The Aging of Innocence


courtesy of Holly Millea


That was when my life began.







courtesy of Holly Millea

"Are you kidding?" I pulled my recorder out. "I hope we're stuck in here all night!"

"Oh God," Mailer groaned, dropping his head into his hands. "Someone please save us."

What we choose to remember, or can't forget, can be inexplicable. The night of December 20, 1993, I left the Plaza hotel, where I'd covered Donald Trump's wedding to Marla Maples, who'd worn a Carolina Herrera gown and a $2 million tiara. After sitting through the ceremony and collecting quotes from guests Susan Lucci, Paul Anka, O. J. Simpson, Robin Leach, Rosie O'Donnell, Howard Stern, Rudy Giuliani, Adnan Khashoggi, Carl Icahn, and Mayor David Dinkins, I strolled the six blocks home, a filched Plaza crystal ashtray heavy in my pocket.

It was around 2 A.M., the crisp air filled with feathery tufts of snow gliding toward the ground. Christmas lights twinkled in storefront windows along Park Avenue. East 60th Street was dark, with the exception of the Bloomingdale's employment office, across from the store. Crowded in the brightly lit lobby were maybe a dozen bald, naked, beautiful women—mannequins. They stood behind a thick glass door stenciled BLOOMINGDALE'S
HUMAN RESOURCES. Lifelike and frozen, they seemed, to me, caught in the act of making a run for it. I stopped and stared, and kept staring, wishing, then willing one of them to move. I felt held there, the snow dusting my shoulders. And I remember thinking, I'm so tired. Seeing my reflection, aged in the fluorescent light, I thought, Why aren't you making a move? What are you doing with your life? Holly, when are you going to leave the party?

By the time my face caught up with the unsettling vision in the glass, it was 1998 and I was six happy years into a feature-writing job at Premiere magazine. The transmogrification seemed—bam!—sudden. I woke up, looked in the mirror, and knew I would never again get carded. Game over.

Not so fast.

I gave myself the pep talk that always works on my friends: Okay, no more tears...look at me: "Who can turn the world on with a smile? Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile? Well, it's you, girl, and you should know it!" Not working. Mary Tyler Moore could stand here and sing it herself, throw her hat up in the air, and I'd still feel depressed, because the truth was, if I could turn the world on with a smile, I'd have had a lot more dates, and not just with Americans.

But Mr. Grant told Mary, "You've got spunk!" And I did too. Incurable spunk detected in a routine blood test. Determined to turn my aging into an asset, I took the elevator up to Premiere's sister magazine Mirabella and boldly pitched an experiential column aimed at cosmetics junkies and nip-and-tuckers, in which I would be their trusted guide through the $50 billion beauty industry maze. I would be the guinea piglet standing up and shouting, "I'll sign the Not Tested on Animals waiver!" and give the raw play-by-play and honest upshot, testing new products and procedures. Simply put, I was willing to donate my body to science while still breathing. The editor had one question: "Do you have health insurance?" And with that, a beauty adventuress was born.

My first Beauty Adventure took me to Dallas to try a new laser machine—ThermoLase Softlight—that promised permanent hair removal. My legs, underarms, and bikini line were zapped, and just to show my derring-do, I made them zap my nipples, too, which burst into flames. I had my lead! Permanent? My hair grew back in the span of a waxing. But four years later, Intense Pulsed Light machines hit the market and left me, like the name of the salon, Completely Bare. (A tad too bare down there.)

By the third column, truth telling had cost the magazine an advertiser, and my Beauty Adventure passport was pulled. But when Robbie Myers took over the editor's chair, she handed it back, stamped TRUTH BEFORE ADVERTISING.

Perfect timing. The beauty industry was exploding with promises of anti-aging everything. I found it funny that my grandmother could remember the invention of the electric razor (1928), the eyelash curler (1931), nylons (1939), hairspray (1948), and tube mascara (1957); and now it seems incredible that I not only remember but participated in the birth of lasers, Botox, and injectable fillers—big breakthroughs back then—that 12 years later are de rigueur.

