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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Forget The Face Lift - Betty Really Should Try Aging Gracefully

Phil Rosenthal Los Angeles Daily News

Betty Crocker is getting a new face, longtime companion General Mills announced this week. Crocker’s plastic surgeon could not be reached for comment.

The plan is for Crocker to have the faces of 75 real-life contest winners electronically morphed into one face, which then will be painted by a professional artist.

Coincidentally, this is the same technique favored by Michael Jackson.

Crocker’s bandages are to come off in February. For Crocker, 75, it will be the seventh new look since 1936, explaining why she eerily doesn’t look a day over 35 despite all her time in the kitchen and all those baked goods.

General Mills is hoping to attract women, ages 18 and up, from all around the nation to enter Crocker’s face race. Officials say the winners will be the 75 who best embody Crocker’s values, which, while somewhat vague, are undoubtedly even greater with a manufacturer’s coupon.

With luck, the final amalgamation will look like Crocker’s rival, Sara Lee. Nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee (except, perhaps, grammarians). A worst-case scenario has Crocker winding up a dead ringer for Ernest Borgnine in a “Friends” hairstyle, which would serve General Mills right.

You ask thousands of people who actually eat canned frosting to send in pictures of themselves, you take your chances.

Why Crocker simply can’t be allowed to grow old gracefully, like her faithful customers, is something of a mystery. But, then again, so is how anyone manages to get all that powdered junk she peddles to resemble the picture-perfect devil’s food cake on the box. The stuff’s delicious but not always pretty.

It’s not as though Crocker’s current look - blue eyes, porcelain skin, conservative ‘do - is so terrible. It doesn’t offend anybody the way Aunt Jemima’s old image did. It doesn’t remind her of some past weirdness she’s trying to forget, like Roseanne.

This whole notion that she needs a new face is disconcerting. You never hear about the Keebler elves putting lifts in their little boots or the Green Giant getting a skin peel. It’s not like the Quaker Oats guy is going on Jenny Craig and ditching his Amish duds just to be fashionable.

Self-improvement is one thing, but it should come from within and not without, and it shouldn’t be a naked grab for publicity like this Crocker shocker.

Everyone in Hollywood knows that the bird who used to go “cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs” went on Prozac, but it was his business and people respected that. If it’s true that the Pillsbury Doughboy did in fact once have a yeast problem - or, as the rumors persist, left a bun in someone’s oven - he worked hard to keep it out of the rags. And that’s fine. We don’t need to know about it.

To not only insist on being the youngest-looking senior citizen this side of the cast of “Beverly Hills, 90210” but to flaunt that vanity with a nationwide contest just seems silly.

Oddly enough, Crocker looked a heck of a lot older back in 1936 than she does today. She had gray hair and everything. She looked puffier in 1955. She had subsequent makeovers in 1965, ‘68, ‘72, ‘80 and ‘86. Now this.

Despite what General Mills may think, Betty Crocker looks fine the way she is.

She’s hot. She’s tasty. She cooks.