Drawing the line under celebrity

I was going to say I was watching The Lady From Shanghai the other night, but that's misleading. It makes me sound like a film buff, which I'm not. I love good storytelling and I love the atmosphere of film noir, but I rarely have time to sit through a whole movie unless I'm sick. So what I actually did was watch the first twenty minutes of The Lady From Shanghai, remember that I have have an aversion to Orson Welles, regret that someone else wasn't playing the lead, vaguely wonder where I put my Maltese Falcon video, and start watching an archaeology documentary instead. What did strike me about the film, however, even more strongly than the awfulness of Welles's Oirish accent, was how jaw-droppingly lovely Rita Hayworth was. Her frocks were rather nice, too. And then I saw it. She was lying on a yacht (I think), singing, and it was there, clear as you like, magnified on the silver screens of yesteryear and the less magical screens of today. A line. Across her forehead. Right across it. And do you know what? It didn't detract from her beauty at all. If anything, it added to it. Beauty and character. If a woman looked like that now, she'd be vilified. Youth is all, beauty is all, but only if it conforms. All traces of character and individuality must be expunged. Open any glossy magazine. Unless you've nothing else to do with your time, I'd bet you'd be hard pressed to tell any of the women apart. Go back fifty years or more. The stars cultivated their individuality, celebrated it. Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly, Veronica Lake, Jean Harlow, Ingrid Bergman, Hepburns Audrey and Katherine, all of them completely distinct. All we have now is bland homogenity and high streets full of poker-straight-haired clones who aspire to be 'celebrities' without the hard graft. There's little real style, let alone any substance. I'm bored with identikit 'stars'. It's time for a change. The revolution starts here. Chuck out your straightening irons. Banish the botox. Reclaim your character, or, if you haven't got one, do something about it. What are you afraid of?