February 20, 2005

• Thanks, mj, for a sad and moving post.
• Wow. I think her husband is a snake and helped contribute to her self-loathing but Lolo made the choice to submit to those horrid surgeries so at least she didn't die a total victim.
• Yeah...it was like she had no idea of herself as a real person, and let others tell her who she was until she made herself into a barely functioning thing.
• Great post (even if that photo is enough to make your eyeballs bleed.) I've read similar stories of people with dysmorphia before, and it's fascinating, if not totally depressing.
• I had heard of Lolo many years ago, but then promptly forgot about her. What an awful way to live, never being happy unless you're altering your appearance somehow. There's a special place in hell for people who would exploit such a sad soul. Nice post mj.
• Very sad... Curiously, though, the two articles have a discrepancy in her reported age of 7 years. I wonder which is the true one.
• I noticed that too...I'll see if I can track down more info.
• This seems pretty accurate - she was 37. Timeline 4 Mar 1962 Eve Valois born in Clermont-Ferrand, France. 1995 Ferrari motors files suit against Lolo for trademark infringement, after she announced plans to market a line of dolls bearing her name. May 1995 Lolo Ferrari arrives in Cannes. Feb 1996 Lolo Ferrari releases her album Airbag Generation. Sep 1996 Lolo Ferrari begins guest-hosting Eurotrash on Channel 4 in England. 5 Mar 2000 Lolo Ferrari dies of a drug overdose in her home in Grasse, France. 1 Mar 2002 Police arrest Eric Vigne, Lolo Ferrari's widower, for her murder. 20 Mar 2002 A judge orders Eric Vigne to be held in jail while awaiting trial for his wife's murder
• Does anyone else who reads a story like this wonder about the doctors who performed the various surgeries? I suppose it can easily be argued that it is a cosmetic surgeons job to do what their client requests, but it seems to me that there must?? should?? be some ethical considerations of appropriate use of cosmetic surgery. Although I do believe that one is ultimately responsible for one's own decisions and actions, it seems that Lolo was a victim, in part, of not only her husband but of greedy doctors with irresponsibly flexible standards for ethical medical conduct.
• What Medusa said
• medusa- Interesting that it was pointed out her breasts were designed by an aircraft engineer. Perhaps the Dr saw it as a challenge to his engineering skills. At first I couldn't understand how those things would have helped her career, but on second glance I realize it has the same disturbing appeal as a train wreck.
• They said in the article she had trouble finding doctors with low enough ethical standards to enlarge her breasts to their dangerous size.
• If Nip/Tuck is anything to go by, there will always be plastic surgeons willing to do anything for money. Why yes, I do think TV is reality.
• I saw Lolo on Eurotrash. As mentioned in the Grauniad article, "les lolos" are "titties", "knockers", (etc.), but it doesn't tell you that "lolo" is a form of "loche". "Loche" meaning "slug", garden-variety.
• Wow. Just WOW mj. too real.
• What a sad story. I hope the sisters Vigne is working to exploit sue his sorry ass off. What a dink. Since the ethics of her plastic surgeons is an issue, it made me think of Jocelyne Wildenstein, the divorcee who needed to remake herself into a human jungle cat, for whatever misguided reason.
• Bride of Wildensteen is fantastic.
• At first I thought that was photoshopped, that nobody could make themselves that grotesque. Now I think it's just pathetic. I see a parallel with Michael Jackson here, too.
• Excuse the misspelling, Jocelyne, you are still fantastic.
• Wow. This is so sad. I have a friend who, at one point, wore a G or H cup bra. She is a big strong girl, but her breasts still gave her terrible back pain. I can't imagine the effort petite little Lolo must have gone through.
• Isn't there a French female performance artist who has undergone a similar number of plastic surgeries? I can't remember her name, but I'm pretty sure I have an article about her around here somewhere. I'll look for it.
