The pain of being vain is getting too much to bear

There I was; my eyeball a hair's breadth (literally) from a modern yet archaic tool known as a curling iron - for eyelashes. The heat coming off the electric curler made my eyes start to water. I blinked back the tears and nervously carried on, knowing that one errant jerk of my wrist and I would be hereafter referred to as Cyclops. Vanity, thy name is woman.

Ladies, how many times have we run to the corner store, utterly devoid of make-up, hoping not to run into any we know or want to know? From the day we receive our first Barbie with its bottomless closet of clothes, accessories and fantasies of perfection, we are doomed as participants in the never-ending race for beauty.

Sure, most men care nominally about how they look (actually this may be too general a statement as I look out at the rush-hour wave of unkempt hair, dark socks with sandals and exposed beer bellies of the men passing by), but women are in a different league altogether. It's like comparing the Olympics with a three-legged race at a family reunion. In fact, it's a draw whether women spend more time thinking about their looks or food, it's certainly in the top three (sorry guys, sex is somewhere down there with remembering to pick up the dry cleaning).