Oh, where to start.

How about, "We live in a society of shallow freaking idiots and I'm really, really sick of it." How's that?

Ours is a world where an arguably carcinogenic goo comprised of chemicals with utterly unpronounceable names whose sole purpose is to turn your hair into a color that doesn't exist in nature is titled "Natural Instincts". Ours is a world where really huge, immobile, spherical breasts that do. not. move. are considered the norm, and perfectly healthy bodies are sliced open and stuffed with things that look like huge teething rings in order to make the possessor...what? Perfectly aligned with the universe, at ease with herself, happy, snappy, flawless, completely fulfilled until the end of time? Evidently.

Until the age of 45 I bought into this mindset, to a degree. I've never had cosmetic surgery or Botox of any of the unspeakably bizarre things women are voluntarily submitting themselves to these days. However, I started coloring my hair when I was 30. I also continued to fight with my contact lenses years longer than I should have. I wore soft lenses with utter ease for about ten years; from 14 (when I got them) to about my mid-20's I could pop them in and not even be aware of them until I took them out. As I started edging towards my 30's, my eyes started getting drier. I fought and fought and FOUGHT with the little bastards years longer than I should have.

Really, what it boils down to this this: those voices from our pasts, telling us on the playground that we look stupid in glasses or are flat as boards or have bad skin or what-a-shame-she-got-that-dishwater-brown-when-her-sister-is-that-gorgeous-flaxen-blond are voices that are really hard to ignore. I don't know that a lot of women in this country have managed to ignore them. I think women in Europe are better at ignoring them, which is why they can go without makeup and have hairy pits and still look like a million Euros. They look like a million Euros because they BELIEVE they look like a million Euros. And if they're French, they also know how to tie scarves. That helps.

I continued to wear the Floating Discs Of Doom in my eyes because of those little shits in 4th grade who took my delight at finally being able to see and completely decimated it in a hail of, "GROSS! YOU GOT GLASSES!!!!" It took me almost FORTY YEARS to get past those voices in my head.

I was on the Pom Pon Squad in high school. Hundreds of girls would try out for 12 coveting spots. We were really quite good; we did dance routines that were very complex and required a stunning amount of physical ability. This, of course, had nothing to do with why so many girls wanted to be on the squad. It was those SKIRTS. Those UNIFORMS. That tangible statement, reverently taken out of the closet every Friday morning and donned in a palpable rain of, "You suck. I don't. I'm cooler than you." We really were cuter than hell. Seriously. There wasn't a girl on the squad who wasn't just freaking adorable. Of COURSE we knew it.

I had such fun in high school, due in no small part to the fact that I looked a lot like the girls in the magazines I read. "'Teen" magazine is now defunct, but it was my Bible. I basically memorized each new issue every month. The clear-skinned, bright-eyed, long-haired, skinny-skinny girls portrayed therein were my sisters. I was one smug little turd, knowing just how pretty I was and never giving a thought to the fact that I was going to have about a two year span of my life where this mindset was valid. When one is 16, one IS immortal.

So, I can understand why there are women in this world like Annabel Bowlen, wife of Denver Broncos owner Pat Bowlen. Holy Lord. The woman is the fried-blond, Botoxed, fish-lipped picture of perfection. If "perfection" can be defined as, "If I keep desperately trying to recreate my 25 year old self, everyone will fall for it! They will!"

I started coloring my hair right before my 30th birthday. Right before my 45th I decided I was done being a moron. It's taken me about eight months, but the artificial color is almost gone. I have the uber-coolest white streak in the front of my hair this side of Bonnie Raitt. To facilitate the demise of the artificial color, I got my hair cut really short. I believe I'm going to get it cut even shorter. I've gone from spending an average of three hours a day on my hair (literally) when I was in high school to slicking gel in it and going. It now takes me about three minutes to do my hair.

I gave up the contacts. My eyes haven't felt this good in years.

In short, I took that self-centered, gorgeous but empty Pom Pon girl and shoved her size four ass off a cliff. I bought into it for years, and I understand how hard it is to get away from it, but the mindset of "Be Pretty At All Costs" is expensive and time-consuming. And those are the best things I can say about it. That mindset also keeps you from living a life of any consequence. If I had spent those three hours a day doing something meaningful when I was 16, I could have changed the world. Focusing on the external makes us look at other women as rivals. And it keeps the girls coming up behind us in the same shackles we've dealt with our whole lives. And...it's 2007. Truthfully, didn't you think we'd be LONG past this mindset by now? "Only her hairdresser knows for sure," is something our mothers dealt with. We were supposed to be past that by now. We're not. Not even remotely.

When I see women my age or older who are at first glance very pretty, but at second glance excruciatingly uncomfortable in their own skin, I just want to squeal. I'm feeling so strongly about this topic I decided to start this blog. I have no idea where it will go from here, but...it feels good to admit to this particular form of murder. I highly recommend it.