Forever Barbie_ The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll - Lord [110]
When we met at Sfuzzi, a restaurant on Manhattan's Upper West Side, for dinner in 1993, Cindy's lower lip was the only part of her body that had not been modified—and she had spent the afternoon talking to a Park Avenue doctor about enlarging it. She also wanted a fat transplant in her cheeks. "I have dents here which need filling in," she explained. "See my cheek here is flat—but I have dents underneath."
"I can't see them," I said.
"But they're there," she assured, craning forward so I could get a better view. Then she scrutinized me. "You don't need your eyes done," she said. I had discussed my drooping lids—and fear of pain—in a phone conversation months earlier. "Everybody's eyes will sag after a certain point." My jawline, however, was another story. "You might do a little liposuction there. But I wouldn't say it's an emergency case. Work on keeping your chin up a little."
As I involuntarily thrust my jaw upward, Cindy pulled out a hefty album of her "before," "after," and "during" photos. "This is what you look like when your eyes need doing," she explained, pointing to a snapshot of herself at twenty-seven, about ten years ago. She did indeed have slits for eyes and a posture reminiscent of Ruth Buzzi's character on Laugh-In. Blond, slender, and almost nondescript in her "prettiness," Cindy today is not Barbie's twin, but she does look more like the doll than she did when she started. She also favors Mattel fantasy clothes: glittery earrings, sleek, short skirts. We ordered dinner—a vegetarian pizza. Like the 1989 Animal Lovin' Barbie, Cindy is an ardent antivivisectionist. She has "adopted" a whale, belongs to "Cheetah Watch," and doesn't eat meat.
As we studied a picture of her post-op face, bruised and looking troublingly like the eggplant appetizer on an adjacent table, she told me, "I want patients to understand that it's major surgery. It's not like going to the beauty shop. There are real dangers—complications that happen, rarely, but they do happen."
Then she moved on to her philosophy. "Men are really drawn to women for their looks," she said. "They can't stand a sick woman, much less a sick, ugly, swollen woman. Besides, I think men worry that you're going to die on the operating table and there'll be nobody there to make their dinner."
As if on cue, our dinner arrived. Avoiding animal products is the extent of Cindy's health regimen; she keeps "fit" through surgery. "It's not me to go to a gym and exercise . . . I don't know that it's really good for you. You go to the gym and you have to keep going. I'm careful who I sweat with, too. I don't like to go in those places and do all those things. Especially now— people expect me to be perfect." She told me about her plans to have the loose flesh removed from her upper arms, an operation in which the scarring itself causes the muscles to appear taut. Thinking of the hours I had logged on the Gravitron to vanquish my own vexatious jiggle, the operation seemed almost a good idea. Then my eyes returned to Cindy's "in-between" photo. Cowardice, I concluded, was the better part of valor.
Cindy believes her appearance in the National Enquirer in January 1993 may have been responsible for Roseanne Arnold's decision to have a total surgical overhaul: that, in a sense, she recruited Arnold into her "bionic army." "ROSEANNE'S HUBBY IN PLOT TO ROB BANK: TOM ARNOLD'S OWN AMAZING CONFESSION" appeared on the newspaper's front page, along with "AMY FISHER: I SHOULD HAVE SHOT MY LOVER" and "WYNONNA JUDD FIGHTS BACK: I'M NO LESBIAN." Cindy and her transformation were prominently featured