Cosmetic Surgery & James' The Private Patient

From last week's Daily Mail article "Hundreds of women with faulty breast implants jeer French businessman as he goes on trial for making millions 'selling leaky PIP silicone':"

A French businessman who made millions by selling faulty breast implants was booed by his victims as he appeared in court today charged with fraud.

Jean-Claude Mas, 74, who founded and ran implant-maker Poly Implant Prothese, is among those on trial in Marseille. The now-defunct company had claimed its factory in France exported to more than 60 countries and was one of the world's leading implant makers.

The implants, which officials say are prone to rupture and leaking, were not sold in the United States, but more than 125,000 women worldwide received them until sales ended in March 2010. Of those, more than 5,000 are joining the trial as victims, saying the executives misled them into believing the implants were safe.

For a novel set in a cosmetic surgery clinic, try P.D. James' mystery novel The Private Patient:

In James's stellar 14th Adam Dalgliesh mystery (after 2006's The Lighthouse), the charismatic police commander knows the case of Rhoda Gradwyn, a 47-year-old journalist murdered soon after undergoing the removal of an old disfiguring scar at a private plastic surgery clinic in Dorset, may be his last; James's readers will fervently hope it isn't.

Dalgliesh probes the convoluted tangle of motives and hidden desires that swirl around the clinic, Cheverell Manor, and its grimly fascinating suspects in the death of Gradwyn, herself a stalker of minds driven by her lifelong passion for rooting out the truth people would prefer left unknown and then selling it for money. Beyond the book's central moral concern, James meditates on universal problems like aging (the amorphous flattening of self)...

Modeling & Porizkova's A Model Summer

There's a fierce debate afoot in the comments section of the Guardian article "Has the Esquire editor escaped from a Benny Hill sketch?:"

According to Bilmes, Esquire uses pictures of women in his magazine "in the same way we provide pictures of cool cars". "The women that we feature in the magazine are ornamental," he said while speaking on a panel about feminism in the media and advertising. "I could lie to you and say we are interested in their brains as well. We are not. They are objectified."...  Lovely as Bilmes sounds, I can't help wondering whether or not he may also be in possession of a time-travelling automobile, as he is clearly stumbling around the wrong century. Isn't there a Benny Hill sketch somewhere, missing a ruddy-faced pervert?

The most popular comment arguing that it is okay to objectify women in a magazine is one by StVitusGerulaitis:

They [Esquire] are mainly using models as ornaments. That's what models are for. They know that when they take the job and are well paid. Same for male models. There's nothing wrong with appreciating the aesthetic value of other people. We are beautiful animals on the whole.

Regardless of where you stand on that debate, I have a novel for you about modeling, which might give us more perspective into the whole issue. Although the writing is so-so, the upside is that it was written by a former supermodel, so the author knows what she's talking about. The book is A Model Summer by Paulina Porizkova:

An incisive, beautifully written first novel by a former supermodel that explores the glamorous and gritty world she inhabitedOnly a handful of women in the world have experienced what Paulina Porizkova has -- being whisked away to model in Paris while still a teenager, reaching the pinnacle of the profession before her schoolmates had even graduated -- and fewer still have the insight to capture it on paper. In her first novel, Paulina tells the story of Jirina. A tall, scrawny fifteen-year-old girl from Sweden, she's much more accustomed to taunts and disdain than admiration and affection, whether from her classmates or her own family. That all changes when her only friend, Hatty, asks to practice her makeup and photography skills on Jirina. Almost before she knows it Jirina is on a plane to Paris, where she will spend the summer in a milieu entirely alien to her. Living at the home of her modeling agency's owner and constantly subjected to blunt physical assessments, catty and often cruel fellow models, and womanizing photographers...Jirina embarks on a journey beyond her wildest imaginings.

UPDATE:  for a longer review of the novel, please check out the I Read Too Much blog.

Spielberg's Napoleon Miniseries & Scarrow's Young Bloods

From today's BBC story "Spielberg to develop Kubrick's Napoleon for TV:"

Steven Spielberg is to give life to a screenplay by Stanley Kubrick about Napoleon, which was scrapped by the late film maker in the 1970s. He told French TV network Canal+ he would make a TV miniseries - not a film - about the life of the French Emperor... Regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Kubrick directed groundbreaking films including 2001: A Space Odyssey...  According to the Hollywood Reporter, he was "devoted" to the research involved in the biopic about Napoleon, spending years exploring the French emperor's life in detail.

If you want a rollicking story about Napoleon's life, you don't have to wait for the Spielberg miniseries. Try Simon Scarrow's Young Bloods:

Europe in the late eighteenth century was a tumultuous place, with war and rebellions breaking out on many fronts. Young Arthur Wesley (later Wellington) and Napoleon Bonaparte grow up worlds apart yet immersed from youth in a culture where a military career is a natural choice for men of ambition. While Wellington is blooded in Ireland and Flanders, Napoleon is caught up in the dramas of the French Revolution and war with Prussia, Britain and Holland. None of this is enough to distract Wellington from his pursuit of Kitty Pakenham or Napoleon from his future bride, Josephine, for these men throw themselves into all aspects of life as enthusiastically as they rush to battle.

The courting scenes between Wellington and Kitty are cringe-worthy, but the rest of the novel is good.