• Sorry, derailing my own thread, because I don't want to do 2 posts in one day, and this is weirding me out. Was looking on Google for more info on Lolo, and clicked on a site that shut down my computer. Thought it was a coincidence, went to the same site, and it shut me down again. WTF?!? I thought that only happened in bad movies.
• Meredithea, I was thinking of the same woman, but I can't remember her name. Her 'performance' consisted of altering her features to conform to the standards of Renaissance beauty, right? If anyone has any info on this, please post away. I've been curious about how this project worked out.
• I don't think that its neccessary to assume the doctors involved were unethical. Is Michael Jackson the victim of an unethical doctor? Look at it this way: Pretend you're a comsetic surgeon, a damn good one, but with high ethics. MJ (or Lolo, or whoever) show up, asking for an operation that you find to be unneccessary, and possibly even dangerous. You also know this person has been to many of your colleagues, trying to get the same operation. If this person keeps looking, you know that they will find someone willing to perform the operation, but this doctor they find will almost certainly be a back alley, unskilled surgeon, likely to botch the operation, and permanently disfigure or even kill the patient. Would you perform the surgery in order to prevent her from finding a back alley doctor? This same sort of moral dilema is one that abortion doctors have to face daily. They don't perform abortions because they're trying to scam money from pregnant women, they do it because the alternative is to offer her a hanger and a bottle of vodka.
• Isn't there a French female performance artist who has undergone a similar number of plastic surgeries? Yes, there is.
• Yes -- Orlan! Thanks, Wolof!
• Oh, and there's these (NSFW google image search), which I believe are probably much bigger than Lolo's.
• Mr. Knickerbocker: Oh, my. Just... my back kinda hurts looking at it. I applaud her lat strength. I used to make my friend with the G cups mad by putting her bra on my head like a hat. Or a ski mask, really.
• Arrrgh! I need a computer whiz to tell me what the hell happened.
• (I know far too much about weird-looking women.)
• There's also the Tiger Man. BTW, who wrote the blurb for the Jocelyn site? It's so cliche-laden and overdone. Marriage with anybody can be difficult. Marriage to the very rich can be impossible, at times. But divorce is war, and all is fair in love and war; Still pining for Alec, she prayed for a miracle - and was at last rewarded. Alec, it seemed, could not get Jocelyne out of his mind or heart, ... the wayward man has at last returned to his senses and the woman he loves.
• NSFW...When breast implants go horribly, horribly wrong.
• NSFW...I never knew what regular non-implanted boobs looked like until I was at a nude beach in my late 20's. This would have been helpful. What natural boobs look like, in all their glorious variations.
• Wait. Hold on. You never knew what regular non-implanted boobs looked like until you were in your late twenties? Are you blind? Were you kept in a hole? Were your hands kept from exploring your own body? Are you quoting from someone who lived in a basement?
• goofyfoot, I think lots of girls feel how moneyjane felt. You may know your own breasts, but how do you know you're normal? Lots of girls grow up thinking they're freaks because their body shape (breast size, weight, hips, whatever) don't conform to the supermodel type that's always being touted in media.
• I think there should be some kind of psychological profile required prior to having plastic surgery, the way it's required prior to a sex change operation, just on a smaller scale. Someone like Lolo or Jacko should raise a red flag with doctors; their psychological profile should follow them with each surgery, and at some point it should be required that they receive counseling before continuing. I mean, it's a person's right to change his/her body any way he/she sees fit, but if they're doing it because they're mentally ill, they should be getting help instead. MJ, maybe you should post another FPP about that link you clicked on. That's really bizarre. It might have installed something on your machine that you need to get rid of.
• But that's not what MoneyJane said at all, Alnedra. It's pretty difficult to get to one's late twenties and not know anything about normal breasts. That's mighty bizarre, in fact.
• Well, up to now (in my late twenties), I've only seen two sets of breasts - my own and my mom's. Other than on the internet, I've never seen another woman's breasts in the open. So I really don't know what normal breasts look like. Well, until now.
