Cindy Jackson

I recently found copies of various magazines I edited between 1990 and 2002. Each Sunday for the next few weeks I am posting one of the many interviews I did during that period. Subjects already posted include Tony Benn, Ken Clarke, Michael Winner and Gyles Brandreth. See also Something for the weekend.

I interviewed Cindy Jackson in November 1991. It's almost 30 years ago but I remember it well. We met in a little cafe just inside the Cafe Royal hotel in Regent Street. I was editing a magazine for an organisation she was a member of so I don't remember if I contacted her or she contacted me. Either way, she had an interesting story to tell that had already attracted the attention of other journalists. Her claim to fame was cosmetic surgery. When we met she had already had twelve 'procedures' costing £20,000. If you're squeamish, this article may not be for you!

BODY TALK

Cindy Jackson is no ordinary woman. Three years and twelve operations have seen to that. But what makes this thirtysomething American particularly unusual is the fact that each and every ‘procedure’ was for purely cosmetic reasons. Chemo peel, temporal lift, rhinoplasty, collagen lips, silicon breast implants, abdominal lipectomy – you name it, she’s done it. The question is, why?

Cindy Jackson was born in Ohio, USA. Her father, so it goes, was a loud, unsubtle, domineering type. ‘He wasn’t the sort of person you’d want to emulate, but I was the spitting image of him, whereas my sister was pretty and looked like my mother, which compounded the problem.’

As for school, ‘I saw pretty girls with nice clothes getting what they wanted – the football players, the dates – and I didn’t think it was fair.’ Worse, the Jacksons lived on a farm. In contrast ‘All those other girls lived in nice houses and their fathers picked them up in nice cars, and I was back on the farm wearing secondhand clothes and I resented it very very deeply for many many years.’

Frustrated by her inability to match her feminine ideal, Jackson created her own Walter Mitty style world. ‘A lot of girls do this. They have their little Barbie doll and they live out their dreams through the fantasies they have of their little doll. Where I was unique was, I saw no real obstacle to turning that fantasy into my own life.’

For Barbie – sorry, Cindy – the dream was not New York, nor Paris, but London. ‘I thought London, England, was the centre of the universe because it was home to the Beatles and the Queen and all those things you dream about when you’re living in Hicksville, USA.’

And so, having worked the midnight shift in a factory to earn the money to cross the pond, Cindy Jackson arrived, like Dick Whittington, in London, aged 21. At which point fantasy met reality. Making ends meet via photography and a raucous rock ‘n’ roll band called Joe Public (‘We never had any chart hits but were never out of the paper because we were so ridiculous!’) almost a decade went by with Jackson no nearer to achieving her Barbie lookalike ideal. Like so many fantasies, the stumbling block was money. ‘I’m quite realistic. I wouldn’t have considered having anything I couldn’t afford.’

Fortune changed with her father’s death just over three years ago [1988]. With an irony she is quick to acknowledge (‘It was his money I used to get rid of the family resemblance!’), Jackson saw the opportunity to remodel herself in her preferred image. And, like all good Americans, she took it.

Beginning with an operation to have her eyes ‘widened’, she later had areas of fat sucked from her chin, abdomen, knees and thighs, followed by a nose job, facelift, silicon breast implants and, finally, in March this year [1991], a temporal lift and lower eye revision.

Recalling just one of those operations, Jackson says, ‘An abdominal lipectomy is where a long hollow tune needles is stuck into an incision in your navel and the little fat pad on your tummy is literally sucked away. When the bandages are removed there’s a little fan shape from all the bruises where the tube has plunged in and out. It’s quite pretty, really.’

Pretty it may have been, but the pain was real enough. Apart from the nose job, which required her nose to be broken in two places, the worst procedure was the collagen lip treatment, designed to make her lips look fatter. Requiring almost 20 injections on each of the three occasions she had it done, it’s an experience she won’t be repeating. ‘It’s very painful, you can almost hear your flesh separating. It’s not very pleasant!’

Some procedures were more successful than others. Satisfied with the operations to stomach, knees and thighs, the nose job (or rhinoplasty) was not only very painful, it also produced a small lump on the bridge of her proboscis, a result that left her less than delighted.

‘If you pay £3,500 for a nose job you want it done right – you don’t want to be sitting there with a lump. What I didn’t know at the time was that you cannot predict the outcome of a nose job, and had I known that I wouldn’t have been so disappointed.’

It was this disappointment, plus the suspicion that one or two other operations were not carried out exactly as she would have wished, that has prompted Jackson to launch a Cosmetic Surgery Network. It also explains why she now prefers a local rather than a general anaesthetic: ‘I like to keep an eye on them!’

