Strange Bedfellows

WikiLeaks Reveals: Qaddafi Uses Botox

Heather Horn 363 Views Dec 1, 2010
We really thought we'd covered every possible angle of the WikiLeaks cable-leak. Nope. Skip all those revelations about UN spying, Dagestani weddings, and the like. Breaking: Mu'ammar Qaddafi uses Botox. As The Guardian's Hadley Freeman  notes, this is deeply weird--and not good news for the brand. In case you haven't noticed, the Libyan leader "is rivalled only by a basset hound in crumpled complexions."

Her analysis:
Now, to be fair to Botox, the leaked reports don't specifically say that Gaddafi injects the Botox in his face and, to be fair to everyone else, we will not speculate on where else he might use it. The point is, Botox has been extraordinarily successful at marketing itself as the youth elixir for the vaguely fashionable: not as much of an 80s throwback as a facelift, not as downmarket as the extra-tight ponytail. It's the kind of thing your B-list celebrity will nip out for at her salon in Chelsea before dashing up to San Lorenzo for lunch with David Furnish. Baggy-faced dictators don't fit into that brand image, not because of the dictator issue, of course, but because of the baggy-faced one. If even a man of Gaddafi's resources can't get decent Botox, what hope for the average mother of the bride?
This is a good question.

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