The Kardashian clan, who like it or not have dominated celebrity news for two decades, are no strangers to the surgeon’s knife.
Arguably, they’ve done more to normalise plastic surgery than anyone in the history of humankind: Kourtney, Kim, Khloe, Kendall and Kylie, aka the sisters who launched a thousand lip/face/butt lifts.
But now even they’ve been upstaged – by their own mother, Kris Jenner. Last week, she touched down in Paris to offer moral support to her second eldest, Kim, as she took the witness box in her robbery trial.
But for once, no one was looking at poor Kim. With the world’s cameras trained upon the Paris Assizes, all eyes were on Kris’s new face. And it was quite a show-stopper.
Not to put too fine a point on it, she hasn’t so much turned back the clock as smashed it to smithereens. She’s 69 but looks younger than her own daughters. It’s quite extraordinary.
We’re used to seeing A-listers who look surprisingly good for their age – think of all those Liz Hurleys, Jane Fondas and Sharon Osbournes – not to mention the odd Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.
But whether or not they’ll admit to having a little help from knife or needle (or insist, as they most often do, that it’s all down to a healthy lifestyle and good genes), they at least all broadly look like they occupy the same decade as their biological age.
Not so Jenner. If you didn’t know she was 69 you might think she had only recently graduated from college. She looks like a walking, talking Instagram filter. She’s basically AI-ed herself. Or rather her surgeon, one Dr Steven Levine – known as Hollywood’s ‘facelift maestro’, has. This is next-level stuff.
Jenner’s surgeon may have rid her face of any wrinkles or sagging skin, but he has also erased all of her character
Of course, this is not Jenner’s first facelift (she was famously filmed having one a few years ago on her reality TV show), but at no point during her ‘transformation’ journey has she done anything as extreme as this. Quite honestly, who even knew such a thing was possible?
Deep plane facelifts (which is what this most likely is) have been around now for a few decades. They differ from the old-fashioned skin-tightening ones in that they essentially require the surgeon to dissect the tissues of the face to reposition them further up on the underlying structures.
They can – and do – produce remarkably natural and long-lasting results, although they take longer to heal and, of course, require great skill on the part of the surgeon.
This one also seems to have altered the overall texture and tone of the skin itself, which means there’s likely been a whole other series of treatments involved: laser resurfacing maybe, injectables and so on.
As to cost, who can say? If I had to pick a number, I’d say that she wouldn’t get much change from £100,000.
But that’s not really the point. Jenner is a rich woman: how she spends her money is up to her.
For me, the real question is: why? Why, even if you had that amount of spare cash to splash on improving your appearance, would you want this level of obvious artificiality? Why would you not want to look even vaguely your age? Why deny it so completely?
It’s not that I disapprove of cosmetic surgery: I am no stranger to a bit of Botox for my post-menopausal mummy frown, or the odd mini-thread to give the old turkey neck a bit of a lift, but these are all minimally invasive tweaks designed to stave off the worst of the ageing process.
Kris Jenner touched down in Paris to offer moral support to her second eldest, Kim, as she took the witness box
I don’t for one second kid myself that they make me look all that much younger than my 58 years – nor, to be honest, do I want them to. I just want to feel OK about myself when I look in the mirror, and this helps. It’s one step on from a good moisturiser or a great haircut.
It’s all about ageing as well as humanly possible – but never about denying who you actually are. Or, as my colleague Sandra Parsons puts it in her brilliant new book, Age Less, which comes out on June 5, ‘it’s about changing habits, making tweaks to your lifestyle, getting serious about your health’ to ensure that as you get older you still look and feel your best.
I’m certainly not trying to compete with my gorgeous 22-year-old daughter, or her equally gorgeous friends. It’s their turn now, not mine. But that doesn’t seem to be the message here: Jenner is competing with women three decades younger than her. That’s not sassy, it’s just a bit sad.
And there’s something else. Jenner’s surgeon may have rid her face of any wrinkles or sagging skin, but he has also erased all of her character. The old Jenner had plenty of personality in her face (as befits a legendary ‘momager’ and businesswoman); Jenner 2.0 has none.
It’s not just weird, it’s also a bit spooky. She no longer really looks human, more like one of those made-in-China silicone robot dolls that strange men who live in basements buy off the internet. Too much exposure to the wrong temperatures and she might start to melt.
Perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps Jenner’s new face is a glorious vision of the future, a world where people grow old but never age. Part of me looks at her and thinks, wow – imagine having all the wisdom, wealth and experience of a 69-year-old, and looking 29. But another, bigger part of me thinks this just looks like a live-action version of Death Becomes Her.
Angela Rayner is apparently keen to establish a think-tank to ‘promote a more confident centre-Left programme within government’. It’s not often the words ‘think’ and ‘Angela Rayner’ appear in the same sentence.
When people like Shabana Mahmood (Justice Secretary) talk about ‘chemical castration’ for sex offenders, I think of Alan Turing. Having played a crucial role in cracking the German Enigma machine, he was prosecuted for homosexuality in 1952, sentenced to chemical castration – and committed suicide a few years later. A travesty. So no thanks: it’s a barbaric idea, if not a slippery slope to eugenics.
BLOOMING TERRIBLE
Visitors admire the stands at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show
I hate to say it, but the Chelsea Flower Show is becoming the middle-class equivalent of the Notting Hill Carnival – it’s now so far removed from the original concept (in the case of the Carnival, a celebration of Caribbean culture, in the case of the Flower Show, a celebration of gardening). These days it’s just a magnet for tourists, celebrities, influencers and people selling overpriced garden furniture.
Carrie Johnson announced the birth of Poppy Eliza Josephine Johnson yesterday
Congratulations to Carrie and Boris Johnson, who yesterday announced the arrival of baby Poppy, above – their fourth, Big Bear Bozza’s ninth. That’s a lot of hand-me-downs!
BAD FORM TO MOCK PAGER CASUALTIES
This may be controversial, but I don’t think police were wrong to question a Jewish protester over a poster that mocked a Hezbollah leader with an image of a pager and the words ‘beep, beep, beep’.
I know Hezbollah is a terrorist organisation and Israel a sovereign nation that has every right to defend itself, especially in the wake of the October 7 atrocities – but glorying in another human being blown up (the placard was a reference to the pagers that Israel detonated, killing and maiming many Hezbollah fighters) does not cover anyone in glory. By all means protest – but do it in a way that is civilised and, crucially, does not give ammunition to your enemies.
