Gordon McLauchlan: Flat out on a fast trip to narcissism

When I heard that John Wayne had at least one face-lift, mine fell. Cheeks sagged, mouth drooped, forehead crumpled inwards. Shocked, I was.

The grizzled cowboy/trooper - true-gritted, big-hatted, booted - had horsed his way through hundreds of hard days in my youth, deadlier than a thousand redskins, capable of squeezing a dozen bullets from a six-gun without reloading, meaner than a gangful of desperados. He won World War II more than once to my knowledge - and all that time he just wanted to be pretty.

But when I thought it through I realised that Hollywood didn't countenance too much realism, even in a visage set way out West in the 19th century. Too much natural erosion on the facial landscape wouldn't get past the publicity department. Makeup could do eyes squinting into the sun-seared distance more evenly than the time-trussed hand of God.

So movies and television have taught us the ideal human proportions, that how we look is a measure of our success and virtue, more important than how we behave, and second only to how much money we have. Beauty is not so much in the eye of the beholder as in the brush of the makeup artist, the scalpel of the plastic surgeon.

When I was younger, Health and Beauty was a popular magazine coveted by men for its photographs of marvellous young women with geometrically perfect but chastely covered busts and, on today's standards, robust thighs.

Centrefolds were a culture shock away in the future. The men were slim and flat-muscled. The beaming, clean-cut faces of both genders bespoke the earnestness of the cult of healthy bodies nurturing healthy minds, and vice-jolly-versa. But the standard for men now is pumped up bodies and the surly, self-obsessed good looks of Russell Crowe.

The other day I watched an All Black pounding along the footpath on Tamaki Drive, seemingly mesmerised by the action of his musculature. My attention was consumed by admiration for his arms and legs, and even his pectorals as he moved symmetrically along at pace. He glanced up only occasionally to make sure he didn't run anyone over. He was on a fast trip to narcissism.

For women the model is that wide-eyed, walking caricature of sexuality called Julia Roberts with her All-American, prairie-wide mouth, its teeth as even as a picket fence, and a tall, skinny body that steps out on long legs, vulnerable but determined - like a new-born foal.

Closer to home, television is obsessed by neophilia. The news is nubile, ostensibly read and reported but really marketed by a succession of pretty, new, lacquered faces, unmarked even by the muffled adversities of middle-class New Zealand life, each a triumph of comeliness over credibility.

But in politics, where being taken seriously is crucial, boyish Bill English has the opposite problem to John Wayne. He looks genuinely pleasant and happy, but when he tries to talk on a subject of high moral importance one is distracted by the thought that his shirt might have crept out at the back from the top of jeans hanging loosely on hips. He couldn't wear a Stetson but would look at home in a baseball cap worn backwards. What he needs is not a face-lift but a face-droop to simulate the sags of experience.

Helen Clark is just about right. Fit, slim, light on her feet, she has a Puritan's smile, lips unparted, never threatening any extreme of pleasure. In moments of great moment her face and voice - androgynous - become serious but unpanicked; face rough-hewn, words chewed, like a farmer talking prices over the gate to a mate.

But how long will it be before most of us are similarly shaped by teeth bands, full-cropped, tied-in hair and surgically modified faces, bellies, breasts and hips?

A few years ago I was sitting alone in an outdoors restaurant in London - Leicester Square to be exact - when I noticed a 40-plus woman talking to a charmed man.

Every time she smiled, which was often, she pulled her hand up to her mouth, a gesture from childhood I guessed that didn't cover the radiance of her face.

She had what we used to call buck teeth and which I hadn't seen for a long time. The pearl-white, distinctively beautiful smile would now have been braced back to conformity, especially since dentists don't have so many holes to fill.

Certainly the incentives are moving towards conformity. In the United States, the Inland Revenue Service has ruled that obesity is a disease and the cost of shedding weight has become tax-deductible. You may write off your gymnasium costs and your weight-reduction programme. The Government will decide what size you should be. How long will it be before anorexia support groups will start lobbying for making the cost of square meals tax-free?

Next thing we know, ugliness, or difference, will be declared a disease. I always thought my swarthy father was a nice-looking man but he did have a large, triangular nose, which didn't bother him at all. A swimmer, he joked that, one afternoon when he lay on his back in the water off St Clair beach in Dunedin, nose aloft, they sounded the shark alarm.

Will all such noses in future be trimmed and cutified? Will nips, tucks, trims and cuts make us all the same? Will television journalists look even more like all they know is where to get the best latte?