So what is attractive?

There are so many standards that are set today, and most of them are impossible to meet.

Because of plastic surgery and myriad enhancements of various sorts, “beautiful” has become a fake, unrealistic dream, chased by the young and dreamt of by the aging. Even men have begun to get wrapped up in this age of fabricated beauty.

It seems to me that people who are naturally lovely or uniquely attractive have no place in today’s society. Every woman is prodded to have breast implants and liposuction and facelifts.

In order to be deemed desirable and sexy, they also have to have a painted-on tan and big, fake dental veneers. Young, lovely women are getting in on this ridiculous fad, having Botox injections by the age of 28 and rhinoplasty in high school.

This whole situation baffles me.

Aging has now become something optional. A woman does not have to age in a way even remotely natural.

These Hollywood types who have chin tucks and brow lifts every two years and end up resembling some strange, distorted version of a bad Picasso blow my mind.

What has happened to being proud of the silver in your hair and the laugh lines that define years of good humor and memories of smiles? I cannot stand to see gorgeous, mature women who feel that because they don’t look 22, they must operate away all of life’s experiences.

There is also the constant struggle to be thin.

I have lost about 75 pounds in the past year myself, but at a comfortable size 12, I still look in the mirror sometimes and say to myself, “Why can’t you be thinner?”

I blame this insane sense of inadequacy on society. The concept of what a woman’s body should look like is so shocking. Models are actually taught to stand so that their hipbones stick out and threaten to stab any potential mate in the eye at first contact.

Women are supposed to be supple and curvy, not hard, muscular and boyish.

Men are also getting in on this stupid craze. There are whole new lines of men’s products that swear they will banish wrinkles and grow hair where there is none, while others offer to remove unwanted hair where nature deemed it pertinent to put it.

Men are having pectoral implants and liposuction as well. The remarkable thing is that a healthy amount of physical labor and sunlight will result in similar effects.

People are pressured to live up to society’s standards of desirability. We are taught at a young age to fight nature and be like the people we see in magazines and on television.

But I say there is a reason why Hollywood’s children are ugly. It’s because their parents live a lie about the way they really look.

So I ask, what is beauty? Is it defined by “corrections” made on nature, or is it something we are born with. Can the aging process be combated or has society simply gone mad?