A Madonna comeback is like the return of spring: After a long, bleak absence of colour and sound, the trees fill with blossoms and the birds begin speaking in the language of love and renewal. And pop music's greatest trickster reinvents herself again, in the manner of the season's first insect sac releasing its fast, wild hostages. Fifty years old this August, Our Lady of Perpetuity has masterminded her return this week with the album Hard Candy, which she has ferociously promoted this week with a series of magazine covers - all of which reveal her to be, appropriately enough, delicious and rough.
Recently on the fronts of Interview, Marie Claire and Vanity Fair, she is at the moment famous for looking her age, yet moistly so, thanks in part to oxygen facials, a beauty secret she has revealed on her website and in numerous interviews. *Yup, plus a bit of Photoshop work and botox injections.
Oxygen? Until a few days ago, all I knew about oxygen was that it is what we breathe and that, according to seventies glam-rock band Sweet, it is like love: "You get too much, you get too high, not enough and you're gonna die."
Wait, scratch that. I have felt the oxygen cult growing: First came the bars ("Gimme a double O{+2}, easy on the degenerate molecular orbitals"), then the portable blast cans (a friend sent me one; it frightened me) and finally the whole save the Earth/organics/nature thing that has forced me to recycle cat excrement on a weekly basis.
And now, there is no denying that Madonna, a long-time proponent of alternative exercise and nutrition practices, looks exceedingly tended to - and without that fat-face filler look so many celebrities are wearing.
She looks, in truth, better than she has in a long time.
So I decided to put the oxygen facial to the test.
I visited the Bay Dermatology Centre, presided over by Dr. Sandy Skotnicki-Grant, and was clearly not the first of a conga line of Madonna fans and beauty editors anxious to make a hot confession on the dance floor.
The facials are technically called "rejuvenation oxygen infusions" and were developed by Intraceuticals in Australia as a means of treating skin cancers caused by prolonged sun exposure.
The process is difficult to describe. In a nutshell, and according to Intraceuticals' press release: "The application of oxygen under hyperbaric pressure allows the epidermis to maximize its oxygen surface level concentration."
Or, in other words, a medical aesthetician named Genny Day lets you breathe oxygen from a tank, then uses a metal apparatus that simultaneously pressurizes your skin with oxygen and inserts brightening, whitening or line-erasing serums into any dimples. The procedure is completely painless and feels like a well-organized massage - what I imagine a shave without a razor would feel like. Ultimately, the process is a faster way of getting moisture into the face, Skotnicki-Grant explains, as opposed to, say, applying cream and waiting and hoping it will break through all that dermis. There are a number of critics who call the practice "snake oil" that lacks any hard medical evidence to back up the claims.
So what? For $250 - about $100 more than one of those hateful, aggressive "Your face is a foot" facials - you are left with plumped up, glowing skin that feels like a new peach and is magically devoid of whatever damage (sunspots, rosacea smudges, lines, lines, lines) you have inflicted upon it.
Okay: on second glance, not completely, but the end result is enough to start a serious "Screw the mortgage, I'm worth it!" jones. (When I went out after, I was called "glowing." Love is like oxygen after all.) I had just enough oxygen to feel high. And enough to feel as though Madonna - damn it! - is, once again, onto something big.
Recently on the fronts of Interview, Marie Claire and Vanity Fair, she is at the moment famous for looking her age, yet moistly so, thanks in part to oxygen facials, a beauty secret she has revealed on her website and in numerous interviews. *Yup, plus a bit of Photoshop work and botox injections.
Oxygen? Until a few days ago, all I knew about oxygen was that it is what we breathe and that, according to seventies glam-rock band Sweet, it is like love: "You get too much, you get too high, not enough and you're gonna die."
Wait, scratch that. I have felt the oxygen cult growing: First came the bars ("Gimme a double O{+2}, easy on the degenerate molecular orbitals"), then the portable blast cans (a friend sent me one; it frightened me) and finally the whole save the Earth/organics/nature thing that has forced me to recycle cat excrement on a weekly basis.
And now, there is no denying that Madonna, a long-time proponent of alternative exercise and nutrition practices, looks exceedingly tended to - and without that fat-face filler look so many celebrities are wearing.
She looks, in truth, better than she has in a long time.
So I decided to put the oxygen facial to the test.
I visited the Bay Dermatology Centre, presided over by Dr. Sandy Skotnicki-Grant, and was clearly not the first of a conga line of Madonna fans and beauty editors anxious to make a hot confession on the dance floor.
The facials are technically called "rejuvenation oxygen infusions" and were developed by Intraceuticals in Australia as a means of treating skin cancers caused by prolonged sun exposure.
The process is difficult to describe. In a nutshell, and according to Intraceuticals' press release: "The application of oxygen under hyperbaric pressure allows the epidermis to maximize its oxygen surface level concentration."
Or, in other words, a medical aesthetician named Genny Day lets you breathe oxygen from a tank, then uses a metal apparatus that simultaneously pressurizes your skin with oxygen and inserts brightening, whitening or line-erasing serums into any dimples. The procedure is completely painless and feels like a well-organized massage - what I imagine a shave without a razor would feel like. Ultimately, the process is a faster way of getting moisture into the face, Skotnicki-Grant explains, as opposed to, say, applying cream and waiting and hoping it will break through all that dermis. There are a number of critics who call the practice "snake oil" that lacks any hard medical evidence to back up the claims.
So what? For $250 - about $100 more than one of those hateful, aggressive "Your face is a foot" facials - you are left with plumped up, glowing skin that feels like a new peach and is magically devoid of whatever damage (sunspots, rosacea smudges, lines, lines, lines) you have inflicted upon it.
Okay: on second glance, not completely, but the end result is enough to start a serious "Screw the mortgage, I'm worth it!" jones. (When I went out after, I was called "glowing." Love is like oxygen after all.) I had just enough oxygen to feel high. And enough to feel as though Madonna - damn it! - is, once again, onto something big.
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