Newsday

June 26, 2004

Confessions of a coverboy

By Ron Roel

Call it the "Holy cow moment."

You know, the one where you peer into the mirror, find yourself startled by the imposter facing you and blurt out: "Holy cow!" (Or something to that effect.) "Who is that person? And since when did he start looking like that?"

In today's cover story, Robert Esposito, a retired New York City police lieutenant, recalled such a moment several years ago, when he was riding his bicycle and saw his reflection in a car window. Esposito's "Holy cow!" was the shock that he was losing his hair - and a lot faster than he had expected, at age 48.

Esposito's retort to time was to get 13 hair replacement surgeries, followed up with a face-lift and nose job - at a total cost of $40,000.

Not everyone, of course, is willing (or financially able) to go to such lengths to look younger than their years. I'm one of those people, despite my posing for today's Act Two cover, in which I'm contemplating the scalpel's smoothing of my face's deepening lines. Sure, I've had some personal "Holy cow moments," but so far, I have no beef with looking older - not yet, at least.

Still, as Virginia Munger Kahn elaborates in her story, we can't get away from some people's desire to look good in our youth-oriented society.

"The public appetite for youthfulness and rejuvenation is enormous," says consultant Ken Dychtwald, president of Age Wave, a consulting firm.

Kahn tells us that Americans spent more than $8.3 billion on cosmetic procedures last year, up by a third from the number of surgeries and treatments done in 2002 - and a majority of patients are between the ages of 35 and 64.

In addition to Esposito, Kahn portrays an array of people who have undertaken cosmetic procedures for interesting, nuanced reasons.

Manhasset resident Tracy Spanover Dowd, for example, had eyelid surgery, a face-lift and tummy tuck because at age 51, she has young twin sons. "I'm a lot older than the other mothers" with similarly aged kids, she said. "I want to look younger for my children."

At the same time, there are still plenty of people like Darin Tripp of Lloyd Harbor, who revel in their wrinkles. "I'm very happy with the way I look," she tells Kahn. "I don't see why you should try to look different."

If anything stirs talk around the watercooler or the dinner table, it's whether people you know should have had plastic surgery: "They look better. ... No, they don't.... They should have had something else done... ."

When you're done arguing, tell us what you think about aging and what it means to "look good" at any age. One thing's certain: As people live longer and medical technologies provide more options, we'll have many choices to make about how we look.