Backfire of the Vanities : A Pretty Face Can Cost an Arm and a Leg

NOBODY’S perfect,” proclaims a recent cover of Harper’s Bazaar. Hope springs eternal, I think, eager to discover “what to wear if you are too tall, short or heavy.” Ever the slave to beauty, I quell my suspicions that this is another ruse to sell me something and turn to Page 82, where Aphrodite’s secrets will be revealed.

Fooled again! The imperfections under consideration are those of such disfigured wretches as Paulina Porizkova (sharply defined bone structure), Kim Alexis (a thin top lip) and Cheryl Tiegs (too tall). Suddenly, I’m depressed. If these are flaws, I’m a walking disaster.

But not to worry. A beauty addict can always find some new, revolutionary beauty fix on the horizon, especially if she’s willing to fork over a couple of months’ salary. Women (and men) are no longer paying even lip service to the concept that beauty comes from within. They now know that beauty comes from investments in French manicures, shiatsu pedicures, herbal body wraps, custom-blended makeup in a personalized seasonal palette, $2,500 Chanel suits, daily workouts with a personal trainer and a few nips and tucks by a plastic surgeon.

Still, whatever you do is never enough. Recently, for example, I invested the equivalent of a week’s groceries in a facial. For 20 minutes, I lay sweating in a thick cloud of steam, my skin encrusted with gritty, lime-green pore cleanser. Then the cosmetician smothered me with a wet towel, covered my eyes with tea-soaked cotton and began assaulting my cheek with a sharp instrument. Finally, I lay motionless for half an hour while an enzyme masque removed a layer of skin.

Afterward, I basked in the satisfaction that one part of my body was under beauty control--for a glorious second. Then my beauty policewoman scowled. “You really should be using our revitalizing neck cream,” she warned me.

Neck cream? This was new. So far this year, people have tried to sell me eye cream, lip cream, day cream, night cream, foot cream, hand cream and breast cream. Will ear cream be next?

“You can’t win,” says my sister, Laurie. “You could spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week on your appearance, and you would still miss some critical beauty maintenance.”

Laurie is right. I religiously go to the gym three times a week. Surrounded by grunting would-be Mr. Universe manques, I lie upside down on a slant board and pump ridiculous amounts of weight with my feet. Then I ride the LifeCycle for half an hour and finish with 20 minutes of stretching.

And I still feel as if I’m shirking. After all, there are people who go from the LifeRower to the StairMaster to the treadmill to the Versa Climber to the free weights, and that’s not even counting the classes that feature muscle conditioning with huge rubber bands, six different “impacts” of aerobics, Aerobic Slimnastics, Jazzercise and yoga.

“I don’t do gyms,” scoffs Laurie, who believes that I’m beauty-obsessed. “I don’t need a personal trainer. I have a dog. I pick her up occasionally. She weighs 42 pounds; that’s as close as I get to Nautilus. I run her around the block a few times. She goes one way; I go another. It’s resistance.”

Sometimes, I can’t believe that we were raised by the same mother. My beauty addiction began in the womb. “When I went to the hospital to have you, I wore an exquisite nightgown and a matching peignoir,” my mother recalls. “And I had beautiful white mules with high heels and little bows, and, of course, my hair was all fixed. I looked like I had stepped out of a magazine. I went into the labor room, and the nurse said, ‘Where do you think you’re going in that? It’s see-through.’ ”

“When Mom had me, she went into labor at the Dairy Queen,” Laurie says. “That’s the difference.”

Nevertheless, my sister recently jumped at a chance to be the model for a beauty makeover for a women’s magazine. “It was a nightmare,” she says. “I went in looking about as bad as I could. I rolled out of bed. I didn’t brush my hair, which is not that unusual. I hadn’t slept in a week. I thought I looked plenty bad enough, but they wanted to make sure that the circles under my eyes really showed, so they darkened them in for the ‘before’ picture.”

Next, they photographed her in the same complexion-dissolving light that’s usually found in department-store dressing rooms. As for the “after” picture: “I spent an entire day having people fuss over me so I looked perfect,” Laurie laments. “I was in the beauty shop for five hours.”

The bottom line? “I did find out that, with enough makeup, I could look like an anchorwoman,” she says. She estimates that it would cost her $300 a month, plus an additional 10 hours a week, to duplicate this look. “Of course, if I were an anchorwoman, it would be worth it,” Laurie says. “And I could afford it.”

Curiously, many people believe that they can’t afford not to look like an anchorperson. More curiously, not all of these people are women. The other day, I ran into my friend Jeff at the hairdresser’s. He was smocking up for a conditioning shampoo and trim. “Your looks are something you have to maintain in this society,” says Jeff, who spends his working day locked in an editing room with a Moviola. “I have an advantage over people who are less good-looking, so I work to keep the advantage.”

Where does he draw the line? “I know guys who go to a tanning salon, and I think that’s over the top,” he says. “I don’t get my nails done or get facials. I don’t see the need. That seems more like a luxury than a requirement for beauty. If I was on vacation in a spa or a resort and that service was offered, I might indulge. But I think plastic surgery is obscene.”

My friend Doug disagrees. “I’d have a face lift in a minute,” he says. “If my jowls were sinking, I’d go to Beverly Hills and have it taken care of.” Why? “I feel that I look better when I look younger,” he says. “And when I feel better about myself, I’m more creative. I don’t want to turn it into a business decision, but it’s that important.”

“I think I’d try just about anything,” says my friend Katie, who is about to give up on her regimen of mail-order cactus moisturizers and drive to Tijuana to buy Retin-A over the counter. “I don’t draw any lines. The object is to get rid of the lines.” Katie does confess that she prefers to avoid anything that causes pain, unless she is knocked out.

Speaking of being knocked out . . . A few months ago, my beauty bibles reported that au courant eyes would be shadowed and lined in rich shades of purple. So I made my semiannual pilgrimage to the cosmetics counter. There, a lacquered makeup artist expertly smudged my eyelids with a palette of dusty, smoky and downright dirty plums.

“See how natural this looks,” she gushed, as she coated my lashes with navy blue mascara. “It really brings out your eyes.” It also brought out my checkbook. Forty-five dollars later, clutching a small bag filled with two tiny boxes (I didn’t spend enough to rate the free gift), I left the store. Shortly thereafter, I ran into a friend. “Are you and your husband getting along?” my friend asked.

“Of course,” I said, widening my perfectly shadowed eyes. She seemed unconvinced. So did the next person I ran into. And the next. I couldn’t understand why everyone kept asking about the state of my marriage. Then I returned home.

“Were you in an accident?” my husband asked. I shook my head. “Don’t tell me you got into a fight,” Duke said. I shook my head again. “Then where did you get the black eye?”

Fooled again!