At the risk of being accused of beating the proverbial dead horse, I'd like to go back for a moment to the theme of beauty that we explored twice already this month (on the 2nd, and again on the 16th). My reason this time is a news report about a beautician who has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for involuntary manslaughter, fraud, and practicing medicine without a license. Her crime: she injected the ... um ... derriere of a client with Mazola corn oil, claiming it was a "French polymer treatment" for reducing wrinkles. The client later died of multiple organ failure brought on by the injection of the oil.

I find this very sad. Why was this poor lady so afraid of wrinkles on her backside that she paid $1400 for the bogus "French polymer treatment" that ended up costing her her life? The unfortunate answer is, probably, that she was afraid of looking older and less-than-perfect in a modern culture that puts a premium on physical attractiveness.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to look your best. There's only so much I can do with the looks I have, but I try to keep myself looking good by the time-honored methods of shaving, taking showers, brushing my teeth, combing my hair, and wearing clothes that don't get a disdainful glare from my wife. But I won't go so far as to dye my hair or get a face lift (I don't think there's a crane big enough to do the job, anyhow). I appreciate that ladies take the time to look beautiful...but I think that we've gone too far when looking beautiful requires things like laser hair removal, botox injections, and all the other forms of agony to which women subject themselves because they think they're necessary for looking good.

Someone once said we're lucky that truth-in-packaging laws don't apply to people. There's also the old joke about the man who tells his friends about the beautiful lady he met at a dance and ended up taking back to his apartment for the night..."She took off her dress and her padded bra...she took off her makeup and her false eyelashes and her wig...she took off her paste-on fingernails and her padded pantyhose...and then I turned around, and she was gone!"

A little exaggeration, maybe, but I think you get the point. We are what we are. A person born with some unfortunate deformity is probably justified in wanting to somehow compensate for it. But the average man or woman should probably be happy in his or her skin. Each of us is different, and I truly believe that each of us eventually finds the person who loves them for what they are and not just for how they look. After all, Agnes could have held out for a Brad Pitt or an Antonio Banderas, but she picked me!

And the fact that she wears glasses had nothing to do with it.

Enjoy your weekend. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo