Article October 4, 2004 Issue

A VISION OF BEAUTY

By Meg Welch Dendler

My Daughter Callista has been known to wear a tiara to the grocery store. (Well, she's only five after all.) She wants to be a princess when she grows up. And, of course, she wants to be beautiful.

It's enough to make a mother cringe and toss the Barbies out the window! I say cringe because in many cultures beauty is based on Barbie-doll (or Ken-doll) looks as well as on images of airbrushed supermodels—a standard that's unattainable for just about all of us. What's amazing is that even those models don't always feel they're attractive. When it comes to physical beauty, most people feel they never measure up.

In her cover-story with People magazine for its 2004 issue on the 50 most beautiful people, the American actress Jennifer Aniston (aka Rachel on the TV show Friends) describes herself as an "unfortunate-looking teenager."