Did Tina Fey’s scar affect her career?

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You’ve doubtless heard all the buzz about the January Vanity Fair cover flaunting Tina Fey, as photographed by Annie Liebowitz and profiled by Maureen Dowd. (Talk about a PR juggernaut over there at Condé…and how come Tina hasn’t graced the cover of TIME yet, I ask you? The Sarah Palin cover doesn’t count.)

One nugget the publicists have leaked is Fey’s discussion of the scar on her left cheek. I noticed the scar when she first began appearing on SNL’s Weekend Update, but promptly forgot about it. I barely see it on 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon. But in her increasingly frequent magazine spreads, I’ve noted that her scar is often airbrushed out. Fey herself seems to care far more about another body part:

“The most I’ve changed pictures out of vanity was to edit around any shot where you can see my butt,” she says. “I like to look goofy, but I also don’t want to get canceled because of my big old butt.”

Also, her feet:

“I don’t like my feet,” she says. “I’m not crazy about anybody’s feet. But I have flat feet.”

Because I never read any comment by Fey about it, I presumed the scar was off limits. Now that she’s addressed it in the VF interview, I found myself wondering: seriously? Who cares? And then I wondered: do physical quirks—scars, bowed legs, a missing ear—affect a career? What do you think?

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