A Mid-Life Pledge to End Vanity

I am not worried about the graying of America. I’m worried about the degrading degraying. So let’s make a deal.

We here at the Gonna Die Institute have an offer that will save you months of pain, years of grief, hours of time and fistfuls of dollars. It’s easy. It’s simple. And all it takes is one itty-bitty generational commitment.

If every one of you will take The Pledge, we can all be free of our enslavement to vanity. Yes, vanity, saith the preacher, is becoming the No. 1 obsession of those between 30 and 50.

Because I trust no one under 30, everyone I know is in various stages of mid-life crisis. I myself am in the avant garde, which involves standing in front of the mirror and systematically imagining life with each of my features altered.

I think it really hit me at a party the other night. A woman I hadn’t seen in years pulled me aside, threw open her coat and said, “Look! They hang down now. I’ve got cleavage.”

My friend Veronica is heading toward surgical never-never land. She ran into a former boyfriend whose wife is a plastic surgeon. He came up to Veronica and said, “You know, Bev does eyes.”

Veronica then asked her husband, Rod, if she could get her eyes lifted for her 40th birthday present. “Bev does eyes,” she said.

“Yeah,” he responded, “but why start up there?”

Rod keeps rubbing Rogaine on his head. He’s still a bowling ball, but his blood pressure is down to 30/10.

Kit’s getting her hair highlighted. Susan’s getting braces. Neal’s getting his nose fixed. For thirtysome years, these people lived imperfectly, but now the slogan seems to be: If I have only one life to lose, let me lose it as a blonde.

I thought cosmetic surgery was invented so that rich people could buy suffering. All of a sudden, every ordinary slob thinks she’s some kind of Phyllis Diller.

How will God know who to send to heaven if all the corpses look like Morgan Fairchild?

Consider the six stages of life: Birth, Childhood, The Hideous 20s When You Are Forced to Grow Up, Mid-Life, Plastic Surgery, Death.

We can’t avoid any of them except Numero Cinco. Act now and sign The Pledge. Think of the money and the suffering we will avoid.

Now, I am not asking anyone to undo what’s already been done. If your nose has been bobbed--just leave it in the air. If your breasts have been augmented, well, hold it right there. If your chin has been lifted, let the chips fall where they may. What’s tucked is tucked.

And I’m not saying that certain people don’t deserve special consideration. If the rumors that Jane Fonda had ‘em enhanced are true, I say: More power to her. Jane’s Fondas are part of a multimillion-dollar body industry. Jane can have ‘em. Linda Ellerbee can’t.

Let us all act now to stop the madness. Sign the following pledge and send it to me here at the Gonna Die Institute, c/o this newspaper.

Dear Alice,

I pledge not to have anything bobbed, lifted, tucked, augmented, suctioned, enhanced or de-love handled if you don’t.

Signed--

The important thing is that we’re all in this together. Every good boomer must come to the aid of his generation. If anyone sneaks out and gets beautiful, then the pressure is on.

Right now, plastic surgery is a trend. You know what happens when the baby boom combines with a trend? You’ve got a necessity. Like hula hoops and birth control pills and answering machines and VCRs and single-family homes and babies.

If we all promise to fight the fad, we can grow old, fat and ugly together. Some people may want to eat oats and work out--fine. That takes time, that takes effort. But no major medical, hospitalization or scars, please.

Send in those pledges pronto. I’ve got an appointment to get my hair colorized next week. And I’m starting to pinch up the skin on my face and push it toward my forehead. I keep imagining how great my rear end would look glued to my earlobes.

Let’s just let it all hang out. I will if you will.