What is this obsession with fat lips? For years, celebrities have been having their lips blown up by inserting all sorts of things into them. There have been bits of string pulled through, injections and fillers. Women even apply irritants to their lips so that the lips swell in protest. Some of the results have been quite horrifying.

Only today I saw a video of Nicole Kidman doing the red carpet thing with a wide pair of labia so very majora that they make her look weird. She was already exhibiting the tell tale signs of desperation, but her bloated pout is evidence that she is panicking about her lack of appeal to cinema goers. Nicole is no longer a drawcard in the movie business since her last few films have been flops.

The Australian romance that she has just finished filming should do well, though, but only because it has Hugh Jackman in it. Furthermore, Australian settings are still popular with international viewers.

As for fat lips, they seem to be a modern obsession. In earlier times a cute rosebud mouth was considered to be de rigueur. Women with large mouths and full lips were considered to be low class. Japanese Geishas used to paint their faces very white and then outline a tiny mouth area with lipstick.
So it’s not true that full lips have always been desirable as the web sites promoting such disfigurement are suggesting.

Apparently, fat lips are considered to be sexy and youthful, but there is nothing sexy about a sloppy mouth in an old face. It looks rather pathetic. Where are the clowns? Don’t bother….they’re here, strutting about on the red carpet trying to promote another movie dud.

The irony of all this is that there was a perception several decades ago that full lips denoted Negroid ancestry and so many Afro-Americans used to have their lips made thinner—the way that Michael Jackson did.

What a crazy world this is! White people burn themselves to a crisp to get a tan while black people and Asians buy products to lighten their complexions. I saw some of these products in an Indian store where I regularly shop for exotic chutneys and sauces. I could only shake my head at all the silly nonsense that we human beings endure.

It’s true that during the last century, being tanned meant that you could afford to holiday in sunny destinations. Nowadays, with all the artificial tanning sprays this elitism no longer rings true. Any working class person can afford to smear something on her body to look brown. And besides, holidaying in the sun, is no longer so exclusive anyway.

For me, a tan represents a lack of concern about skin cancer and the dreaded melanoma. No glamour in that prospect, for sure!

As I gaze at Nicole Kidman and watch her take the same sad path of her contemporaries, I miss the freckled-faced actress with the frizzy red hair who seemed so full of life. She was our Nic and we hoped she would not capitulate. But Hollywood was mightier and Nic had been persuaded to do the lip thing and the bleaching thing and the straightening of hair thing and now she looks like any other desperate movie star only taller.