• MJ: Do you have an antivirus? If not, AVG is your friend. Then, ad-aware and spybot. After that, I don't know.
• Interesting that it was pointed out her breasts were designed by an aircraft engineer. Perhaps the Dr saw it as a challenge to his engineering skills. Aircraft engineer Howard Hughes designed a bra for Jane Russell to wear in the movie "The Outlaw". Is this mentioned in The Aviator, which I've yet to see?
• Thanks for the link on natural breasts. It amazes me the warped image that woman (and men) can have about their bodies, esp. something that is fawned over as much as breasts. Normal people are not models. Normal people are beautiful.
• I read somewhere that the bra Hughes made for Russell was so uncomfortable that she redesigned it but didn't tell Hughes. She didn't want to hurt his feelings.
• I stand corrected, Alnedra. I shouldn't have assumed - at my age - that my experience was the norm. It still seems odd to me.
• There are two professional bodies for plastic surgeons in the UK. The British Association of Plastic Surgeons - BAPS - and the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons - BAAPS. I find this childishly amusing. On the issue of platic surgeons' ethics, I've had some professional dealings (no, not in that sense) with the guy who did Jordan's (NSFW, scantily clad lady with huge baps) first two breast implants, but refused to do any more. As with all professions, there's a range of ethical behaviours - I wouldn't count this guy as being particularly ethical, but he had his limits. She still found somebody to do them easily enough. Also, with regards to the "how do you know what normal breasts look like?" thing - I think very few people have seen enough of any erogenous zone to be able to say what "normal" is. I don't know what a normal pair of breasts looks like, or a normal penis, but I've seen enough of both to suspect that anything short of "grossly deformed" probably counts as normal. And you certainly wouldn't be able to work out what "normal" was by looking at the old NSFWs...
• Yeah. I was a poor little blind girl, kept in a basement, heart-broken over my my inability to give quality handjobs or find my own tits. C'mon...think about it... Unless you have a bunch of sisters, or are a jock so you see lots of women changing clothes, where and how are you going to see other women's boobs on display? Strippers? Hardly the prime source for anything but the naturally spectacular or enhanced varirty. Skin mags? Same thing. I don't even swim, so there goes women changing into swimsuits. And I'm straight, so no tits there either. I'm not a girlie-girl, so there goes seeing your friend's boobs trying on clothes together or whatever the hell girlie-girls do. And this was pre-internet for me, so zippo amateur porn and rate-me sites. Unless regular women starting going bra-less and flashing me on the streets, where was I going to see all those tits?
• A question I too have asked myself mj.
• If I'm elected, there'll be tits for everyone. Vote now, vote twice.
• I find more than a little surprising that I have seen more natural tits than many women. But it's only surprising because I haven't htought about the situation before. To compare, I bet most women of a certain age have seen more natural dicks than I have (seen).
• I guess I am lucky to have a group of friends with whom I often hottub naked. we have all seen each other naked many times, we all represent a wide variety of body types/sizes/shapes/ages etc., and we have all pretty much come to the conclusion that we are some hot n sexy people, in our natural and imperfect ways. I think the opportunity to be around lots of naked people in a non-sexualized situation can be very healthy. other than that, I would like the record to state that I am voting for moneyjane. twice. boobies for everyone!!
• That's the one thing that worries me about porn, specially now it being easier to get on the net: the unrealistic ideals it promotes. Perfect (if quite plastic-looking) bodies, clich
• A burka at the beach would keep me from burning - maybe a good idea :)
• Yay for naked hot tubbing with friends and strangers! Where I live/hang out it's almost unheard of for clothing to be required in a social hot tubbing situation. Such openness about the human body short circuits body shape/size issues, fixation on/unhealthy fetishim of nude bodies, etc. in a very powerful way. Burning Man is also an excellent place to see all sorts of naked people in all their natural glory. When I stop to think about it, before I went to Burning Man, I really didn't have a very diverse experience of real-world naked bodies.
