AVA GARDNER, I once read, pulled up loose skin on her face with hooks, and stuffed it under a wig. That was her makeshift face-lift. Joan Crawford is said to have smothered her acne with a mortician’s layer of makeup. Marilyn Monroe’s scalp was reportedly visible to intimates, shining scarlet from the scalding bleach she used. She was also, legend has it, going bald.
America’s greatest beauties: they’d never get away with it these days. Those gorgeous Life magazine spreads of Gardner, the fresh-faced, green-eyed brunette: She was life’s crisp and sparkling perfection. Today we would never gaze placidly at those photos, dazzled as if by a Vermeer.
Instead, if Ava were still around, she’d appear on idontlikeyouinthatway.com or dlisted.com, and we wouldn’t ogle her face as much as her hairline, and the microscopic mysteries of the snagged skin, each hook tugging gruesomely at the flesh. And there would be a caption, angry, as if Gardner had intruded on us, and not we on her: What the hell is wrong with Ava’s face?!
