I, like so many other people, was distracted and appalled by the frozen state of Sandra Bullock's face during this year's Oscar ceremonies.  Particularly for an actress who made her name by being wacky and emotive, it was a shock to see Bullock down-modulate her own emotional projection in order to match her heavily botoxed face.

I had a similar problem recently when I tried to watch an episode of "Cougar Town."  I had heard about it, and wanted to check it out just to see what all the fuss was about.  Honestly, I have no idea, because I spent the entire episode staring at the numb faces of Christa Miller and Courteney Cox.  I kept watching for any show of expression, from such notably expressive actresses.  I found none.  Christa Miller and Courteney Cox now resides in the Uncanny Valley.

Much has been made of these actors' decision to freeze their face in order to look younger.  It seems on the face of it (ha!) like shooting yourself in the foot, if you make your living acting.  But this presupposes that Hollywood wants women who can act.  

I propose that the rule of Darwinism makes it clear that acting ability is not a studio's top priority.  You can test this by thinking of all the household name "actors" you can think of who can't act a bit.  And yet they keep getting work, don't they?  Question: are these people also very attractive?  I would guess yes.

Hollywood prefers beauty over acting ability because that is what we pay it to provide.  If everyone suddenly stopped seeing movies with pretty people who couldn't act, Hollywood would be rushing a lot of ugly but great actors into the forefront within a month, I assure you.

And so ultimately the answer is, the actors freeze their faces because we want them to.  

Unfortunately, somewhere along the line we equated "absence of wrinkles" with "looking younger."  Now I grant you, wrinkles do appear with age.  But simply removing all the wrinkles from a face of a 51 year-old woman like Madonna doesn't make her look younger.  It makes her look revoltingly weird and inhuman.

Are wrinkles inherently ugly?  You wouldn't think so, if you examined the star power of actors like Harrison Ford, Clint Eastwood, Sean Connery, Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson, Alan Rickman, Jeremy Irons, Patrick Stewart, Pierce Brosnan, Patrick Swayze (RIP), Liam Neeson - the list goes on.  Certainly male actors have work done, and feel a pressure to look younger.  But men are allowed to be both wrinkled and attractive.

Women, unfortunately, are not.  Or such is the message of the industry.  Some actresses speak out against it - including Meryl Streep, Marisa Tomei, and Kate Winslet.  Unfortunately, these women are definitely in the minority.

What can you do about it?  For one thing, vote with your feet.  I know I'm not going to waste money or time on anything starring Sandra Bullock, Courteney Cox, or Christa Miller.  

But more importantly, understand for yourself that wrinkles don't make you ugly.  But artificially ironing out those wrinkles sure does!  Be beautiful - skip Botox!

Creative Commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user trawets1