by Inside The Chrysalis

Created on: May 18, 2009

As little girls we are told that beauty is within, but somewhere along the way we realize people are looking at our outward shell and evaluating what they see. Wanting that evaluation to be favorable, we adorn the most sparkling of jewels, the trendiest clothes and the most popular hair styles...and don't forget the $300 handbag. So as a kind of dichotomy, we want to stop our skin from showing signs of age, while keeping pace with the latest fashion trends. This, we think, will complete the outward portrait of ourselves and will garner untold amounts through the doors of Tiffany's auction house.

The anti-aging industry is a billion-dollar venture whose sole purpose is to make us believe we can literally erase lines and wrinkles, stop the aging process and become youthful. We, being sold on the idea, jump wallet first into the fountain of wrinkle-free youth. What makes us rip open our wallets, hand over bucket-loads of cash and tear into the packaging before leaving the parking lot? It boils down to three key reasons: hope; an insatiable hunger to try new things; and belief in advertising.

They say hope deferred is no hope at all. And so we fork over our credit cards and sign away with the hope that the anti-aging system we just bought in its fancy packaging, will indeed work. We have to have hope so we won't feel guilty when the bill comes in making our husband's peaceful face contort into a painful whince. Yes, hope is what gets us to the cosmetics counter and back out the door, package in hand.

Let's not forget that trying new things is a blast. Have you ever been in a bathroom with a bunch of women trying out a new product line, or sampling each other's cleanser, scrub or eye cream? It's a veritable hoopla, with ooh's and aah's of admiration flowing left and right, sprays and gloss cloud the air like a stardust firecracker on the 4th of July. I know, I've been there.

And who can resist the promising claims our favorite brands tell us. We want to believe in the clinical studies, the deep -jungle extraction of rare and exotic ingredients, the lack of parabens, the presence of key anti-aging properties and the specially designed nutritive complex only found in this product, and formulated just for me. So we believe it all and are willing to "invest" in this company and its anti-aging cure for our aging skin.

We are pretty simple creatures really. Give us a little hope, keep delivering new products and make us believe in what you're selling, and next thing you know we're at the beauty store in a blaze of glitter. The anti-aging companies know it works...there's a billion dollars that says so.

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