Beauty or Beast?

Climbing back on  my soap box... I don’t understand some current “beauty” techniques. A New Jersey woman, Patricia Krentcil, has been accused of child endangerment for taking her 5 year-old daughter in a tanning booth with her. Upon seeing a photo of this uber-tanned person, I was prompted to visit my 68-color Crayola box. As I figured, her skin color matched the Burnt Sienna Crayon. Not a good look. Kind of orange, and much darker than a clay pot. Why would anyone think this was pretty, and wassup with people in New Jersey and tanning booths? Does the whole state have a serious vitamin D deficiency??? I would expect it maybe from sun-deprived Seattlites, except we like things more on the natural side. Ms. Krentcil denies her daughter was near the tanning booth. Her awesome quote sums it up - “Never in my life would I endanger my child by putting her in a tanning booth. I’m not dumb.”  I beg to differ. If you do that to your skin, you are a big, dumbass nimrod. She admits she wouldn’t endanger her daughter, so she knows tanning is not safe. Likes to live on the edge, or just plain stupid? My vote is the latter. The other fake beauty trend that I don’t get is lip augmentation. I have a theory where this originated - the porn industry. Nobody else would think big, fat lips were a must for a beautiful face. I wonder if aging celebrities think inner-tube sized lips divert attention from wrinkles and crow’s feet. Seriously, you are not fooling anyone. You are just prompting the rest of us to race to Google for a contrast and compare session with the former you. Cheek and chin implants, and Botox injections belong in a horror movie, not real life. I’m reminded of an old margarine commercial where an angry woman says “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature!”. This stuff is fairly new. Who knows what will become of these faces in twenty years? It won’t be pretty.