I am a student in addition to working full time for a highway construction company. I am finishing a B. A. in English that I started working on in the Fall of 1966. Okay, maybe this will be a record for the longest anyone ever spent earning a bachelor's degree. Regardless, the endeavor is a cultural awakening process. This semester I am enrolled in a "multicultural" literature class entitled The Politics of Beauty. Based on the syllabus, the class will include ventures into reading, feminist works as well as works by authors of various ethnic and religious backgrounds. Since web searches are the new way of finding what is going on out there in the world, I did a few searches: beauty/politics, politics of beauty, and others, but the search on beauty/power reaped interesting finds. The quote that follows is a couple of paragraphs from the home page of a Southern California Plastic Surgeon. The warrants and beliefs evidenced in the assumptions that underlie the text are a chilling glimpse into how "some" Americans, both men and women have come to view beauty and its consequences in our society today.

There is an ancestral need for beauty in mankind. Signs for this quest go back to prehistoric times: tattoos, rings through the ears and nose, the wrapping of Oriental women's feet, and many other tribal and cultural customs were for the purpose of enhancing beauty. More contemporary and sophisticated methods are more obvious - hair dying, cosmetic, and make-up techniques, and also the use of physical adornments, such as jewelry, earrings, clothing styles and hair styles in thousands of forms. All of these are for the single purpose of improving the appearance and creating beauty.

"Why?", we say. Improved self-image through improved appearance has proven to people over the centuries to be a means of better realizing ourselves as human beings, a means to influence other individuals and to communicate better in our lives, a means to gain power, if you will, and to obtain things. This urgent need threads its way through history as a mechanism for man to increase his level of acceptance. A more attractive and beautiful individual always appears to have a better chance to ascent in the social scale, to improve in his or her own fields of endeavor, and, perhaps most desirable, to reach new emotional and sentimental heights. Every man and woman searches for absolute truth through many pathways. However, beauty is almost always found in any of these as a constant, and, therefore, as an important intrastructure for the personal growth of the individual.

The pseudo-psychological and pseudo-anthropological 'evidence,' in justification of self butchery to conform to current definitions of beauty, are most disturbing because they appear to be so deeply believed. The chasm that exists between the reality of the physical appearance of the majority of Americans and the media prescribed images that are the domain of so few creates a disturbance that haunts the souls of many and wreaks havoc with the lives of young and old alike. There are no doubt many good reasons for increased exercise and improved diet. But aging is inevitable, and beauty is so much more than outward appearances.