In 2000, Robbie became the editor of ELLE, and she took me along, promising, as ever, to have my back and post my bail. There was sure to be trouble. As Holly Golightly says, "I'm always top banana in the shock department." I was a kid who never stopped talking. My parents offered bribes: "Be quiet until we get to the restaurant and you can order a Shirley Temple." Never happened. My father's constant refrain: "Houlihan, do you always have to tell everybody everything you know all the time?" Yes, I do, and now more than ever, and often in great, immodest, embarrassing, gross but necessary detail. Because what began as a flip, facile way to finance the recouping of my youth evolved into a reality check and something that actually mattered. The blithe spirit of the column grew weighted with the unrealities of the industry. I had a first-class ticket to the supposed "best" doctors, hottest gizmos, and latest procedures, but the rates at which I returned with negative reports of "scam" and "don't bother" and "I'm scarred" were higher than "it works!"

courtesy of Holly Millea

Over the course of 50-some adventures, I've covered everything from the surgical to the nonsensical to the totally surreal. I had my eyelids snipped, veins stripped, and muscles ripped; my chakras rocked, pimples shocked, and colon unblocked. I've been Platza-ed with tree branches, slept in a hyperbaric chamber, and gone undercover as a QVC model. I joined the Victoria's Secret Angels Across America tour, where Adriana Lima—the Mean Girl in the mix—kicked me off the bus in Vegas for being old. I've been Eliza Doolittled by Oscar de la Renta and disguised as a Latina, a WASP, and a punk rocker on the website HotOrNot. (The Latina me was voted hot. The punk pose, not: "She looks like the girl that beat me up in high school.")

I was stuck in a Czech monastery loo, visiting monks who make Fresh Crème Ancienne, and stuck up a Brazilian rainforest tree picking açai berries for Kiehl's, and stuck up the bum with an herbed oil enema by a former supermodel turned Ayurvedic healer turned close friend, Cameron
Alborzian. (It was a bonding experience.)

When my wizened hands were plumped with Radiesse, the girls ripped me a new a-hole, which, God bless Cameron, he repaired. Their mock cover line screamed: VAGINA OF A TEEN BUT HANDS OF A 52 YEAR OLD? PLASTIC SURGERY FOR YOUR NEW NEUROTIC OBSESSION. No, I am not 52. Yes, I am neurotic. And according to my gynecologist, I absolutely do have the vagina of a teenager, which makes sense since it never gets any exercise. The Jezzies have attacked me before, and will again. I call them the Monkey Coven because they sit chattering away in their website tree, casting evil aspersions, throwing coconuts, and hoping celebs slip on their banana peels. There's no need for a counterattack. Sit by the river long enough, and you will see the body of a chimp float by, felled by middle age. And seeing me, the simian beast will swim toward the bank, panicked and screaming: "Who's best at Botox? Lip filler? Vein injections? Eye jobs?!"

As Cameron says, "There is no such thing as good karma or bad karma, there are only lessons to be learned." Don't worry, girls, despite the hard coco-knocks, I'll be here when you need me. I was you once, after all.

Some adventures were misadventures, and those were the best to write, because, all fun and games and coconuts aside, busting a bogus new product claim, or better yet, a procedure, gives me a Ralph Nader high. I will always, and somewhat proudly, bear the white hyperpigmentation scars of coblation—a skin-resurfacing technique that uses radio-frequency energy. If you read the column, you ran in the other direction. After that scarring nightmare, I held off testing the new laser resurfacers that sprang up over the years, which were all deemed "too risky" by my dermatologist, Dennis Gross, MD. He finally gave the MiXto Micro Fractional CO2 Skin Resurfacing laser his ultraconservative "good to go." Still gun-shy, I coaxed Emily, our beauty director, and my editor, Liesl, into walking a mile in my guinea piglet shoes. But seeing their MiXto lobster red faces, I took a guilt trip to Gross's office and underwent the lasering too. For better or worse, we were all in it together. And, amen, it was for better. Two years later, MiXto is still a top Beauty Adventure, completely changing the landscape of my skin, erasing fine lines and sun damage and inducing collagen production. Liesl, too, was thrilled, though Em did file a freckling complaint.

That was the first and last time I've had company on a serious Adventure, and frankly, it spoiled me. The MiXto recovery being long and not pretty, I would have been a little scared and a lot lonely getting through it without my commiserating cohorts. There have been days when I've returned from an Adventure to my empty apartment and sat in stricken silence thinking, What have I done? Like when I watched my hands blow up into oven mitts post-Radiesse. (Ten days later they deflated, looking 10 years younger.) The three weeks of seeping, scabbing, coblation wounds. And let's not forget the truly traumatizing Edward (Scissorhands) Tricomi shag haircut that sentenced me to four months' house arrest. (I'd been shagged, but not in the way my friends said I so badly needed.)

