, pretty conclusively in my mind, show that she is absolutely made of wax—features a little blurb of text underneath quoting some plastic surgeon who says, essentially, “Well, she may have, or she may not have. You know, maybe. Then again, maybe not.” What I find strange is that not once in the entire piece is there a mention of the fact that, right around the release of her album Irresistible—which is precisely when Jessica went from okay to hot—Jessica’s formerly squinty eyes suddenly grew round as saucers. Unless she is surprised all the time, I think there’s a little more to these rumors than meets the (lifted) eye.

I’m an especially flat-chested girl—it’s just my lot in life.  There will be no bikini pageants and Playboy centerfolds in my future, but I also don’t have to deal with back pain, sagginess, stretch marks or those oversized bra-contraptions that look like they could double as parachutes.  And—hey, bonus!—I fit into shirts from middle school and automatically look slim no matter what kind of J Lo. booty I’m packing, so I suppose you win some, you lose some. 

Any girl who’s exceptionally small is probably lying if she says that the thought of breast implants has never crossed her mind, even fleetingly, maybe even just once while, say, staring at a picture of Scarlett Johansson in InStyle and cursing the gods.  Quite randomly today, however, I actually held a breast implant in my hand: a squishy, slimy, silicone-filled fun bag.  And it freaked the hell out of me.  Those suckers are heavy!  This is what my busty compadres have to lug around on their chests 24 hours a day??  Botox me to high heaven (well, okay, let’s not go crazy–botox me within reason, perhaps with a photo of Nicole Kidman close by to serve as a reminder that it’s not always possible to differentiate betwen humans and Madame Tussaud’s Wax Figures)…but knives?  Sutures?  Bags of goo?  Er…you know, I think I’ll pass, after all!

Speaking of breast implants, here’s an article in the New York Times by Natasha Singer detailing the annoyances and costs of necessary repeat-surgeries, something many women aren’t aware of when upgrading their size.  I was speaking with a friend of mine a few weeks ago about her implants, and when I brought up the fact that implants don’t last forever, she tried to assure me that they do.  (They don’t.)  In fact, most manufacturer warranties last 10 years, and it’s common for women to go back for repeat surgery after only 4 or 5 years (either to change implant size, to correct capsular contraction—where scar tissue forms around the implant, or to address leaks or rippling).  Scary stuff!  As one doctor, Linda Huang, MD, says of the roughly $7000 cost of surgery: “If they would rather spend their money on a trip to Paris than on me, then I recommend that they do not have breast augmentation to begin with.”  (Um, my trips to Paris cost a hell of a lot less than seven grand!  Clearly, I’m staying at the wrong hotels.)