Beauty Above All Else

Don't pray this doesn't happen to your daughter, guarantee it doesn't with a little parental attention.

Why are we so afraid of aging?

The answer: sagging self-valuation, similar to the dollar.

"I love being hot," said a good friend of mine, she the owner of an atypical combination of an hourglass body and a sound mind.

So does everyone, but unfortunately, some will never know how it feels, never get to fall in love, never get to feel cool.

You can't love another until you learn to love yourself--perhaps the most difficult lesson of all--and this conundrum taxes the mental makeup of many.

Beautiful girls see strange globular shapes in the mirror when they stare intently at the rise and swell of their every curve. Men resort to chemicals to recreate their bodies, and in turn, self-image--we're not talking Jason Giambi here either, but the unimposing quiet type who wants some goddamn attention. Botox needles may soon take the mantle from the addict's syringe as modernity's most popular pointed object this side of the penis.

Angry culture auditors blame the media, and they have a point. Busty bosoms, bursting biceps, and perfect, poreless profiles assault us daily from the safety of magical flat screens, within which technology reshapes these genetic outliers into the Zeuses and Aphrodites we wish to see in our reflections. But really, are we such simpletons that we can't differentiate between the ideal and reality?

I believe it comes back to parenting and community. Remember how much your words weigh when you assure your daughter she'll always be beautiful to you no matter what she looks like, or choose to stay mum on the couch, beer in hand, watching the very instrument that replaces you as a parent. Without your reassurances, the nasty notes she receives in class on folded, lined paper and the lipstick caricatures and alarming asinine hate she reads on the bathroom wall will win.

No matter how many psychiatrists dote upon her ego for dollars or boys treat her like a rag doll in the bedroom, she'll never reclaim that confidence her parents should have instilled into her impressionable mind before all these negative forces had a clean shot from their high perches.