Every city has its love story. New York loves winter, London loves summer and Paris loves romance. What about Los Angeles? Quite simply, it loves itself.
More specifically, it loves a younger version of itself. There are historical sites like the Greystone Mansion (built in 1928) or the Getty Villa (opened in 1974), although the word “historical” is a term lightly used since they are both decades younger than some concession stands in London underground stations.
A great thing about Los Angeles’ self-love is that it routinely makes films about itself. They are mostly sunny and happy, except for when they are LA film noir packed with murder. Even then, the killers are good looking, along with the corpses.
A Los Angeles zombie movie will have the beautiful groups of walking dead, and camera-ready morticians. The city continues to reinvent itself whenever possible since there is an endless thirst for new entertainment. Los Angeles has to stay young at all costs, much like its inhabitants.
Beauty has a spiritual dimension. Jewish literature speaks of the beauty of Sarah (Genesis 12:11), Queen Esther who wins a beauty pageant, and Talmudic hotties like Rabbi Yochanan (Talmud, Bava Metzia 84a). It defines the standard measure of male beauty as someone who has a beard, and the same page goes into explicit detail about the certain physical features that meet high aesthetic standards.
There is a mildly-active Instagram account called @hotguysintefillin (it’s real, look it up). They say “DM us to get featured.” So I sent them a direct message to get my photo featured. I sent three direct messages, to be precise. Their response was nothing but the dead quiet sound of tumbleweed rolling across the prairie. It must be because I don’t have a beard.
Maybe it’s time to press “reset” on our 21st-century standards of beauty. I find it increasingly disconcerting walking the streets of Beverly Hills, where old age is treated like a disease rather than a time for wisdom. Winter may be approaching, but the only things frozen in Los Angeles are the taut faces of many residents.
Cosmetic procedures often play a truly important function in people’s lives. Plastic surgery can boost self-esteem, exponentially improve mental health, improve vision, remove pain, hide aesthetic flaws, treat obesity, remove scarring and increase wellbeing. There are some examples of celebrities who had a great surgeon, like Jane Fonda, but admitted regret about a facelift in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times. She acknowledged that it can get addictive, but stopped having treatments because she didn’t “want to look distorted.”
A billboard currently sits above Pico Boulevard announcing “Botox, $12 per shot!” Botox also has important health benefits, like treating neck spasms, lazy eyes, chronic migraines or excessive sweating, but where is the limit? It can feel weird speaking to people in their 60s who have the foreheads of a 20-year-old. But it’s not fair to make fun of unnecessary Botox injections. It would be a cheap shot. More specifically, a $12 cheap shot.
Angeleno screenwriters and casting directors may celebrate eternal youth, but Shakespeare beat them to it. Many modern lovers still recite “shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” without realizing that it has a dark ironic undertone. The Bard not only writes that her “eternal summer shall not fade” and will never grow old or “lose possession” of beauty, but also says that she will never die — “Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade.” This is because his lover, sometimes referred to as “Shakespeare’s Dark Lady,” is already dead in real life and her only aging lines are the lines of the poem: “in eternal lines to time thou grow’st.” In other words, Shakespeare’s 18th sonnet is about a wrinkle-free, smoking-hot zombie.
Los Angeles is a great place to stay young, and sometimes it can be done without a knife. The city regularly features new restaurants, bars and tourist attractions, and we can similarly try out new clothes, hairstyles and make-up (even the straight men). Or maybe I should just give in and see a plastic surgeon. I’ll literally do anything to get featured on @hotguysintefillin.
Marcus J Freed is an actor, writer and Jewish educator. www.marcusjfreed.com and on social @marcusjfreed