Those nights when I was physically uncomfortable and overtired and everything felt like The End, I called the one I knew would not answer, "I told you so" (even though she sometimes told me so) Liesl. And during the day, when the light exposed just how wrong everything had gone and I couldn't bring myself to go out in public, I rang the one who could actually make it better, Gross. For more than a decade, this man has always fixed my self-infliction, or at least performed damage control. We met on one of my first Adventures testing a new wrinkle eraser: Botox. Seeing him last week, he'd found a new use for the juice. "I invented this procedure," he said, pricking me along my upper and lower lip lines. "It relaxes the muscles around the lips that cause them to contract and appear smaller. By relaxing them, your lips expand and have a natural volume." It works. "Have 12 years really gone by?" Gross asks. "It's funny, but I feel emotional about that." (He thinks he's emotional? When I first stepped into his office, I could still get pregnant.)

But hey, I signed up for it all, right? Literally signed—my ELLE contract; the medical waiver; and the Who to Contact in Case of Emergency form, which, I swear to God, was Warren Beatty, because he's on the Scripps Research Institute board and I still had his phone number from when I interviewed him for Premiere.

In another instance, I nearly signed away my soul. I'm obsessed with my teeth, neurotic about gum recession. During one of millions of cleanings, my periodontist observed that overbrushing had made me "long in the tooth" and suggested pulling the gum down in that area. I let her perform the procedure, with horrific results. My dentist determined she'd stitched the incisions so tight the blood supply was cut off from my gum tissue, which died and sloughed off, exposing the roots of three teeth. I'd broken my first rule: Never trust a doctor simply because you like her or she says she can fix you. Despite the license on the wall, she wasn't skilled or talented enough to perform cosmetic surgery. Now I had a serious problem. Which demanded a serious—and seriously accomplished—surgeon: Dennis Tarnow, DDS, a pioneering periodontist and one of the coinventors of the coronally positioned flap procedure that corrected the unsightly mess in my mouth. Given my crazed emotional state at the time, the guy pretty much saved my life. Or at least kept me from living alone, unloved, in a cave.

When it comes to your face, the first cut is akin to losing your virginity. All that messing around that leads up to it—the Botox, filler, lasers—they're the cosmetic equivalent of getting to first, second, and third bases. But when a surgeon pulls out his scalpel, you're going all the way. And whoever's wielding the blade better be better than the guy in high school.

courtesy of Holly Millea

I wasn't one of those who swore they'd never get plastic surgery. I was born with heavy-hooded eyes that were sexy when I was young, but I knew would come to hang past my lashes. I also knew that cutting the lids, like refining the nose, can easily lead to a loss of self-recognition. The decision was made easy when I no longer recognized my eyes anyway. I'd interviewed most of the famous Park Avenue plastic surgeons over the years, but, like Goldilocks, I couldn't find the one that felt "just right." Gross—being my most trusted MD, and a man who sees a lot of "work"—recommended Gerald Pitman, whose work can't be seen.

In a city where people can point at strangers and accurately say, "That's Doctor So-and-So's nose job. That's a Doctor So-and-So face-lift," Pitman doesn't leave his signature. Which is probably why he's best known for liposuction—he literally wrote the medical textbook. I knew he was the one. For starters, he was a real surgeon, not a celebrity. He didn't have a KING OF THE WORLD–embroidered cushion in his office, like one I'd met; or framed pictures of himself with presidents and famous clients, like another. Nor did he suggest I get a nose job, as did the one whose noses populate Manhattan's Upper East Side. Pitman listened. And understood. And had a feel for my emotional life, which is key in a plastic surgeon. Everyone's expectations are unique, but everyone wants to wake up happy. And the difference between happy and another "Oh God, what have I done?" moment that would last a lifetime can be a millimeter (or an ounce) one way or the other. I committed and asked, "While you're at it, could you suck a pound off my pear shape?" Which, given the two procedures, amortized the cost of the anesthesiologist and the hospital fees. (My advice? Never get surgery in a doctor's private operating room.)

