http://www.canada.com/montreal/globaltv/st...AF-F8A5AB991C63
Looks can be deceiving
We're drawn to people who are physically attractive and many will go to any lengths to look good, but these are superficial obsessions, style consultant says
DAVE STUBBS
The Gazette
Forty-five-year-old model and style consultant Linda Burton says facial lines and wrinkles are our "history."
There were two Linda Burtons smiling on the newsstands last month, the same woman and yet women quite different.
The part-time model from St. Lazare was on the covers of Option Retraite and Le Bel Age, two magazines for mature readers.
On the former, Burton was riding a stationary bicycle, her features gently buffed and softened.
On the latter, she was a fashionable portrait unretouched, as the eye would have seen her that day.
Both Linda Burtons picture the time in which we live - how our image can be massaged on a whim and how appearance shapes the way we're viewed and treated by others.
Image has been a part of Burton's career for most of her adult life; she has worked as an esthetician, massage therapist, reflexologist, aromatherapist, makeup artist and wardrobe and image consultant.
Today, at 45 - "I'm as old as my tongue and a little bit older than my teeth," she jokes - she is eagerly exploring new paths, very clearly at ease with her life and everything it offers.
Burton sees her two selves on two magazines and accepts both as part of an industry where technology and a client's need can transform her with one stroke of a computer key.
"There's a good 10- or 15-year age difference between the two covers," she said.
"I'm not bothered by it, but here's a retirement magazine touching me up to make me look like I'm 30, or younger.
"I've looked at the bicycle cover and I haven't seen myself. I've thought, 'It's a pretty picture, but that's not me when I wake up in the morning.' "
Burton arrived in Canada 20 years ago, wanderlust in the backpack of a young Rhodesian who had gone to finishing school and done a little runway and photo modelling. Fittingly, image played into the events that brought her here to stay.
She remembers not wanting to return home overweight, having added a few pounds during 18 months of travel, so she stayed away a while longer.
She finally returned to a country by then known as Zimbabwe, and at customs was told her passport was worthless.
It would be a five-year wait to earn citizenship, so Burton returned to Canada, working as an alien domestic until she was granted landed immigrant status.
She became a Canadian citizen in the late 1980s.
Burton has seen trends and silly fads come and go in her health and beauty work, from floating hems and widening lapels to skin care and diets. But perhaps no change has been as dramatic as our attitudes.
"We're not afraid now to look at our image and do something about it," she said.
"Twenty years ago, you never asked somebody if they dyed their hair. It's normal today for men to have pec implants and butt lifts.
"But I've had clients with really nice bodies who are terribly insecure with who they are, and they think that plastic surgery is going to fix them. Until they fix what's going on inside them, surgery will not help at all.
"You should be able to look in the mirror and say, 'I'm working on myself and I really like who I am.' Or, 'I've got a fat butt and cellulite, but I'm a damn nice person.' If you're with people who can't accept that, then you're with the wrong people.
"We're all so concerned about how we look to the rest of the world, but the rest of the world is busy looking at themselves."
It's not easy when you're a teenager who's craving individuality within the herd. This is an age group that's easily influenced by a world glorifying beautiful people who travel with caregiving entourages and have bottomless budgets.
"Teens strive to look like the models on magazines, but those aren't the models," Burton said.
"They've had their legs elongated and busts enlarged, bits and pieces trimmed, highlights and shadows added. This
isn't real life, and these aren't real people. This is a superficial society."
Still, Burton believes that image is important to a degree, and says that we all must fit in, whether that's right or wrong.
Within four seconds of walking into a room, often introduced by what we do instead of who we are, she says we've been judged.
Of course, we all make life-shaping decisions every day - decisions of discrimination.
"If you're walking through a park and see an unbathed tramp on one bench and a nicely dressed businessman on the other, on which bench will you sit?" Burton asked.
"Everybody wants to associate with success, and a successful person usually doesn't look like a tramp.
"What if you choose to hang out with people who don't smoke or do drugs? Don't tell me you're not discriminating. But we must discriminate in order to make wise judgments."
Yet in the end, she says, image is only a small part of the package we carry through our days, something that's best put in its proper perspective.
"The lines and wrinkles on our face are our history," Burton said.
"Lines of grief develop a few years after a trauma, so when you see a face that's lined and it's not from the sun, you can say, 'Wow, they've been through something.
"There's some history in that face,' and that's OK.