‘When women go for an operation, they have complete faith in their surgeon. They hand over £2,000, the surgeon maybe makes a bad mistake and won’t put it right, and these women are stuck. Cosmetic Surgery Network is not a referral service, but you can talk to someone who’s used a certain doctor, or they can speak to me about my operation and experiences – about scarring, cost, recovery times etc.

‘In addition, I have on file a comprehensive collection of published material covering material covering various aspects of cosmetic surgery. I’m not trying to be the Mother Theresa of cosmetic surgery, but I know from my own personal experience there’s got to be more information given to people because cosmetic surgery is getting bigger and bigger in this country.’

Aware that a recent episode of [Granada TV’s] World in Action highlighted the possibility that silicone breast implants may cause cancer, Jackson complains, ‘I was never told these things. After that programme I wrote off to a company which manufactures silicon implants. I wanted to know what weight, what pressure it withstands, what tests are done on it before it’s implanted etc. I had a letter back saying “We do not release this information to non-medical persons” which I found appalling. They’ll tell a doctor, who’s not going to have a breast implant, but they won’t tell someone who has paid for the operation and will have it inside them for the rest of their life.’

To those who argue that the money – £20,000 at the last count – could have been better spent elsewhere, Jackson is adamant. ‘How much is your mortgage? How much did you pay for your holiday abroad last year? I haven’t had a holiday in four years, I don’t own a home, and my car – I’m not saying it’s dodgy but my MPT certificate is signed by Mel Gibson!’

Quite rightly she believes that it’s her money and who are we to say how she should spend it? Nevertheless, shouldn’t nature be allowed to take its course? ‘Nature,’ says Jackson, ‘can be pretty nasty. Some children are born deformed, not to mention all the floods, the mud slides and the plagues. What’s so great about nature? I’m ready to fight it tooth and nail and have my life and my face on my own terms because that’s what’s we’re all here for. It’s a constant struggle for survival and happiness. Maybe I go about things a bit differently, but it works for me.’

Point taken. But that still leaves the vexed question, why are looks so important? According to Jackson, ‘Women are still not aware of just how much men are influenced by the visual aspect of women. It’s power, it’s something you use as a tool. What I mean by that is, if you are plain then you don’t get as good a job. If you commit a murder you get life rather than 20 years.

‘These are facts – the better you look the more places you can go. I’ve been on both sides of the fence and I would definitely prefer to conform to the feminine ideal. I’m not ideal now, by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m a hell of a lot closer than I ever was before and, eventually perhaps, I will conform to exactly what I would like to look like, but that’s dictated by society, not me.’

It’s a view that will no doubt cause apoplexy in some quarters. Jackson however is unperturbed. Her response to feminism is, ‘If you want to fight your cause, fight your cause. I’m going to take the easy way out by making the best of my short life and having fun. I don’t have that wonderful a life but compared to a lot of people I think I’m doing quite well.’

As to the future, ‘I’d like to stave off looking older in every respect. I know that sounds extravagant but I mind putting myself forward, not as a guinea pig but as a spokesperson for cosmetic surgery because this is what I am, whether I like it or not, so if I have all the operations I’ll have all the information first hand.’

There are words to describe people like Cindy Jackson, the kindest of which is ‘obsessed’. To her credit she doesn’t argue with that, though she does add a qualification. ‘I’m not obsessed with the idea of cosmetic surgery, I’m obsessed with the idea of beauty, and not just my own. It goes deeper. My cosmetic surgery forays are part and parcel of a whole attitude and cosmetic surgery is just a way of expressing it.

‘Why can’t people be good looking without automatically being categorised as being thick? Why not develop the whole person? Is intelligence enough? Are good looks enough? I wouldn’t want to be highly brilliant and ugly. I want it all and I don’t see why people shouldn’t have it all – it would be a better world.’

Cynics may scoff but Jackson has no doubt that cosmetic surgery has significantly improved the quality of her life and others could benefit from it too. ‘I used to dye my hair, use padded bras, wear tight, short dressed and use make-up to disguise the size of my nose. Now, because it’s permanent, I don’t feel the need to create a different image for something that I’m not because I’m embodying that image.

‘I was always disappointed when I found that Utopia was not a real place or Atlantis had sunk so I tried to live on a higher plain. Now I look at life as a series of opportunities. If you choose the ones that you like and are suitable and take them for yourself, that’s your life. I’ve only chosen the things that looked pretty and I reject things that don’t fit into the sort of fantasy life I want to live.

‘I don’t want people to think I’m weird, just ahead of my time, because in 20 years a lot of people will be doing what I’m doing.’

According to the Daily Mirror (June 2020), Cindy Jackson has now had '47 cosmetic procedures, costing her more than £53,000'. The paper reports that she has had 14 operations including three face lifts, two nose jobs, implants and a chin reductions.' Full story here.