It wasn’t nearly as jarring as it should have been to see these two headlines ‘above the fold’ in the NYTimes earlier this week: “Banks in Need of Even More Bailout Money” and “Love the Long Eyelashes. Who’s Your Doctor?”
Yup. As America crumbles, we’re performing plastic surgery on the dead and gearing up to pay $120 a month for stupid eyelashes. First it was frozen foreheads. Now it’s Betty Boop eyelashes.
Allergan, the company that turned an obscure muscle paralyzer for eyelid spasms, Botox, into a blockbuster wrinkle smoother, hopes to perform cosmetic alchemy yet again. At the end of the month, the company plans to introduce Latisse, the first federally approved prescription drug for growing longer, lusher lashes.
So what if an already overburdened doctor will have to make time for the hordes of Barbie-obsessed women who’ll need a prescription? So what if the medication (cuz that’s what it is; it’s intended for glaucoma patients) has nasty side effects like changing your eye color, darkening your eye lids,and causing red eye and eye itch? Isn’t that worth a possible 25 percent increase in your lashes?
So what, when this nirvana awaits you:
“People would say to me ‘Are you wearing false eyelashes?’—even my own mother asked,” said Cindy Ross, vice president for sales at Young Pharmaceuticals in Wethersfield, Conn., who participated in the Latisse clinical trial.
Ms. Ross said she liked the effect so much that she had a doctor prescribe the glaucoma drug to use on her lashes until Latisse becomes commercially available. “I wouldn’t stop,” Ms. Ross said. “I found a way to get it.”
So what if it makes you a criminal?
So what, as long as you look marvelous?
Hopefully, there’s a way to cross reference patient numbers (and I think there’ll be more than a few metrosexuals slavering this stuff on their eyes) with bankruptcy filings, or numbers of people demanding help with the mortgages they could never afford.
Am I living in the same America as everyone else? The one where we need to resume the frugality of our grandparents?
