Understanding the motivation behind the ‘Bride of Wildenstein’s’ plastic surgery obsession through personal experience.

Even at the time of her passing, at a Parisian palace on New Year’s Eve at 84 years old, the internet was filled with jokes at her expense, much like the pollution in the Seine River.

The mockery continued with comments like, ‘How can we be sure she’s no longer with us? Her expression hasn’t changed in ages.’ and, ‘I could have helped her save a fortune by advising her to dip her head in bees.’ There was even confusion with remarks such as, ‘Is it possible that Mickey Rourke has passed away?!’

But to me and many others who suffer from crippling self-doubt and have committed terrible self-harm, her life and death feel profoundly sad.

Jocelyn Wildenstein, who received a hefty $2.5 billion settlement from her divorce with French-American art dealer Alec N Wildenstein in 1999, thereby becoming one of the wealthiest women globally, was notoriously referred to as The Bride of Wildenstein or Cat Woman due to her excessive reliance on plastic surgery.

She died in her sleep, while taking a nap with her 57-year-old fashion designer partner, Lloyd Klein, apparently from a blood clot caused by the condition phlebitis. The couple had been together for 21 years. He commendably says in a statement following her death that he found her ‘extremely beautiful’.

Indeed, looking back at photos of Jocelyn as a young woman, she was exquisite. That, of course, was before she was sliced open by a scalpel. As a young woman, she reminds me of Brigitte Bardot or Lana Turner: a heart-shaped face, high cheekbones, huge eyes.

And so the question everyone is asking is: What on earth possessed her? Why do even genetically blessed people believe they are hideous? As a young man, Michael Jackson was perfect. How could he not see that?

But if you believe you are flawed, nothing and no one can convince you otherwise. And surgery becomes a compulsion: you fiddle, fix, fiddle some more.

These people who end up looking odd and alien-like are not remotely vain. Far from it. They cannot even bear to look at themselves in the mirror.

Jocelyn started undergoing cosmetic surgery after she married billionaire Wildenstein in 1978, becoming one of the jet set’s most flamboyant characters. 

For years she lived an extraordinary life of eye-popping luxury. In the couple’s townhouse in Manhattan, there was said to have been an aquarium containing a small shark.

They owned artworks by Botticelli, Rubens, Rembrandt – it was a life surrounded by beauty, perhaps adding to the intolerable pressure Jocelyn felt to be ‘perfect’ herself.

There was an elegant Renaissance mansion on the outskirts of Paris, a private compound on the British Virgin Islands, and a 66,000-acre luxury reserve in Kenya. Jocelyn once told a story about Alec shooting a lion and then eating a piece of its heart.

He was said to have loved big cats and especially the lynx – hence Jocelyn’s Cat Woman look – but it is hard to tell what is myth and what is not.

During the divorce proceedings, she stated she continued to have cosmetic surgery over the course of the 20-year marriage because her husband ‘hated to be with old people’.

That is telling and tragic, isn’t it? Women should feel more secure once in a relationship, but it seems too often it’s precisely when the doubts creep in.

And, of course, the endless renovations never work, never mean we are loved. Instead of being resprayed like a car, we can simply be replaced. What prompted her divorce was Jocelyn finding her husband, then in his late 50s, in bed with a 21-year-old Russian model. So far, so predictable.

Looking at photographs of myself between the ages of 13 and 21, I was, if not beautiful, then certainly not hideous. I’m looking at a photo of me at a student party in 1978. I had young hair! I was slim, long-limbed, with huge eyes.

But I felt so ugly that, from the age of five, I developed techniques to avoid looking at myself. I would slide along a wall into the girls’ loo at school to avoid the mirror, and would never, ever look up while washing my hands because that way, madness lies.

I remember the relief of being given No7 foundation for Christmas as a teenager – a layer of thickly spread make-up was a lifeline, a mask behind which I could tentatively face the world.

As I grew up, I moved on to elaborate skincare routines – procedures such as electrolysis, facials, waxing, lasers. Eventually, at the age of 29, so desperate was I for a model’s silhouette, I had a breast reduction.

The invariably male plastic surgeons are so seductive, so outwardly caring, they seem like miracle workers, our friends and saviours! Twenty-five years later, I sat in my surgeon’s office and watched in a mirror as he placed his hands either side of my face and lifted. As Keira Knightley remarked in Love Actually, ‘Oh. I look quite pretty.’

