Alex Kuczynski

Alexandra Louise Kuczynski (born December 6, 1967) is a reporter for the New York Times, a columnist for the New York Times Magazine and the author of the award-winning 2006 book Beauty Junkies about the cosmetic surgery industry. The book was translated into ten languages.

Her father, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski of Lima (Peru),[1] is an economist and politician who lost the Presidential election in Peru in April 2011.

After graduating from Barnard College in 1990, she became a journalist with the New York Observer and then the New York Times. On 10 September 2001, she was transferred by Howell Raines from media reporter to the style section, where Kuczynski would write "the sort of pop-feature pieces that would appeal to the Times national audience."[2] She has been described as "a giddy blast. She always would have 10 ideas at story meetings and eight of them would be terrible and two would be brilliant."[3]

Kuczynski married the investor Charles Porter Stevenson Jr. in 2002.[4]

In 2006, she authored a book about the growth of the cosmetic surgery business:[5] Beauty Junkies: Inside Our $15 Billion Obsession with Plastic Surgery (ISBN 978-0-385-50853-7). Reviewers have noted that readers of the book "may take a pass after reading this exposé about extreme makeovers."[6] Kuczynski concludes, "looks are the new feminism, an activism of aesthetics. As vulgar and shallow as it sounds, looks matter more than they ever have — especially for women"[7]

In 2008, she wrote an article in The New York Times about her decision after eight years of marriage to use a gestational surrogate mother to have her genetic child after several miscarriages.[8]

References

  1. ↑ "WEDDINGS/CELEBRATIONS; Alex Kuczynski, Charles Stevenson Jr.". The New York Times. 1 December 2002.
  2. ↑ Auletta, Ken (2004). Backstory: inside the business of news. Penguin Group. p. 6. ISBN 978-1-59420-000-7. Retrieved 24 October 2010.
  3. ↑ New York Observer (2009). The Kingdom of New York: Knights, Knaves, Billionaires, and Beauties in the City of Big Shots. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-169540-7. Retrieved 24 October 2010.
  4. ↑ "Weddings/Celebrations; Alex Kuczynski, Charles Stevenson Jr.". New York Times. December 1, 2002. Retrieved 25 April 2010.
  5. ↑ Levin, Judith (2008). Obesity and Self-Image. Rosen Publishing Group. p. 14. ISBN 978-1-4042-1768-3. Retrieved 24 October 2010.
  6. ↑ Hammond, Margo; Heltzel, Ellen (2008). Between the Covers: The Book Babes' Guide to a Woman's Reading Pleasures. Da Capo Press. p. 54. ISBN 978-0-7382-1229-6. Retrieved 24 October 2010.
  7. ↑ Berry, Bonnie (2008). The power of looks: social stratification of physical appearance. Ashgate Publishing. p. 54. ISBN 978-0-7546-4758-4. Retrieved 24 October 2010.
  8. ↑ Kuczynski, Alex (November 28, 2008). "Her Body, My Baby". New York Times. Retrieved 25 April 2010.

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