I am addressing the issue of society and the pressure to be beautiful from a personal standpoint. As a youngster back in the 1950's I watched actresses such as Marilyn Monroe, a buxom blonde wearing a reported size 12, and Jane Russell, a dark haired, curvacious symbol of womanhood, wowing and wooing their leading men on the screen, and captivating the attention of the general public.

Later, in the 1960's when I was a teen, the new look of the fashion model Twiggy arrived with her gaunt, skeletal figure and boyish haircut. All at once my size 12 was less than desirable, and along with that bit of news came derogatory remarks from others which only fed the belief that I was too big for my average, 5' 5" frame.

The remedy? Dieting, of course! But to my dismay and frustration, I seldom managed to get the scales to read less than 130 pounds, and no matter what, I had the old fashioned shape of the '50's girls. I had to learn to accept that some of us weren't built to look like Twiggy, and also had to put up with others' biased opinions of beauty.

To this day, thin is in. Society has continually done it's best to make us all fit into it's latest mould of fashion and beauty, while some chafe under the knowledge that without drastic, and sometimes life threatening procedures and lifestyles, there is no way to be considered beautiful.

I was recently rather alarmed when my eight year old granddaughter began asking about how to make her teeth white like the lady's on television, about wearing makeup, and other adult beauty concerns. It was obvious she'd been picking up on society's expectations from television and was being programmed at a very young age.

Who actually benefits from all the fashion and beauty hype? Is it you or me? I would venture to say not. Is our society happier because of it? I rather doubt it, but the companies such as Cover Girl, Maybeline, and Miss Clairol are, as well as those producing designer jeans and other fashions of the day. Let's not forget those helping us to fit into them either, such as Weight Watchers. They are smiling all the way to bank while we, the consumers, constantly strive to conform to the latest fads.

I must admit, I followed along with fashion trends as best I could when I was in my late teens and early twenties, but as I grew older and hopefully, a bit wiser, I decided that I was simply going to look like me. I quit torturing myself with dieting, began wearing basic clothing instead of trying to be stylish,

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