How to ...

... be beautiful. By Guy Browning.

Beauty may only be skin deep, but let's face it, no one's in a hurry to go out with a good-looking pancreas. In general, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, especially when alcohol goes into the mouth of the beholder at roughly the same time.

Face-lifts are a popular way of keeping your looks for longer, although you don't often hear younger people saying to each other, "I love your high face." You can now get botox injections that freeze your face in position. Traditionally, you got the same kind of frozen face every time Uncle Ralph told one of his jokes. The cheapest and most effective face-lift is the smile. The quickest way to smile is when someone says you're beautiful. Which is why most people look grumpy.

Women make up their faces to appear more attractive; men make up things about themselves to appear more attractive. With women, the more make-up they use, the less attractive they think they are. Men don't like a lot of make-up, partly because it's like kissing a recently laid pavement and partly because we don't want to wait the hour and a half it takes to put the stuff on.

Doing beautiful things can make you look beautiful. That's why public sector workers are generally accepted to be better looking than those in the private sector. The only things that stop most people being beautiful are superficialities such as hair, nose, eyes, skin, legs, body, clothing and personality. Seeing past these requires the miracle x-ray specs of love. The really amazing thing is that someone out there will find you beautiful, even though you've always thought you were Mr Potato Head. True, you may have to wait for incredibly sympathetic lighting conditions for this to happen, but it will.

Whatever you look like, everyone thinks they have one or two good bits. For example, the old troll in the dry cleaners may secretly believe she has very attractive feet. When her Prince Charming eventually comes in with his soiled doublet for cleaning, they'll be the first thing he notices.

Some people start ugly but become beautiful, like the ugly duckling. But if you are young and ugly, brace yourself for the fact that most ugly ducklings grow up to be ugly ducks. On the other hand, swans hiss and ducks quack. There's got to be a moral there. There is an Estonian saying that you can't make soup from beauty. If you could, it wouldn't be carrot and coriander.

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