nip 'n tuck

I just saw a real-life face lift for the first time on a friend's mother, and the image is still haunting me. Her skin is so tightly pulled back that she looks freakish. My friend defends her mother by saying she works in a field with all men where she has to be persuasive (politics). But why don't these men have to look attractive for the woman? Why is she the one who has to mutilate her body so that she can do better business. Before I entered the corporate world I would have said that that entire notion is bullshit, about an attractive woman being more successful. But now that I work in an office with practically all men, and being that I'm their secretary, I have learned to use my appearance in my favor. I've heard from the other two women in the office that the pres. and v.p. (both men) can have horrid tempers. One of these women wears khakis and t-shirts to work, and the pres. is always telling her to dress more femininely. I've decided to wear make-up and dress cutely in the hopes that he won't explode at me for forgetting to put sugar in his coffee. So far so good. But like I said, this could be total bullshit.

I wonder if plastic surgeons get the same satisfaction while stretching skin as I get while covering a bowl with Saran wrap and smoothing the creases. We can spend so much time packaging things only to tear them apart later. And so much of the packaging is unnecessarily difficult to open. In the words of Ellen Degeneres, "Whoever packages CD's must be angry angry people."