Beauty

You probably know that Robert and I almost never watch TV. We don't have cable and our reception is terrible and the TV comes on about once a month.

But in Vermont we had cable! And Robert's laptop was down so we couldn't play World of Warcraft (*cough*dorks*cough*), so we happily turned to cable's loving embrace. One night we actually watched that Gene Simmons reality show. Mostly I watched, truth be told. It was like watching a train wreck- I couldn't look away. And then, to my surprise (and annoyance) I couldn't stop thinking about it either. The episode I watched had his girlfriend-partner-whatever getting plastic surgery. Her sister too. And he was out of town and they were trying to hide it from him- get it all done and be healed up when he returned. They both got all kinds of stuff done- boobs, face, chin, tummies...they looked awful afterwards, all bruised and bandaged. And then his girlfriend person actually lied about when he called asking about the enormous credit card charge ("Hmm, that must be a mistake!"). In the end he came home early and she implied that he'd be just fine with everything once he saw her new boobs, and she appeared to be correct. This mostly led me to thoughts of aging gracefully, and how difficult that can be, especially for women (why do older guys get to be considered sexy anyway? do we really like excess nose hair that well?), and whether a pair of artificially perky boobs in your bed is an acceptable trade off for being lied to (cause, come on, he can't be that dumb. Hmmm, charge to plastic surgeon? By my gf who likes getting plastic surgery? Oh well, she says it must be a mistake....).

Later in the week we watched some VH1 80's countdown. That's more our usual cable speed, and we stayed up too late watching it. And we both noticed that a lot of the rockstars of the 80s were....kinda ugly. In a traditional sense. But they were so talented that it made up for it, and people loved them (and even found them unbearably attractive- see Cynthia Heimel on Mick Jagger and blow jobs).

And that, we concluded, is what is wrong with your generation. In my day if you were talented and made good music it didn't matter if you were ugly. But today? If you're pretty it doesn't matter if your music sucks ass, you can still become a famous celebrity (I can't say musician since that's clearly not the case). Up with boobs! Down with talent! Don't we want better for ourselves? And won't somebody please think of the children??