Cosmetically culpable persons should gather with the unworthy to meet damnation - if it ever comes, writes Sarah Carey
MY ANNUAL bout of the post-Christmas blues has yet to give way to spring optimism. The news is a vale of tears as human suffering reaches epic proportions. If I didn't have to write this column I'd have switched off months ago and put the quilt over my head, appearing at intervals to eat, wash and await the Second Coming. For clearly the end is nigh (see Vincent Browne, next page).
The quilt option not being realistic due to the demands of two young children and the requirement to earn a living, I get out of bed each day and monitor the collapse of civilisation. A friend assures me the rot set in long ago and humanity peaked when man landed on the moon. It's been downhill since then, he claims, and so far I've been unable to come up with any example of human achievement in the past 40 years that would challenge his theory.
Instead, like that line from the Battle Hymn of the Republic, the papers are like the Lord, "sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment seat". When they aren't relating heartbreaking stories of war, death and suffering, they are casting the losers in this recession into what Noam Chomsky called "worthy" and "unworthy" victims.
The Wall Street Journal reads more like The Fall Street Journal, as it records the tales of woe from the nouveau pauvre. Just before Christmas they carried one story, "When the Going Gets Tough, Some People Lay Off the Nanny". Tearful Moms were being forced to fire their immigrant nannies, leading to terrible grief. One stay-at-home mother, Suzanne Sirof, whose husband is a litigation lawyer, admitted that El Salvadoran nanny Alba Monterosa was a second mother to her children. They can't afford her any more and now poor Mrs Monterosa can't afford shoes for her own children. Mrs Sirof's daughters took the separation badly and their doctor recommended renewed contact with the nanny, who now comes once a week for visits.
Are these tearful women worthy victims of this middle class recession? Not all. Mrs Sirof says she feels "horrible" about laying off Mrs Monterosa. But there are some perks she isn't willing to give up. "Nothing deters me from my Botox treatments."
Ah. The livelihood of a poor immigrant woman and the tears of her own children are no match for a frozen forehead. Mrs Sirof should stand to the right where the unworthy victims are assembling to meet damnation, if it ever comes. Now, more than ever, I want to believe in Judgment Day.
Over at the more liberal New York Times, it appears that all is not lost and women who devoted themselves to spending their husbands' ill-gotten gains on their looks will endure hell on this Earth - wrinkles. A December 17th piece in the NYT Style section asked: "As the country plunges into recession, will financial hardship demote the pursuit of physical perfection?" Hallelujah! The answer might just be yes.
Some plastic surgeons had hoped that Botox would be seen as a necessity rather than a luxury. Who would want to go back to the way they looked five years ago? Fortunately, the recession has caused some women to re-evaluate their priorities and surveys indicate that the number of cosmetic procedures has dropped, although the reduction varies between 5 per cent and 30 per cent, depending on who you ask. At last, the ethically dubious practice of mixing vanity and surgery is in decline. Call it a touch of Schadenfreude, but seeing the back of the 20,000 mile service cheers me up no end.
The cost of cosmetic surgery, major or minor, decreased to the extent that it moved from being something only the super rich could afford to a rite of passage for middle class women - a transformation some called "democratisation". Personally, I've been shocked that women can't see how ugly the high glamour fashion of the past 10 years made them. I'm not talking about extremes like Jordan, but ordinary women out for the night with filthy spray-on tans, inappropriate dresses and expressional faces that came from both Botox and anxiety.
If finance forces an end to the looks and psychology of self-obsessive aesthetics, then let's chalk it down to one more upside of the bust. Fortunately, the first signs of celebrity endorsement have appeared. Courteney Cox, or Monica From Friends as you might know her, has admitted her Botox days are over. She told Marie Claire: "It's not that I haven't tried Botox - but I hated it. You know you've messed up when people who are close to you say, 'Whoa, what are you doing?' " What were you doing? Whatever it was, Courteney says it's Okay to stop.
I'm not predicting the end of the cosmetic medicine industry, but women are being offered a chance at redemption which they should seize. So are the doctors who've flocked to the business.
Top tier medical students in the US have long been migrating away from life-saving branches of healthcare towards specialities like dermatology. With the downturn, the LA Times reports that this glut of "cosmetic doctors" is diversifying into procedures such as "reconstructive surgery for cancer patients and others covered by insurance".
This is surely salvation - doctors forced by economics to do what medicine should do: heal the sick. There is no Judgment Day of biblical proportions, but I like this kind of reckoning. We have sinned and perhaps there is no hope for humanity, but there is always time for atonement. Start today.