The NYT's Maureen Dowd -- who's been hitting the female appearance ball pretty hard lately -- watched the Oscars and was appalled by the Stepford Celebrity Women.

An excerpt:

Others found the Oscars boring; I found the show slightly alarming.

I used to worry that women were heading toward one face. Sometimes in affluent settings, like the Oscars or the shoe department at Bergdorf's, you see a bunch of eerily similar women with oddly off-track features - Botox-smoothed Formica foreheads, collagen-protruding lips, surgically narrowed noses, taut jaws - who look like sisters from another planet. ...

In the future, there will be only one face. And if the Oscars are predictive, there will be only one body - big chest, skinny body - and one style. It was bizarre how actress after actress came out in the same mermaid silhouette: a strapless sheath with a trumpet-flared or ruffled skirt. ...

In decades past, each top glamour girl aimed for a signature face and measurements, a trademark voice, a unique walk. You never saw Katharine Hepburn and Ava Gardner showing up in the same dress, or Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe looking like a pair of matching candles. ...

In some wacky, self-defeating conspiracy, stylists have joined forces with surgeons to homogenize today's actresses so it's hard to tell one from another; the Oscars had a safe, boring, generic look. Top female stars who have had a lot of work done start looking like one another on magazine covers, and being confused for one another at publicity events.

Chris Rock was right: star power is in short supply in a town where women would rather be conventional than individual. It's the same problem Hollywood has making movies: too much cloning, not enough originality. ...

Women have become so fixated on not withering, they've forgotten that there are infinite ways to be beautiful.

I was busy with other things on Oscar night and only watched the show intermittently, so I can't say as I did a thorough deconstruction of glamour-girl fashion statements.

The big hooters/skinny body thing (not often seen in nature) has been around for a while.

Is there a certain homogeneity in what's considered glamourous for women? Yep. But it's pretty much the same thing for men.

Maybe one gets allowed into the glamour circle because one conforms to a certain look, not because one has a wildly original style.

But she's right about movies. They aren't about allowing an auteur to follow a creative vision; they're about being slaves to test audiences.

I don't watch many Hollywood movies any more except when I want a completely predictable experience.

But poor Mo has been writing a lot on female appearance lately. I wonder if someone's feeling their age. :^)

Addendum:

Here's some previous entries to Dowd's columns on this general subject:

Dowd dumps on double standards and "road beef" (Feb. 21)

Men just want mommy (Jan. 15)

This isn't about Dowd, but is related: Explaining Roger Dodger (Feb. 28)