The other day I was working in Santa Monica, otherwise known as the Land Of The Beautiful People Who All Look The Same, and I felt like I was in a Twilight Zone episode - no, not the one where the hot chick is being operated on by the mutant people so she’ll fit their standard of beauty. The one where everyone swallowed a magic pill causing them to morph into exact replicas of each other in size, shape, and facial features. What do you mean that wasn’t a real Twilight Zone episode? Well, okay. But it should have been, because it’s freaky enough to be fiction.

Sadly though, it is reality. The plastic surgery epidemic is a perfect example of a good idea gone horribly awry. Giving people the option to look younger and feel better about themselves is a good thing. But when that evolved into giving people the option to look like a younger version of their favorite celebrity, whom they never looked like to begin with, even on a good day, is when we gave up our seat on the sanity train for a ride on the cuckoo rollercoaster from hell at the county fair. The one with the rickety tracks operated by a carnie from Kentucky named Jeb who is in the throes of a bad acid trip while on his shift.

 Don’t get me wrong. I’m not anti plastic surgery. I’m just anti homogenous society. I like the idea of restorative surgery and preventative treatments. It’s the transformative procedures that have us looking like a bad commercial by a beginning student in Special Effects 101, that creep me out a bit.

I’m all for a nip here, a tuck there, a syringe of something to take a few years off, or prevent a few from adding on, in order to keep you looking like the best you ever! But the operative word in the sentence is “you” – the best YOU ever. Not the best you from the eyebrows up and the best Kidman-Jolie-Hayek combination from the lower lash line down.

Because it’s not possible anyway - the best of those features already exists…. on them. They are the best versions of them, so we can’t be. Can’t we all just accept that? (By the way, Salma Hayek attributes her large chest to having put her hands in holy water and praying for big boobs; so try that and report back to me with the results).

It was one thing when it was just the girls. But now it’s guys getting all de-wrinkled, nose jobbed, and pec-implanted. The vanity alone, that drives a dude to go under the knife, seems kind of femme, if you ask me.

Looking like a Ken doll is highly overrated, anyway. Ken was a metro-sexual, emasculated man sipping tea in Barbie’s Dream House. Here’s my mantra: GI Joe is hot. Ken doll is not. GI Joe makes Barbie moist in her panties just by sitting next to her. Ken doll doesn’t even make it as an understudy in her masturbation fantasies. (Oh, don’t all pretend like you didn’t know Barbie has a dildo stashed away in that lame freakin’ Dream House.) That’s why it’s a dream house, people! You thought it was a dream house because it’s a big mansion? Did no one teach you it’s not the size of the house that matters, but how many times it rocks in the earthquake before it collapses?

Which brings me back to my point. Ken doll doesn’t even look like he wants to get it up for Barbie. He looks asexual – the toy version of Ryan Seacrest. This is what plastic surgery does to men. It makes them all look gay even when they’re not. And yes, I do realize that the Plastic Perfect Men of the world probably aren’t losing any sleep over the fact that little ol’ me is not dying to Eskimo kiss their perfectly chiseled schnozes, but I don’t think I’m the only woman that feels this way.

Not long ago, one of those emails was going around with photos of supposedly hot guys – half naked pseudo-men with strategically placed kitchen items concealing their jiggles and wiggles. I received the email and thought, if the National terrorist alert color code system could be applied to the femme scale, (an invented gauge in my mind measuring a man’s lack of masculinity), then my computer screen would be a flaming red right now.

The Plastic Perfects on the email did nothing for me, but I forwarded it to female friends on the off chance some of them might enjoy it. More than a few emailed back with the same sentiment I had: This passes for hot in whose world, exactly? Perfection is highly overrated when it comes to what turns women on!

There are a few problems with this plastic surgery vortex everybody’s been sucked into. The first one is, now average looking people look downright ugly, and that just sucks for everyone involved – the lookees and the lookers.

The second one is… well, Kenny Rogers. Have you seen him lately? If Kenny wasn’t famous I would have thought the surgeon got him confused with another patient who is entering the witness protection program and needs an entirely different face from the one he’s had all his life. Kenny, sweetie - take your own advice. Know when to walk away. Know when to RUN, (from an overzealous surgeon).

The third problem with plastic surgery is it’s effect on dating and mating. It tinkers with the natural order of attraction. Think about it. Those of us who are attracted to uniqueness have a smaller pool of possible mates to choose from now. There was an infinite wisdom in the creation of the world. When one person with an imperfect feature was created, a person with an appreciation for it was also created. You muck up the first part of that equation with rhinoplasty, the second part of the equation is unsolvable even to Will Hunting.

Lucky for me, plastic surgery statistics show that women still account for 91% of procedures, totaling 10.6 million in 2007. Phew! Looking at the pseudo-men in Santa Monica skewed my perspective. I was worried my dating choices were limited to two options: dating metro-sexual men I’m not attracted to or raiding Barbie’s nightstand drawer.  

So, ladies, go be part of the 11 million and get an entirely new face and body if you want to, but the way I see it, if you do that, you may be robbing the real life GI Joe who is looking for your A cups and normal-sized lips, the chance of finding his dream girl.