Aging gracefully?

From USA Today: "This obsession with plastic surgery is an epidemic. It's lunacy! These women have had their faces rebuilt and they look terrible. It's going to backfire at some point; sadly, somebody famous and young is going to have to die on the table." --plastic surgery veteran Jamie Lee Curtis, 45, to More Magazine.

Well, guess what, Jamie? Even that won't stop the lunacy. In a society where what you look like on the outside is of paramount importance, people--especially women--will continue to pursue that image of perfection, whether it be through plastic surgery or extreme diets.

Don't get me wrong; I believe in looking one's best. As an old preacher once said about women wearing make-up: "Even an old barn looks better with some paint." (OK, that's a groaner.) I don't even have a problem with people correcting something that really, truly needs fixing.

But I do believe the plastic surgery craze is getting out of control. It started in Hollywood and it's spreading across the nation, aided and abetted by the plethora of cosmetic surgery reality TV shows. One of the most disturbing trends is young girls hopping on the plastic surgery bandwagon; teen-agers getting breast implants, etc. My daughter picked up a copy of Teen Vogue recently, and it included an article on this disturbing phenomenon.

It might be a good idea to do a follow-up on some of these people and see if altering their appearances was the ultimate antidote they thought it was going to be. Hmm, makes me think of a thought from the Bible: "Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised."

Sure, I get frustrated when I see signs of encroaching age--another "laugh line," or the fact that I can't see ANYTHING up close without reading glasses, or the chagrin when I compare my late-40-something hands with the impossibly silken smoothness of my 19-year-old daughter's.

But then I think about my mother.

My beautiful mother, pictured above, is in her early 70's, but looks much younger. I wrote these words in a tribute to her a few years ago, and they are just as true today: "She has sparkling green eyes; a lovely full,expressive mouth...a dazzling smile. The years have been kind to her, and she is a prime example of how decades of righteous living can influence a woman's face...years free of alcohol, cigarettes and immoral living. Years dedicated to God's service and unselfish love for her husband and children. She has the sort of radiant, luminous, from-the-inside beauty that defies age."

That kind of beauty--the beauty of a pure mind, a loving heart and a God-focused soul--is the kind of beauty to which I aspire. And that kind of beauty cannot be touched by age.

(This post was partially based one I wrote in August 2004.)