Putting Your Best Face Forward

Yet there is something weirdly appropriate about cosmetic surgery winding up on television. This may be the logical end point of the looking-glass self. It is not just that people on television are on average much better-looking than the rest of us, though that is certainly true. It is also that the average American spends four hours a day watching television. It would be surprising if all that viewing time did not make us more self-conscious. As the novelist David Foster Wallace puts it, four hours a day spent watching television means four hours a day of unconscious reinforcement that genuine human worth dwells in the phenomenon of being watched. No wonder we can't turn away.