Superficial vanities a waste of money

Published 1:55 pm Friday, January 18, 2008

Regarding the article, “About face: Injections, other procedures offer short-term, virtual facelifts without surgery” in the Tuesday Living section:

What’s wrong with growing old? Tuesday’s “Quick Lifts” perky, upbeat and uncritical article about “facial enhancements” brought to mind the controversial bestseller “The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women” by Naomi Wolf. It made me wonder why people are pursuing such superficial vanities and throwing away good money and time. Get out of the mirror — there’s a world out there.

This is a radical, overweening, violently vain procedure.

In “The Beauty Myth,” Wolf describes the unattainable expectations of women who use these synthetic, unnatural tricks to feed an obsession with youth, beauty or thinness and who are unwitting victims of the industry, opening themselves to the self-inflicted violence of “cosmetic” surgery (sounds better than “plastic”). Why not look to values which are deeper, spiritually satisfying and beyond appearances; values simply more realistic than fighting the well-earned furrows of experience that come with aging? With self-acceptance comes peace.

Mike Coslor