by Christina Larson
Since its debut last year, the cosmetic-surgery show "ExtremeMakeover" has drawn runaway ratings, its many viewers at oncefascinated and appalled by the needles, incisions, and bandagesthe mostly female participants will endure in order to climb afew notches on the beauty totem pole.
This fall, ABC moved its Nielson heavyweight into televisions' kingpin slot, Thursday evenings, while wincing critics sounded an alarm that Americans' fundamental understanding of nature, beauty, and artifice has changed.
Nonsense, darling. In the pursuit of beauty, American women havevariously plumped breasts with toilet-plunger-like suctiondevices (1890s), strapped themselves into fat-roller machines topress away the pounds (1910s), endured "electrode" shocktreatment to zap away wrinkles (1920s), worn wire headsets topull back cheek waddles (1960s), popped "youth" pills, andslathered on anti-cellulite lotions for generations.
Today's ladies have no greater drive to become beautiful, and defy the effects of timer than their mothers did. But the technology hassure come a long way.
In Inventing Beauty: A History of the Innovations That Have MadeUs Beautiful, New York Times patent writer Teresa Riordan givesreaders a delightful, quirky account of American cosmeticinnovations, from lipstick to silicon implants, from the mid-19thcentury to the mid-20th. She avoids swerving into pro-feminist orantifeminist polemics, and instead simply accepts that the desireto be fairest-of-them-all is an impulse as mythic and enduring asa fairytale. With a little Cinderella-magic of her own, Riordantransforms patent history into an almost titillating subject,while reminding readers that tanning creams, breast implants, andnail polishes are "not merely articles of fashion but legitimateinventions"--and serious business.
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