There was a time in the not-too-distant past when Meg Ryan was about the cutest thing going.  I can remember openly groaning in tandem with a friend of mine back in college during Spanish class at the mention of her name.  And this was not back in the early-90s, but the spring of 2002. 

She was the embodiment of class and normal-person-hot as far as big-time movie stars went.  She was up there with Kate Hudson as Penny Lane and Shakira atop my Top Five Celebrities list at the time (Jennifer Connelly and Heidi Klum, for the record), mostly because she seemed above the usual Hollywood disgustingness.  She was classy.  She was beautiful.

Key words there being “was,” because have you seen her recently?  She’s only made six major movies since the turn of the century, so perhaps you’re still under the impression that she aged gracefully.

This is not the case.  The magical Botox demon struck again, and with as horrifying a result as it is capable of producing.  Apparently she also got bad lip implants in the middle part of this century.  Bloody hell, it’s awful.

Why do people think Botox looks good?  It’s disgusting!  Paralyzing large portions of one’s face does not fool anybody!  When women who have had Botox injections done come into my restaurant and sit at one of my tables, I wrestle with my gag reflex for the entirety of our encounter.  Botox makes women look like they got into a fistfight with a two-by-four.  Like they paid Mike Tyson to re-arrange their face with his bare hands.

It’s uneven, unnatural, unnecessary…pretty disgusting, all told.

While I’m not surprised that a rich, once-successful woman who works in movies had these procedures done in an attempt to prolong her career, still…Meg Ryan?!  She was gorgeous in seven or eight different ways, with eyes like lighthouses and everything in proper proportion.  I was looking forward to her face settling into the perfectly pleasant picture of a pretty older lady.  That’s one of the best kinds of faces there is.

The Deal, a movie she was in from 2008 (they don’t even tell us when her movies come out anymore), popped up on Showtime a couple nights back.  Where once she made it so that you could not look at anyone else unlucky enough to be on-screen with her, I could only glance at her before averting my eyes from…the horror…

And the movie is supposed to be a comedy (don’t waste your time).

I understand the perils of aging in a business obsessed with youth and in which dignity always has a price.  But for the love of all that is holy, what was once America’s Sweetheart now best resembles a deranged Gargoyle, something some being who doesn’t know humans as well as it thinks it does sent to distract us with its supposed beauty.

It’s a Meg Ryan look-alike is what it is.  And a bad one at that.

With a talentless fem-bot like Megan Fox, one well aware of how talentless she is but unopposed to showing skin or doing a scandalous photo shoot, garnering headlines and occupying everyone’s attention, it’s nearly impossible for a woman to become a Lady in Hollywood.  Nicole Kidman in the junior division (although her Botox virginity has been disputed in the past) and Diane Keaton for the seniors should have taught everyone, however, that it is possible to age gracefully and maintain a career in Hollywood.

Meg Ryan is almost 48.  When Harry Met Sally… was twenty years ago.  She hasn’t been in a halfway-decent movie since Proof of Life in 2000, or a romantic comedy that made any money since Kate and Leopold in 2001.

Perhaps it is no accident that decent romantic comedies are a dying breed of movie: Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Garner (and Kate Hudson especially) are pretenders to the throne that once was Meg’s.  She doesn’t get the roles anymore, because no one is going to fall in love with an uneven, half-paralyzed death mask where once there was pure, golden truth.

It must be terribly difficult to be an actress over forty (a similar situation happened with Rene Russo).  That said, if anyone seemed to be above something like this, it was Meg Ryan.

And when she smiles now, she kind of looks like Jack Nicholson’s Joker.

Damn you, Hollywood…damn you all to Hell.