"Plastics"

"Plastics"

When Mr. McGuire uttered that immortal word in the 1967 film The Graduate, who would have guessed he was referring to the pliable reconstruction of the human form, rather than that useful and ubiquitous product we have all come to know and love.

Actually, I know he wasn't, but he could have been ... I mean, advising Ben to go into plastic surgery, would have been sound advice, indeed.  Even Mrs. Robinson would have approved.

It's official: Cosmetic plastic surgery is now enjoying such vogue and acceptance, that it's taken on a life of its own. Like Reality TV, or Celine Dion's ego.

We're all looking at ourselves more critically these days. You know what I'm talking about, ladies. We squint into the mirror, and scowl at our hindquarters like we always have, but now we make liposuction sound effects.

We'd probably have to travel all the way back to caveman days to find a time when women didn't take full advantage of whatever technology was available to make themselves look better. But since the precise moment those troglodettes figured out that by enduring a bit of inconvenience and discomfort, one could possibly turn the head of the knuckle dragger with the biggest muscles, women have been availing themselves of these techniques.

Makeup was actually invented approximately three weeks before food was discovered. And even today, more women will forego eating than will forego mascara.

We've come to accept tattoos, piercings, and all kinds of bodily mutilations, in the name of beauty or individuality (the individuality of looking exactly as decorated as our friends, that is.)

Hair dyes and braces -originally were eyed with suspicion, now enjoy such acceptance that people feel comfortable passing judgment on complete strangers, "Why don't you just get those teeth straightened already? And that HAIR? Get thee to a colorist! Where is your sense of pride?" (And I'm not just talking the American Idol judges.)

Whereas once these procedures were viewed as fringe, now the avoidance of the procedure is becoming fringe.

One of the major problems with the proliferation of nips and tucks and colors and highlights and such is that nobody can tell how your basic genetic makeup would have you look. We choose our mates based partly on their apparent health and vitality - a primal desire to procreate with someone who will produce attractive and healthy children. Nowadays you can have two supermodels produce a veritable lizard-child, though neither would confess that their good looks were completely constructed. (It's less messy to just sue the obstetrician.) This is why so many Hollywood starlets are adopting.

It's false advertising, on a genetic level. Dating is hard enough when you have to ask the guy across the table for affidavits covering his entire sexual past. Imagine asking for all of his family albums (and then having to actually look through them!)

The new spectator sport of the 00'ies is surgically appraising every person we pass - in the grocery store, the mall, the auto repair waiting room. Are those boobs real? Could those lips possibly get any "poutier" Collgen! We're suspicious of honest good looks, yet more and more intolerant of deviations from the standard.

You see where this is going. Cosmetic treatments and surgeries will eventually become so prevalent, that we'll all start to look alike.

We won't be huddled at the hospital nursery window proudly proclaiming, "She looks just like Aunt Mavis." We'll be saying, "She's going to look like Alyssa Milano!"

How shallow are we prepared to go? Back in my college years, I noticed that all the popular girls wore one of four officially-sanctioned haircuts. Where all this surgery is going - there will only be four officially-sanctioned girls.  Only they'll be everywhere.

Saddam Hussein has already taught us some of the pitfalls of populating a country with a bunch of look-alikes. It would be almost impossible to solve crimes. The eyewitness would say, "Blimey! It was a Brad Pitt, what did it! I saw the whole thing!"

Twin problems will be impossibly compounded. We'll have to fingerprint children, before handing over their allowance, or our husband when he comes home from work expecting a kiss. How could you hire a babysitter, or take roll-call in a classroom? What if you kept spying your Mother-in-Law everywhere? Like at Victoria's Secret or something? Yikes!

Of course, it could bring about a few conveniences. Like, you could pre-order your wedding video. But overall, it would lead to a lot of frustration and misunderstandings. We'd have to start wearing nametags, and based on humanity's track record on issues of superficiality, we'd probably get all elitist about what kind of nametag it was, or whether it had a blue border or a gold border, or the "Hello My Name Is…" part.

The new concept of beauty could possibly hinge entirely on a sticky rectangular piece of paper, worn on the lapel.  Do we really want to sink into such a state where wars will erupt between the Cursive Nametag people and the Block Print people?

Maybe our nametags would eventually feature pictures of how we looked before all the plastic surgery. Then we could simply judge each other based on our old looks, rather than our surgically enhanced cookie cutter looks.

Which would be great for me, because I used to look like Jennifer Aniston.