Chelsea Clinton looks fantastic. That's right, the once-gawky kid with buck teeth, bedspring hair, and her father's bulbous nose is suddenly a sleek-tressed, lip-glossed looker.
At 24, the daughter of former President Bill and current U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton is turning heads and fueling rumors. Did she or didn't she? Is her new smile anchored by a chin implant? Has the tip of her nose been trimmed?
At least two supermarket tabloids, the Globe and the Star, couldn't resist publishing before-and-after photos of the former first daughter this week with headlines posing the question. MIRACLE MAKEOVERS! shouts the Star, calling Clinton "the Real Life Swan." CHELSEA PLASTIC SURGERY RIDDLE, screams the Globe, quoting an anonymous "inside source," speculating: "It suddenly seems as if all her facial features - eyes, ears and nose - are all perfectly proportioned."
In one photograph she's ruddy-faced and weak-chinned, and in the other, buffed and polished.
One Dr. Paul Parker, a Paramus, N.J., plastic surgeon who has not treated Clinton, says in the Globe that Clinton looks as if she may have gotten a chin implant, a nose job and maybe even an eye lift.
Nobody in the Clinton clan is talking. Calls to Chelsea's Manhattan job site, the consulting firm of McKinsey & Co. where she's reportedly earning a six-figure salary, were funneled directly into voice mail. E-mail messages and phone calls to her father's office in Harlem and her mother's office in Washington were not returned.
This is not the first time Chelsea has gone glam and set tongues wagging. In 2002, she stunned photographers by showing up at a fashion show in Paris with a sleek bob haircut, a Versace pantsuit, and celebrity pals Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow at her side. Now, she's a college grad sporting honey blond hair, slender cheeks, and an expert makeup job.
But, says Dr. Algird R. Mameniskis of the Rittenhouse Plastic Surgery center, she probably has not had plastic surgery. "Judging from these pictures, I'd say it's mostly a result of weight loss," he said after studying the magazine spreads.
"I don't see anything around the eyes, and I'd have to see other pictures to be definite about the chin," he added. "But in a woman her age, the skin is taut enough that weight loss could change her look."