Didn't beauty used to come from within?

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

Of course I read every word of Boston magazine's cover story, "Do You Need A Facelift?" The question seemed personally addressed to me. I hate the lines on my face and my droopy eyelids and the age spots on my hands and the creeping invisibility that comes with age. And I envy all the women I know who have had surgery. They look young and taut and confident.

And I'd have surgery too, I admit it, if it were free and painless and quick as a car wash. But it isn't. It's expensive and it hurts and it leaves you bruised for weeks. So until it comes in a jar in the mail from Mary Kay, forget it.

Except that it's not so easy to forget. The ads are everywhere: "Breast enhancement." "Liposuction." "Body contouring." "Botox treatment." "Laser skin resurfacing." They are constantly in my sun-damaged, post middle-age face. As are so many of the people I see and know, who are dropping out of sight for a few weeks then returning and looking better than they have in 10 years.

My mother used to say the one good thing about getting old is that all your friends get old, too.

Not any more.

"Cosmetic enhancement (sounds as innocuous as a henna rinse) is not just for pop stars and actresses anymore, nor are facelifts solely for wealthy women of a certain age," Boston magazine tells us. "Plastic surgery's biggest demographic group is adults under 50 The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery reports that nearly 2.8 million cosmetic procedures were performed in the United States in 1998," one-third performed on men.

The problem with everyone getting face-lifts is that you feel as if you're back in high school and not in the in-crowd - again. Only this time around there isn't just one Elaine Ruell, the prettiest girl in class. There are dozens, freshly nipped and tucked and lasered and peeled, putting you to shame.

So what's going on here? How is it that cosmetic surgery, (check out Boston's photos of a face lift in progress) has become an acceptable, no doubt soon-to-be standard form of new millennium skin care?

In the 1960s women scrubbed their faces, burned their bras, stopped shaving their legs and said to the world and to men in particular, love us as we are. Women's liberation was supposed to have stenos free.

So what have we done with this freedom?

I watched "The Sopranos" the other night for the first time because everyone said it's the best show on TV. It's raw and violent and interesting. It's also base and exploits women. Maybe it's real life, somebody's real life. Maybe it isn't. But it's what our society considers excellent entertainment today.

The point is that our standards for everything have changed. Goodbye Betty Friedan. Hello Betty Boop. We haven't gone backwards as women. We've gone around in a circle from the kitchen to the bedroom to the boardroom to the operating room right back to the kitchen again, not in aprons and heels anymore, but in our liposuctioned bodies and tighter skins.

"Enhance your natural shape," says one ad. "What is it like to feel beautiful?" asks another. "There is no such thing as the Fountain of Youth. Or is there?"

Who is leading all this? And is the goal to make all women Barbie dolls?

"Inner beauty and peace begin on the outside," declares one plastic surgeon. Is this true? I thought the object of life was to do good, not to look good.

But that was yesterday; this is today.