Dave Barry - Stay Fit And Healthy Until You’re Dead

Sometimes, out of the goodness of our hearts, we beauty experts make guest appearances on those morning television shows devoted to a wide range of topics that the folks who run television feel are of interest to women, namely these:

Sex problems Fashion and beauty tips Problems that involve sex Tips on beauty and fashion Various sexually involved problems Discussions of how you can become more sexually fashionable and beautiful by means of certain tips Pasta

What the beauty experts generally do on these shows is select a woman from the audience and point out how she has committed several dozen common major beauty blunders due to the fact that she is not a knowledgeable beauty expert. Their technique is to pick somebody who looks perfectly normal—perhaps even attractive—to the unprofessional eye, then harp away at her until the audience begins to marvel that she managed to get past the studio guards without being mistaken for an escaped boar and shot.

Then they take this pathetic woman, and they give her a completely New Look, offering all kinds of professional beauty tips as they go along:

“Now the most unfortunate facial characteristic of Rhonda here,” they say, “is that she has a nose you could hang a garment bag on, so we are going to begin by applying about five-eighths of an inch of base coat to the rest of her head in an effort to make it appear larger. We’ll top that off with two coats of sealant, then we’ll remove all of Rhonda’s current eyebrows and start applying the first few coats of skin dye while we try to think up something we can do about her mouth.”

And so on, until Rhonda’s face is encased in congealed cosmetic substances to the point where her own dog wouldn’t recognize her. As the studio audience applauds her New Look enthusiastically, Robert Redford walks onstage and asks her to marry him, and they walk off together, living proof of the advantages of knowledgeably applied beauty products, at least until Rhonda’s sealant weakens and her base coat starts falling off in slabs the size of French toast.

Unfortunately, we are dealing with the print medium here, so I am unable to consult individually with you in regard to your specific beauty needs, except to say that from this particular angle it appears you ought to give a bit more thought to booger removal. However, I can offer these helpful beauty guidelines for you to bear in mind as you try to achieve your New Look:

It looks like a weather balloon, for God’s sake. Try some puce blush on your cheekbones, if you can locate them, and accentuate those little lines coming out of the sides of your mouth by filling them in lightly with an Accountant’s Fine Point Bic pen.

I am assuming that you didn’t pay for that cut. I am assuming that a deranged, near-blind, palsied person wielding pruning shears burst into your room in the dead of night and cut your hair after beating you unconscious. The only thing I can suggest until it grows back out is that you join some sort of religious order that has a mandatory head covering. And when it does grow back, you want to decide which of the three common head shapes, you have and choose a hairstyle that compliments it.

This is assuming I have to pick something. You want to draw attention to your eyes through subtle use of your lipstick. Note that when I say your eyes are your best feature, I am speaking of them as independent organs. Taken as a set, they are maybe three-quarters of an inch too close together.

After going to all that trouble with your face and hair, the last thing you want to do is go around smelling like a billy goat with a flatulence problem. This is why good personal hygiene habits are so important. Let’s review them briefly.

You should brush them immediately before having conversations, using a tube of toothpaste with these words printed on the side: “The American Dental Association has found this to be an effective tube of toothpaste when squeezed from the bottom in conjunction with a program of regular payments to a member of the American Dental Association.”

Floss them regularly. If you use the same floss, do your gums first.

Shampoo regularly with a shampoo bearing the name of a reputable beauty snot, such as Vidal Sassoon. Also, be alert for dandruff, an incurable disease where little pieces of your head keep falling off until eventually all you have left is two eyeballs on stalks protruding from your neck and you look like a gigantic lobster walking around wearing clothes. Scratching only makes it worse.

There’s an old saying about feet that goes: “I had no shoes, and I pitied myself. Then I met a man who had no feet; so I took his shoes.” Better than anything I could think of, this saying illustrates the importance of proper foot care. Each day, you should spend a minimum of an hour examining your feet closely under a 200-watt light bulb and picking at your toenails with various foot care implements available at Woolworth’s. This is something the whole family can do together. Stress to your children that they should not mention it to the authorities.

At one time, this important subject would have been considered “too delicate” for a book like this, but all that has changed, thanks to the efforts of the fine people who sell vaginal deodorants via television commercials featuring two Good Friends having a Frank Discussion:

DEBBIE (hesitantly): Sue, may I ask you something?

SUE: Sure, Debbie. What is it?

DEBBIE: Sue, are you aware that for the past seven years, including at formal affairs such as funerals, you’ve been emitting an aroma that would fell a buffalo at 90 feet?

SUE (frowning slightly): Why no, Debbie, I didn’t know! Perhaps that is why I have remained a housewife, rather than winning the Nobel Prize for Physics!

DEBBIE: Why not try this?

SUE (examining the label thoughtfully): Hmmm. New Improved Crotch Bouquet. By golly, I’ll try it!

DEBBIE: Not here, for God’s sake!

As recently as 20 years ago, a man was considered well-groomed if he remembered to remove the little pieces of toilet paper he stuck on his face where he cut himself shaving. But today we live in a liberated era, an era in which men are not afraid to make themselves more attractive by means of beauty aids formerly limited to women—hair coloring, makeup, totally alien plastic substances inserted into the body so as to form bulges, designer dresses, etc.

This is basically a healthy social development. For, as the saying goes, “A man who cares about his personal appearance is a man who is always checking his reflection in store windows.” So in this section, men, we’re going to suggest some grooming “tips” to help you look more like the lean and cruelly handsome male models in the “Fall Fashion Supplement,” and less like the people in your immediate gene pool.

I will assume that you already shampoo your hair at frequent intervals, that you are not one of those repulsive males who, apparently feeling that there is some sort of grave threat to the world’s grease supply, let their hair go for weeks at a time without washing it, such that if one of their pillows ever caught fire, it would burn for days. But men, even if you do use shampoo regularly, it’s probably the wrong kind, by which I mean it probably consists mainly of shampoo, with perhaps a dash of pH.