What's the price of beauty?

We all do things to improve on our outward appearance. We go to the gym, we watch what we eat, we spend money on makeup and visit beauty salons. We do all these things in an effort to look more beautiful, more appealing to others. There are so many things we can do to turn back the hands of time or enhance our inner beauty. We can get cosmetic surgery to lift our buttocks, augment our breasts, and our belly corrected with a tummy tuck. We can get injections to make our wrinkles disappear and fill in the sunken hollows of our faces. We can buy age-defying lotions and makeup to make people believe that we haven't aged a day.

Some of these methods are more effective than others. Botox looks more natural but fades in 4 to 6 months, whereas a facelift is meant to last your lifetime, but doesn't always look natural. Going to the gym can improve your appearance and health, but may cause other problems, whereas diet pills and fad diets will make you lose weight but may damage your health. Our quest for beauty and youth is not a new thing. From earliest history we have records of some forms of plastic surgery , we have done things, sometimes harmful things, to make us stand out or look more appealing. We go to the tanning beds or lay out in the sun, pierce things and remove things and generally put ourselves through a lot of torturous procedures. We are in love with the idea of beauty and looking younger than our years, and with the advancements in cosmetic surgery, makeup, and diet plans, we succeed for the most part.

Those of us who can afford to do so can look younger than our children, and often do. There is no longer any need to grow old gracefully, or age well, and those are not really considered compliments anymore. There are even procedures where you can change yourself to the point where you no longer even look human, although that may be extreme. You can have your eye wear fastened to your face, your teeth surgically replaced and the structure of your face completely altered. There is a procedure available for almost anything you want to change.

With permanent makeup you can wake in the morning looking as good as you did when you went to sleep, and eliminate the need to constantly buy eyeliner and mascara. There are cosmetic treatments available that will cause your eye lashes to grow thicker and longer. You can have beauty spots attached, or removed, with a simple outpatient procedure, or have your skin chemically peeled. You can even change the color of your eyes, although before wearing contacts you should check with your eye care professional.

How fantastic it is, how remarkable, to be able to look beautiful, and youthful, no matter what plans life held in store for us. On the whole, the price, not only in money but in time and effort, is well worth it, and is one that many of us are more than willing to pay.