"Life is a state of mind, not an image. It doesn't consist of one big bang, it's many, many little sparks along the way. We should stop to enjoy every single one."
dstubbs@thegazette.canwest.com
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Looks can be deceiving
We're drawn to people who are physically attractive and many will go to any lengths to look good, but these are superficial obsessions, style consultant says
DAVE STUBBS
The Gazette
Forty-five-year-old model and style consultant Linda Burton says facial lines and wrinkles are our "history."
There were two Linda Burtons smiling on the newsstands last month, the same woman and yet women quite different.
The part-time model from St. Lazare was on the covers of Option Retraite and Le Bel Age, two magazines for mature readers.
On the former, Burton was riding a stationary bicycle, her features gently buffed and softened.
On the latter, she was a fashionable portrait unretouched, as the eye would have seen her that day.
Both Linda Burtons picture the time in which we live - how our image can be massaged on a whim and how appearance shapes the way we're viewed and treated by others.
Image has been a part of Burton's career for most of her adult life; she has worked as an esthetician, massage therapist, reflexologist, aromatherapist, makeup artist and wardrobe and image consultant.
Today, at 45 - "I'm as old as my tongue and a little bit older than my teeth," she jokes - she is eagerly exploring new paths, very clearly at ease with her life and everything it offers.
Burton sees her two selves on two magazines and accepts both as part of an industry where technology and a client's need can transform her with one stroke of a computer key.
"There's a good 10- or 15-year age difference between the two covers," she said.
"I'm not bothered by it, but here's a retirement magazine touching me up to make me look like I'm 30, or younger.
"I've looked at the bicycle cover and I haven't seen myself. I've thought, 'It's a pretty picture, but that's not me when I wake up in the morning.' "
Burton arrived in Canada 20 years ago, wanderlust in the backpack of a young Rhodesian who had gone to finishing school and done a little runway and photo modelling. Fittingly, image played into the events that brought her here to stay.
She remembers not wanting to return home overweight, having added a few pounds during 18 months of travel, so she stayed away a while longer.
She finally returned to a country by then known as Zimbabwe, and at customs was told her passport was worthless.
It would be a five-year wait to earn citizenship, so Burton returned to Canada, working as an alien domestic until she was granted landed immigrant status.
She became a Canadian citizen in the late 1980s.
Burton has seen trends and silly fads come and go in her health and beauty work, from floating hems and widening lapels to skin care and diets. But perhaps no change has been as dramatic as our attitudes.
"We're not afraid now to look at our image and do something about it," she said.
"Twenty years ago, you never asked somebody if they dyed their hair. It's normal today for men to have pec implants and butt lifts.
"But I've had clients with really nice bodies who are terribly insecure with who they are, and they think that plastic surgery is going to fix them. Until they fix what's going on inside them, surgery will not help at all.
"You should be able to look in the mirror and say, 'I'm working on myself and I really like who I am.' Or, 'I've got a fat butt and cellulite, but I'm a damn nice person.' If you're with people who can't accept that, then you're with the wrong people.
"We're all so concerned about how we look to the rest of the world, but the rest of the world is busy looking at themselves."
It's not easy when you're a teenager who's craving individuality within the herd. This is an age group that's easily influenced by a world glorifying beautiful people who travel with caregiving entourages and have bottomless budgets.
"Teens strive to look like the models on magazines, but those aren't the models," Burton said.
"They've had their legs elongated and busts enlarged, bits and pieces trimmed, highlights and shadows added. This
isn't real life, and these aren't real people. This is a superficial society."
Still, Burton believes that image is important to a degree, and says that we all must fit in, whether that's right or wrong.
Within four seconds of walking into a room, often introduced by what we do instead of who we are, she says we've been judged.
Of course, we all make life-shaping decisions every day - decisions of discrimination.
"If you're walking through a park and see an unbathed tramp on one bench and a nicely dressed businessman on the other, on which bench will you sit?" Burton asked.
"Everybody wants to associate with success, and a successful person usually doesn't look like a tramp.
"What if you choose to hang out with people who don't smoke or do drugs? Don't tell me you're not discriminating. But we must discriminate in order to make wise judgments."
Yet in the end, she says, image is only a small part of the package we carry through our days, something that's best put in its proper perspective.
"The lines and wrinkles on our face are our history," Burton said.
"Lines of grief develop a few years after a trauma, so when you see a face that's lined and it's not from the sun, you can say, 'Wow, they've been through something.
"There's some history in that face,' and that's OK.
"Life is a state of mind, not an image. It doesn't consist of one big bang, it's many, many little sparks along the way. We should stop to enjoy every single one."
dstubbs@thegazette.canwest.com
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