Of course, I’d be remiss to talk about Amanda Lepore without also mentioning her mentor in body modification: the increasingly disturbing, the always fascinating, Ms. Jocelyn Wildenstein.
Being, in the end (heh), a guy from small-town Mississippi, I was denied the opportunity–some would say, privilege–of growing up with women like Jocelyn. Until recently, plastic surgery, divorce, and Judaism were topics my family and other respectable Southern Baptists discussed in hushed tones after dark with the curtains drawn. In fact, were I not inspired by Harriet the Spy to hone my eavesdropping abilities, I might not have heard about la chirurgie en plastique until I reached graduate school, where Orlan was all the rage.
As it happened, though, I got wind of the concept one July afternoon between fifth and sixth grades when my mother and Aunt Grace were “visiting” in the kitchen over a pot of coffee. I told them was going over to a friend’s house, but I hid in the dining room so I could listen in. (I was worried that my parents had plans to ship me off to school and wanted confirmation.) Sadly, most of their nattering was of the tedious, dull variety of which my mother is so fond. Mom is sweet, yes–even pretty. But a conversationalist? Never.
Just as I was growing weary of their chit chat about distant relatives I neither knew nor cared about, my mother brought up the topic:
MOM: Now Gracie, you know I’m not one for gossip, but did you hear about what ol’ Libby Monahan has gone and done to herself?
GRACE: No, indeed not. Tell it!
MOM: Shhh! (Looking over her shoulder to make sure they’re alone. I hold my breath and cringe. After a long moment, she continues.) All right…you know how she and John Ed just love to go up to Gatlinburg every summer? Say they wouldn’t miss it for the world?
GRACE: It is pretty up there, I’ll give her that.
MOM: Well, I have it on good authority from her cousin Lizabeth Ann that they skipped Gatlinburg altogether last month and made a bee-line for Nashville.
GRACE: What on earth for?
MOM: (Whispering so low I can barely hear her) Surgery!
GRACE: What kind of surgery? It ain’t cancer, is it? Oh, that poor, poor thing…
MOM: No, Gracie, not cancer.
(From behind the long runner covering the dining room table, I see MOM put her hands to the side of her head and pull the skin of her face taut.)
GRACE: You gotta be kiddin’!
MOM: No m’am, I am serious as a heart attack.
GRACE: Libby Monahan had (whispering again) plastic surgery?
MOM: Just like in that Elizabeth Taylor movie where she told everybody she was going on a vacation, but really ran off to this clinic and let a whole football team of doctors take off her face and put it back on again.
GRACE: Sweet Jesus!
MOM: Can you believe? …Did you see that thing, by the way? That movie? It was “pure d” awful. Just disgusting what ol’ Liz is doing these days.
GRACE: Nuh-uh, never saw it. You know I get squeamish about medical things. Doctor Rayburn had to sedate me just to put in my partial.
In an environment like that, Jocelyn would’ve raised more than a few eyebrows–and not in the surgical way. In fact, odds are pretty good that her cosmetic hubris would’ve inspired a mass uprising a la the torch-wielding mob at the end of Frankenstein. She never would have stood a chance.
Of course, she wasn’t always a mutant. I guess it all began as a way of staying young and pretty for her hubby. Or maybe years of powdered bleach eventually took a toll on her brain. Or maybe she was just really inspired by a trip to the Bronx Zoo. Whatever the case, these days she’s definitely got a unique look.
And that’s my take on Jocelyn–or, as my friend, Jon, likes to call her and those of her ilk, “Jocelyn Wildenstein, brought to you by DuPont.”
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