When Self Improvement Slides Into Mutilation

How many times have you heard people say I wish I had Jennifer Aniston’s nose or Angelina’s lips or Halle Barry’s anything? Some people are blessed with a perfect feature or two. These days there are doctors who are willing to give people what God has not.

The problem comes when you try and take the perfect parts from many different people and put them all together on one person. Sometimes the sum of those parts is far from attractive. Case in point was a flight attendant on our plane today. She had all the signs of a woman trying to look 25 years younger than she was and at the same time had the obvious look of too many plastic surgeries. Her lips were pumped up to the verge of exploding and the artificial lip liner only accentuated their odd shape. Her nose had been bobbed to resemble Michael Jackson’s on a bad day. The look of surprise was stretched onto her forehead with her eye brows at least an inch from their natural position. Her too strawberry blond hair was cut and styled in a way that it was brushed forward all around her face to hide any telltale scars from too much cutting and pulling. Her naturally thin pale skin could not hide the scars on her eyelids announcing their surgery.

She probably was beautiful before she fiddled with all her parts. She had a fabulous figure, nice skin, beautiful hands, the one thing she could not change, that announced her true age. Even without my glasses on she was scary to look at, which might explain all the screaming babies on our flight today. I wonder if she regretted starting down the plastic pathway?

I am all for self improvement to a degree. Obviously being a more healthy weight is my main goal, but I’m not unrealistically looking for a single digit dress size. I am happy with my imperfections, be them many. But I also appreciate a few good parts, like my feet are in fairly good condition after that I’m not really taking stock.

If you are overcome with self improvement fever try volunteering at a charity or doing the Avon Breast Cancer walk. Nothing makes you more attractive than helping someone else. If those things are more time than you have try writing someone important to you a heartfelt handwritten letter letting them know what they mean to you. I promise they will think you are beautiful for doing that. Lastly if you just can’t help but harp on some minor imperfection you have just stop looking in the mirror. I bet no one who looks at you is thinking twice about it.