Introduction

Beauty rules.

And not just in our fantasies. Do you ever get the impression that the girls and guys blessed with knock-'em-dead good looks are much more likely than everyone else to fall into fame and fortune?

Turn on your favorite TV show, scan a few magazine covers at the local corner store, or check out the singers who make it big: chances are the faces and bodies you're looking at are more attractive than most of the people you see walking down the street or hanging out in the hallways at school.

Every day, in a thousand ways, we're reminded of how much easier the world seems to be for people blessed with the right hair, face, and body parts. You can't help but wonder whether your own life would be just that much better if the reflection looking back at you from the mirror every morning were a bit more like Brad Pitt or Jennifer Lopez, and a bit less like your Uncle Howard or Aunt Lou.

And yet, ideas about what's 'beautiful' change all the time. Your closet probably has evidence of the fact that fashion is awfully fickle: what's considered cool and desirable one month can be 'so over' the next. And not everyone has the same tastes: not here in North America, and certainly not in other parts of the world. Open up any history book or foreign magazine: you'll see people whose looks may be admired in their own countries, or would have wowed their friends in the past, but wouldn't turn heads in your crowd.

Ever ask yourself why? Why then, and not now? Why there, and not here? Why that look, and not this?

Even though the standards of beauty -- not to mention the methods for achieving it -- have changed radically overtime and across cultures, it's pretty clear that the desire to look hot is hard-wired into human nature. Art in the tomb of an Egyptian nobleman who lived around 2400 BC shows a slave beautifying his feet; a couple of thousand years later, Cleopatra, an acknowledged babe of her day, was big into eyeliner; and aspiring hotties of the 21st century can choose from a seemingly endless array of beauty aids.

In Your Face sets out to discover:

• why we're so fascinated by beauty;
• what we've done over the centuries and across cultures to stand out, fit in, and measure up;
• who gets to decide what's hot and what's not; and
• what forces and sources shape our views.

We'll examine the beauty lessons we learn in everything from bedtime stories to blockbuster movies and check out the vast and varied definitions of beauty from all over the world. And our exploration of the enduring appeal of the young and the healthy will help to explain some of the wild and wacky things people have done in the past and are doing today in pursuit of looking good.

We'll compare the gap in the beauty standards applied to guys and girls, and shine some light on the power games that have been played in the name of beauty to keep some people in their place. Along the way, we'll look at the advantages and the disadvantages (yes, there are some!) of being judged a hot property.

In Your Face goes backstage at beauty contests -- both the kind that focus on tiaras and prize money, and the kind that happen every day in school hallways and bathroom mirrors. We'll also open the vault on the folks who get rich by making the rest of us feel insecure, and expose the gap between what we see and what's actually achievable. And we'll check out the impact that being beautiful had on the lives of a couple of great-looking teens.

Understanding the powers and pitfalls of trying to look our best won't necessarily inspire us to toss out the tweezers or hair gel. But putting beauty into perspective can definitely help us to stop feeling so controlled by it. The treatment -- if not the cure -- includes valuable reality checks and alternative beauty tips; great strategies for wrestling your feelings about image pressure to the ground.