I am really, really starting to appreciate nonfiction. (=

Much like how I think that aspiring young actors would benefit from reading Secrets of My Hollywood Life and its subsequent series, it is imperative that anyone who is even remotely curious about cosmetic surgery (which, as I learned, is NOT the same as plastic surgery) should take the time to read this fascinating, horrifying, brutally sad commentary/memoir on what beauty has become in American society.

My heart ached many times over as I read accounts of men and women who strive for external validation of personal significance and worth-- some of whom died in search of that fleeting vanity. The author herself, a New York Times reporter, shows some steel in her willingness to incriminate herself as a former "beauty junkie" to serve as a warning to all of us who are ignorant of what it is really like.

Alex Kuczynski has done to the allure of plastic surgery what Lori Gottlieb did to the myth of "not settling" in her book Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough: exposing the misconceptions, the ugly truth, and the lies that we've come to believe. Bravo.