Back then I said the good news and bad news were the same news: You couldn't tell I'd had an eye job. The Monkey Coven bonked me on the head for that and chattered, "An expensive form of emo self-mutilation!" Wrong again, girls. I pay Pitman a visit three years later. Studying my before and after blepharoplasty pictures, and staring at me now, he declares, "Your eye job gets inexplicably better." I see for myself. Yep, it's true and slightly anxious making—shades of Death Becomes Her, growing wider-eyed by the minute. Checking my imagination, I strip and we agree that my old pear is peachy lean. But I do miss a bit of the junk he took out of my trunk. Like, two ounces. He laughs: "Your bottom is still round and high!"

I leave Pitman, but not before asking him if I could use a little neck lift. "You're not even close to needing that," he says. "Holly, stop looking for what `needs to be done.' You're an attractive woman, and the truth about attractive women is that they're attractive at any age. Growing older isn't going to change that."

Have I changed? Years ago I'd Adventured to the office of Gerald Epstein, MD, a psychiatrist and expert in the ancient art of morphology—the science of face reading. Morphologists believe that 95 percent of our disposition is set at birth, with our profiles revealing one of four temperaments, and our faces one of 12 personalities designated by their shapes, which correlate with the names of Greek and Roman gods. He'd diagnosed me as a rectangle, Aries/Mars: "gregarious, good-humored, fickle, short-tempered, penchant for war." All job requirements. I have the angular face "women find attractive in men" but men don't find appealing in women. Which leaves me single, wishing I were a lesbian, who could find another lesbian, who was attracted to women who look like men. Meanwhile, the men I'm attracted to fall for moon-shaped faces: "a circle of receptivity that conveys a yielding nature." It is also a more youthful look, which is why so many women are inflating their faces—cheeks especially—with fillers.

Cosmetic procedures big and small can change your morphology and, in turn, your character. I swing by Epstein's office to see if I've become a different person. On close inspection he says matter-of-factly, "You still have the face of a warrior. Look at the sharp angles, the creases around your mouth—your calling is to conquer, be indefatigable, acquire knowledge. That's why you do what you do. You also put obstacles in your own way so that you can surmount them." He chuckles. "But you don't like other people putting things in your way. God help them." What about my eyes? "They smile when you smile, which doesn't always happen after people have surgery. That's one way you can tell."

When I'd first met Epstein, he'd examined a photo of me at three and said, "Now this is a tough little monkey." (I told you I was one of them.) And now? "You're still you." What a relief, for the most part.

Walking home down Madison Avenue, I smile at all the work coming toward me in the other direction: the overblown lips and implanted cheeks and frozen foreheads and cinched faces. You can see it all, just as you could see it in me at times. After one noodling, my friend Jo said something that sums it up for me, and probably anyone who indulges: "You look prettier in an artificial way and less pretty in a natural way." So we all have to decide.

I pass by Barneys (a first) and turn on 60th Street. The Bloomingdale's human resources lobby is empty, of course. The mannequins have escaped and are walking among us now, indistinguishable from their well-sculpted human counterparts. "What is there left for you to do?" my oldest friend Virginia asked not long ago, adding, "You could go to Japan and have your legs lengthened! They cut your bones in half and insert metal rods...." She burst into laughter. I'll pass on that, thanks. In this modern day and age—and at my age—there will always be more Adventures. (Have you noticed how my hair is thinning? I'll get back to you on that.)

Inside my elevator is a silver plaque, etched with HELP IS ON THE WAY, which lights up if you push a button. I always look at that and think, Oh, yeah? When? I'm tempted to push it now, just to see who comes. Would Dr. Gross show up? Or Robbie? Liesl? Em? Maybe Cameron. They're always helping me. Do I help anyone? Beauty Adventuring isn't exactly brain surgery. "No," I can hear Virginia say, "but surgery has been involved."

I'm older now. And occasionally I get what the other Holly called "the mean reds...when suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of." Only I know. I'm afraid of growing even older. I can't honestly tell you otherwise. I just am. And I know I'm not alone. I'd like to think there's something to be said for putting that anxiety out there, and finding ways to alleviate it—or ways not to. And if I can throw in a laugh, that's a beautiful thing too. So you see, it's me. I'm the help that's on the way.

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