Sunday, August 18, 2013

Mindy Kaling is onto something

-I will no doubt be weighing in on this. For now, the placeholder.

-Is it really all that empowering to end an article arguing against people/women having facelifts by advising, as an alternative, "a good deal of skin care"? Yes, Luisa Dillner also advises "good sleep" and "good diet," but isn't "skin care" itself problematic for many of the same reasons as cosmetic surgery? As in, it involves spending far too much money on that which likely won't do anything positive for one's appearance, but might nevertheless have some unforeseen medical and/or cosmetic consequences? (At least if you're poisoning yourself with lipstick - and you are - your lips actually become - temporarily - whichever color you've painted them.)

If "skin care" means sun protection, not scratching at mosquito bites (or not getting so bitten to begin with - thanks very much, faulty window screens), and, if at all possible, seeing a dermatologist if there's an actual, identifiable problem, then yes, wise. But I'm not sure where, on the "love the face you have" spectrum, the thousand-dollar creams fall, relative to surgery, injections, peels (this is a thing, yes? not just something Patsy does on AbFab?), etc.

-I've been watching a lot of "I Love Lucy" at the gym, while folding laundry, and beats me why, but there it is. And I noticed something I'd never thought about when watching the show originally, as a toddler or thereabouts: Ricky Ricardo is, like, attractive. (Possibly relevant: my husband's been away for a while, as have all human beings, so I'm comparing black-and-white sitcom stars to, I don't know, squirrels, or the more strapping of the deer. And, I suppose, Fred Mertz.) Desi Arnaz must have used a really expensive moisturizer or something, because damn.

Well! Apparently (credit goes to a relative, but a different one than identified the crawfish) Mindy Kaling agrees. She calls him "matinee-idol good-looking," which about covers it. Glad to know I haven't lost my mind/taste, as presumably Kaling is comparing Ricky to a broader cast of characters.

3 comments:

Petey said...

"Desi Arnaz must have used a really expensive moisturizer or something, because damn."

I watched it long enough ago that I might be mis-rembering, but wan't Desi's dishiness an occasional Plot Point?

Phoebe Maltz Bovy said...

I suppose so, although I think it's more that he works in show business and is always around a lot of chorus girls and such, making Lucy jealous.

It's also, though, that it's odd to find someone from that long ago anything other than... historic? And it's that odd thing of remembering a show, but remembering it from an age when one's mind was quite different. So I'll kind of know which episode it is, what's about to happen, but it all looks different from married-and-30 than parents'-living-room-at-3.

I did once have an instructor (undergrad) who insisted that various 17th C (or earlier?) authors were very good-looking. Which, now that I think of it, suggests this is a late-grad-school-induced delusion.

Petey said...

"It's also, though, that it's odd to find someone from that long ago anything other than... historic?"

Yeah. There is an initial surprise.

I remember first seeing pre-ILL films where Lucille Ball herself is a real dish, and being surprised. But still, even that was nothing like my shock at seeing old films where Angela Lansbury is a dish.