Then the surgeon took away his hands, and my face dropped, like an over-whisked sponge. I was sold. I had a face lift and blepharoplasty (eye bag removal) aged 52. (God, I wasn’t even old!)

Even today, addicted as I am to Botox and filler, I still avoid mirrors. If ever my iPhone camera is facing the wrong way as if to take a selfie, I have a heart attack. Just now, I caught my reflection on my laptop and fell into a pit of despair.

After my latest Botox, even my phone failed to recognise me, so I couldn’t log into my bank. Just as well, really, given the cost of all the cosmetic work.

In Jocelyn, I recognise a kindred spirit, albeit one with much more money to undertake much more radical transformations. She wasn’t vain, I can tell that much. So why did she do this to herself?

Self-hatred, is my guess. Self-loathing can be genetic. It can be caused by an anomaly in your brain similar to an addiction, a mental illness. Or it can be societal: you are told you are not good enough, often by those who are supposed to shore you up, so you believe you aren’t.

And so I feel huge sympathy for her. How she must have despised herself. The pain she will have endured: anyone who has had a face lift or liposuction will tell you the pain is off the scale, the recovery time long and humiliating.

I had to wear a sling on my face for four weeks post-surgery; it made my dogs bark in alarm. The flesh around my ears is still numb, over a decade later. I can no longer whistle. And, of course, gravity still cannot be denied, and so you need the procedure done again, and again, and again.

Women could rule the world, and would certainly be happier, if we were not preoccupied with our looks. The time, the expense, the energy Jocelyn would have expended! If only she had had a passion outside her own skin that meant she cared not a hoot what she looked like.

I think the most beautiful women in every sense are those who shrug off their beauty like an old cardigan and get stuck into stuff that really matters.

Take 1960s Vogue cover girl Celia Hammond, who has devoted her life to saving animals. Now 81, she never buys new clothes or wears make-up and runs an animal charity. She literally shines from every pore.

For years as a glossy magazine editor, I’d sit front row at fashion shows in Paris, surrounded by social X-rays who seemed terrified of the passage of time, misery seeping from their tiny, over-procedured pores.

You cannot entirely blame men, or even the fashion and beauty industries for our self-harm (though you can perhaps blame the surgeons who inflict too many procedures upon patients in the name of greed). From dyeing our hair every fortnight to going under the knife, pursuit of perfection is a slippery slope and we should be able to see that for ourselves.

Lack of self-esteem, not being brought up in a protective bubble where we are told we are beautiful every day – that we deserve our space in the world – with love and happiness (only on his death bed did my dad tell me I was lovely), leaves us turning the knife inwards, twisting it in our guts.

On her divorce, as well as the $2.5 billion, Jocelyn was given $100 million annually for the next 13 years. She didn’t do a great deal of good with it, but spent millions in her lifetime on re-sculpting her face – from eye and brow lifts to lip enhancement to goodness knows what else.

Sadder still, she lost contact with both of her children, Alec Jr and Diane, who are now in their 50s.

Astonishingly, she filed for bankruptcy in 2018; goodness, we have so much in common!

Jocelyn was so deluded, she even denied having had much done to her face and body. She credited her background – she was born in Switzerland, nee Jocelynnys Dayannys da Silva Bezerra Périsset – for her cheekbones as high as the Alps and her feline eyes, just like her favourite animal, the leopard. ‘I don’t like Botox … I’ve only had it twice. I think I am allergic, so my face swelled up,’ she said.

Yeah, right. As Sir Walter Scott wrote: ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.’

Literally. I see so many young women with cheap, matted weaves, extensions that will ruin their natural hair. I want to rip them from their empty heads. The addiction to an idea of ‘beauty’ that doesn’t exist in nature; the misguided pursuit of ‘perfection’, it all seems more prevalent now than it ever was.

The lashes, the tattooed brows, the over-extended lips that enter a room minutes before their owner does – too many young women today are all little Jocelyn Wildensteins, wobbling through the world on difficult shoes, not striding powerfully towards fulfilment. This is the real pandemic that is felling a generation.

And so, we really shouldn’t laugh at the so-called Bride of Wildenstein. Her actions should be a grave, cautionary tale. In my opinion, she wasted her life. Don’t let other girls grow up to do the same.