This is one of three essays that have been inspired by the "Limelight" episode of Criminal Minds. None of the thoughts I've had about the episode are all that related to one another, so I thought I'd make up three short blog posts rather than a single long article.
I would say the most remarkable thing about the "Limelight" episode is the way it has changed my views on the way gags affect a woman's looks.
I have always thought that gags were basically appearance-neutral, and I still think that's the case for most gag scenes: a woman who appears beautiful prior to being gagged will appear beautiful afterward, and a woman who appears, shall we say, ordinary, will still look ordinary.
But there are clearly exceptions, based on this image:
Hell, it doesn't even appear to be the same woman, but it is, believe me. The tight cleave gag has given Andrea Roth, the actress playing Jill Morris in this episode a REALLY bad case of chipmunk cheeks (you may remember Andrea Roth from such Loosie Award winners as Dangerous Attraction). Tight cleave gags frequently do that to the wearer, but don't generally change their appearances much, and rarely for the worse when they do. Chipmunk cheeks aren't all that unattractive, in and of themselves, IMHO.
But something about the way this gag drags backward and downward at the same time makes Roth appear to be, well ... jowly. There, I've said it -- jowly.
And the thing is, the image of Roth's face without the gag isn't an extraordinarily good shot of her face -- there are plenty of others like it that bring out her beauty. That's what she really looks like -- she really does look like a different person without the gag.
I suspect that the great changes wrought in her appearances by the gag are the result of a perfect storm of coincidences having to do with the structure of her face and the way the gag was applied -- it's very tight and the knot appears to be slightly lower than her mouth, dragging her cheeks down. Roth is also playing a woman watching another woman get tortured to death who is in fear for her own life and at the same time enraged at her captor, with much more dramatic lighting, so you'd expect some difference in appearance. But still ... wow.
My advice to Andrea is this: avoid gag scenes involving cleave gags, especially tight cleave gags. Tape gags like the one you wore in Dangerous Attraction are OK, but you might want to watch the ball gags. We know you're a trooper because of the bondage scenes you've already done, but you, unlike most actresses, have a legitimate reason to avoid cleave gags.
And obviously, there may be others out there like her. So I stand corrected in my viewpoint, though I think the basic principle that gags are appearance-neutral is still sound, there are clearly exceptions to the rule.