• how are you going to see other women's boobs on display locker rooms! weren't you forced to shower with dozens of other mortified young women in high-school and college locker rooms or dorms? or is that just an american torture?
• where and how are you going to see other women's boobs on display? I already apologized for thinking my experience was the norm, so please back a bit off, MoneyJane. Fact is, I don't have sisters, but I had gym class - I figured everyone did. Also, I grew up in Southern California, on the beach - and this is where I went wrong about what I consider regular exposure to regular breasts. You'd think we'd all be checking each other out for mammary growth on the beach, but it was the ability to fight, and the deepness of tan, that mattered. We wore the kind of bathing suits you can see in Boogie Nights , but tits and the bigness thereof didn't mean a thing
• I didn't think that was particularily harsh, but in any case, we've figured it out. locker rooms! Heh...I was the one with *no* boobs until I was sixteen, so I'd change in one of the stalls on the few occasions I actually hadn't weaseled out of gym entirely. So school was largely a tit-free atmosphere as well.
• *sending MoneyJane a tit-pie* Hey - on this note - I asked members of another forum what they think of the word vagina, and whether they use that term, or another, and what they think of it.
• I've never been exposed to other boobs either. Not in the gym or elsewhere. I was rather amazed at the real-ones' site. No, I take that back as I recall that in adult gyms the most 'perfect' bods were always strutting while the rest of us just did our business. But in high school? Never.
• I never saw anything in gym class - the showers were non-functioning, no time anyways before class, and all the girls were apparently as shy as I was, and changed as quickly as possible facing into the lockers. If only there had been gazing time! Generations of bi and gay girls would have been so happy.
• what they think of the word vagina Vagina sounds like either a pastry, an injury, or a car part to me, so I tend to use koochie or poonani if possible. "Man! This is the *best* strawberry vagina ever! I'll take a dozen, please". "Whoa dude...you get in a fight or something? That's quite the nasty vagina you got there over your eyebrow". "Sweet! That thing hauls! What kinda vagina you got in there?"
• MonkeyFilter: What kinda vagina you got in there? *sigh* Had to do it before GranMa got to it.
• No, Vagina sounds like a charming holiday destination. "Come and experience the joy and wonder of Vagina in summertime! With its dense forests and lush valleys, it's an experience you'll treasure for the rest of your life."
• flashboy, that's Regina.
• See, to me it seems mispronounced. Va/gee/na sounds right. Va/gI/na, not at all. I say cootch or pussy. The term 'yoni' got totally ruined for me when I met a dog by that name.
• No, no, no, "The Regina" is the canonical list of amateur community theatre groups who have performed My Night With Reg.
• 'Oh, nothing could be finer than to be in a vagina in the Spriiiing-time'* * Or indeed at any other season. Many of the best moments of my life have been spent basking in the glorious aura of natural naked womankind.
• Oh damn! Dx, you stole my tagline. good show
• I always thought vagina sounded like a preppy girl name. "This is my friend Buffy, and this is my other friend Vagina!" I tend to use hoo-ha.
• Whatever you call 'em, I love 'em. I think they're really beautiful and I say this because I know a lot of women don't think so. The only production of TVM I've seen was the HBO one. I actually was left feeling pretty depressed at the need for such a show and by the numbers of women that were very alienated from their vaginas. I saw in some art photog magazine years ago a piece which was similar to the "real breasts" thing linked above. It was dozens and dozens of photos of real women's vagainas. Very diverse. And all beautiful.
• I'd dig seeing that...I'm a board-qualified expert by now on all variety of penii, but haven't even cracked the textbook on vaginii.
• Jesus Christ in a unitard...I went looking for a site with the kind of images mentioned by kmellis. Googling 'vagina' and 'photography' maybe wasn't the best idea ever...but I did find Tamponhenge and whatever the hell this is. Worst. Super. Power. Ever.
