If you really want to see panic in the streets, ban peroxide. Once on a bus I saw a dazzlingly pretty woman with the best coloured hair I have ever seen, completely fake, imaginative and becoming, several colours, seven strands at a time. I am sure it cost the earth to accomplish and she was willing to pay because she knew she was on a winner.
Of course – the Princess of Wales is perfectly allowed to do whatever she wants to do in the matter of her personal appearance.
I just hope – as a widely experienced hair dresser friend said to me -that the hair technicians have thought about the drugs she has been on and is probably still using in connection with her cancer. And I don’t like it. She isn’t “everybody else” and it has to work rather better than it is, to my disappointed eye. But I’d rather she let it go and grow, than tried again. Give the body a break.
The account of Orlando Bloom (poor baby, not as well known as he thinks he should be) faffing about with having his body rebuilt was mentioned alongside the singer Lulu and the late Duchess of Kent, both bemoaning over exposure. You do wonder if these people ever had any real friends – anybody who said “Great – but it comes with a very hefty price tag.”
Don’t wish for fame, says Lulu, promoting a book about her history and shortcomings . But the business in which she made her name is built on reinvention, keeping yourself up there, putting yourself forwards,
doing the next thing even if you don’t feel like it, being popular and staying in the headlines, no matter the emotional cost.
While I suppose that the late Duchess who married young (and even younger then because of her class, upbringing and expectations) just thought she’d manage – a devout Christian – on the invocation of prayer and duty,
But if you are on show – everybody wants a piece of you. They check you, your hair, your face, your makeup and whatever else you have done to yourself, your clothes, how you are wearing, never mind the clothes. Days off are rare, becoming rarer as technology explodes and there is always somebody watching.
And performers risk being chewed up and spat out, in favour of the next “new” thing.
I recently read the account of a day in the life of a young actress who is going to be a big star and the relentlessness of it repelled me. “Doesn’t matter if it’s 23 hours a day” she was quoted as saying.
Well, lots of us have done a version of that to achieve longed-for goals, but over time it affects your skin, your hair, your mental state (very popular, mental states). And ignoring the impact doesn’t make the problems go away.
I went through a phase where I felt I had to put on makeup to put out the rubbish. But it I didn’t last long because I was a radio girl. And I used to say that the day I was recognized (from some piece of itinerant tv) was always when I had a spot – which was ultimately humbling. Subsequently I took refuge in the mantra of my youth – doing my best.
Occasionally I did look splendid which was lovely when I was recognised – but nobody was bothering me as they now do celebrities, royals and pop stars. And, should my head swell even temporarily, there was always somebody to take me down a peg. Not that I am accusing any of these people of conceit – I am not.
To be an actor who is denied success in the terms he hopes for is disappointing. To be a star is mostly to be on show – pictorially and verbally – with rare exceptions (like Katherine Hepburn or Robert de Niro.) To be royal is to have a whole complex of hopes, wishes and dreams projected on to you, which means (primitively) there may be clues in how you look.
Fame and success are relative terms – they mean different things to different people. Accolade is lovely but you can’t eat it. And being seen doesn’t always mean you’re there ….
Annalog 