Buy your beauty

Physical beauty and self esteem; the two seem to go hand in han d. When societial standards are used to classify a person as being beautiful, the ego-inflating importance attributed to those people is a fraction of an inch away.

In this science-fiction age where beauty can be purchased from medical technicians who specialize in plastic parts and 4-year-olds compete in beauty pageants, image at any price is the message we are bombarded with constantly.

No cost is too great, even if it means having fat cells sucked out of your thighs or paying for trendy starvation diets.

We've noticed some people who have had their faces lifted so often their eyebrows creep past their hair-lines.

Success isn't an intangible quality anymore. It is measured nowdays in gyms memborships, birthday cards from tannin g salons, perfect hair and the angles of a person's pectorial muscles.

What motivates people today are not noble successes, but the achievment of external ornaments. Children aren't growing into adulthood with the urge to change the world and make it a better place, they're growing up with media-spawned images of glamour. Own a fast, beautiful car, a mansion and cosmetically alter your appearance and you have everything.

Parents feel an overpowering need to grant their children perfect teeth and force them into braces. Yes, there are medical reasons for some of the instances, but orthodontics are a billion dollar industry. Some of those children could be spared the pain, both physical and mental, that come with superficial dentistry.

If this mentality persists and lives are altered to obtain false appearances of physical perfection, there will be two possible outcomes.

One, the genetically infirm who are unable to pay for the artifical cosmetics will be unsuccessful in finding mates with which to establish fulfilling relationships. Or secondly, cosmetic surgery will become so commonplace that the human race will become more plastic and silicone and mechanical than the average Barbi doll. Either aspect is horrifying.