Vanity will affect most women at some stage of their life and many women during virtually their entire life. The fashion and beauty industries spend huge amounts of money on advertising every month just trying to convince people that their clothing range or make-up products will help them to look perfect, and then make a massive amount of profit because a lot of people buy into that dream.

Of course, the world of fashion mostly seems to suggest that all women should be tall and skinny and creates its clothes accordingly. Because of this, many girls who try to keep apace of current fashions end up looking far worse than they might do if they believed in their own instincts as to what looks good on them and what doesn’t.

Failing to look good in this season’s catwalk designs very often leads to women seeking out yet another diet. There are crazy statistics about the number of women who are always ‘on a diet’. Obviously, it makes great sense to eat a healthy and balanced variety of foods, but permanently trying to starve yourself by following one fad diet or another doesn’t really get you very far in reality.

Many women also seem to believe that there is a problem with having untanned skin, as the obsession with sunbed bookings or fake tans shows, and this is surely encouraged by the looks of those female celebrities who many women view as the look to aspire to. I can see why people dye their hair alternative colours, whether it be to cover up a few grey hairs, because they want to enhance their natural colour or just because they fancy a bit of a change. Tweaking your hair colour is similar to applying polish to fingernails in my book. But I don’t really understand the need to alter skin colour, unless it happens naturally (and sensibly!) from whilst doing things outside in good weather.

The passion to look good is often enough of an obsession that surgery to alter parts of the body becomes the next step to explore. This sort of surgery is usually done outside of the NHS in the UK and can be a costly experience. The sorts of treatment available include things such as reducing excess fat, remodelling a crooked nose, botox to reduce the amount of wrinkles, Laser eye surgery to correct vision so that glasses aren’t necessary, breast enlargement or reduction, chemical peels to make skin look clearer and many and various other treatments.

Obviously, there are some cases where a range of these operations are undertaken for the sake of the patient’s health. A crooked nose could cause breathing difficulties, a vision defect may be cured by Laser eye treatment particularly if the patient has an occupation which makes using glasses or contact lenses problematic or dangerous, a breast reduction may be recommended for a patient with a back complaint.

Obviously some of the above mentioned operations, such as Laser eye surgery, are used often to correct real health defects as well as pandering to a person’s vanity, but that cannot be said for some of them. It is fair to say that many surgical processes which are now considered largely cosmetic were originally devised to resolve health problems and have since been employed as some of the quickest and easiest, albeit pricey, ways to improve your looks.

The problem is though, as people get older it becomes increasingly obvious if cosmetic surgery has been been performed. Think of the many elderly film stars you watch and automatically assume that they must have had work done in order to continue to look that good. It seems a bit unfair on those who are healthy enough to still look good without surgical intervention that many people will inevitably assume that they have had work done, simply because a lot of people do!

There seems little chance that such a fixation with looking perfect will stop in the coming years, as ever more unrealistic role models appear for women to attempt to imitate. But it is essential to remember how much time and money it would take to experience all of the various surgical enhancements, Laser eye treatment, chemical skin peel, comprehensive dentistry work and others. Otherwise, you could just start to love yourself as you are.