• moneyjane: You should pick up a book called Femalia by Joani Blank. It is nothing but non-pornographic closeups of different vaginas -- all different shapes, colors, etc. Very beautifully photographed, IMHO. There was an activist who made something of a name for herself (but not one that is sticking right now :) doing a slideshow like this for women but I can't remember if this was Blank or I am confusing her with another sex-positive feminist.
• Thanks for the new desktop moneyjane. not really
• I bet that it was Joani Blank's work that I saw. MJ, from this side of the fence (almost entirely straight male), mostly the only penes (the correct Latin plural; but that level of pedantry is annoying and a conventional English plural—penises—is probably best) I've seen have been in porn. How much in variance are real-world penises from porn penises? Size? Shape? Other "strange" things (from the standpoint of only knowing porn penises)? For that matter, it's interesting to me that my best friend, a gay man, has told me that in gay male porn (and in general) a big, "veiny" penis is preferred. I wouldn't have expected that, as veiny-ness doesn't look good to me. And do most women think erect penises look silly? I've always thought they do though I wish they didn't. It's perfectly normal. It should be attractive. But it's, well, awkward-looking. Not elegant at all.
• Yeah, what the hell is that?? It seems like a sex-positive, menses-positive female-empowering image. But it's named "men.gif". So is it some peculiar fetish image? I suppose so.
• Monkeyfilter:Man! This is the *best* strawberry vagina ever! I'll take a dozen, please
• I never thought it was red bunnies and koalas and other happy animals coming out of my uterus. Huh. (That is just so funny. They look so darn jolly.) Oh, and I don't think erect penises look funny. Non-erect ones when there's some running or jumping going on? You bet, but only as silly as women's breasts during similar activity.
• what they think of the word vagina Vagina is so ... clinical. I prefer cunt, said as loudly and abruptly as possible. Or, when I'm in a more shy mood, I refer to it as my "special area".
• Erect penises don't look funny to me ... until I draw faces on them.
• Oh, good grief... Just remember: water-soluble ink only, OK Koko? : )
• MonkeyFilter: when I'm in a more shy mood, I refer to it as my "special area".
• I like to think of Georgia O'Keefe's images.
• As mentioned in the Grauniad article, "les lolos" are "titties", "knockers", (etc.), but it doesn't tell you that "lolo" is a form of "loche". "Loche" meaning "slug", garden-variety. In Hawai'ian, Lolo means stupid. I only know that because the Hawai'ian word for marijuana is pakalolo. Paka means smoke. Lolo means stupid.
• And I learned that from watching Lilo and Stitch with my son.
• I love words/phrases like menses-positive. Never quite sure what they mean (that the one who's menses-positive has menses, a la HIV-positive? or that one has a positive opinion of menses? or is in favor of, or supports, menses?) -- but I enjoy 'em nonetheless.
• http://www.fineart.sk/index.php?cat=2 ^naked artists models, courtesy of the Mefi thread on posture photos. All your titty needs!
• I'm banana-positive, if that helps.
• In a unitard? I think not.
• HawthorneWingo, you enjoy menses? I hence wish menopause upon you. Enjoy.
• Wildenstein seems to be the anti-Michael Jackson. He went from young black man to old white woman, while that cat woman went from young white lady to old black transvestite. Not attractive, all that messing with the body we can do thanks to surgery... eew. I'm not a big fan of cosmetic surgery to begin with; fixing damage after an injury, sure, but changing yourself just because you can looks like lying to me. Symmetry advertises good genes in animals; probably the same for humans as the more "beautiful" people tend to be symmetrical. When you have a kid with a person who was surgically altered, the kid will need surgery to look like mom or dad. I know of at least one woman who was very surprised to find out what her husband's nose really looked like, when it showed up on her own son.
• MonkeyFilter: I'm banana-positive, if that helps. Indeed, banana-positive and Rh-infused. And I guess I'd better do this one, too: MonkeyFilter: All your titty needs!