“Provided a man is not mad, he can be cured of every folly but vanity” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, French philosopher & writer, 1712-1778

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One of the very first things that I noticed about the man who would become my second husband (and eventually second ex-husband) was that he had absolutely gorgeous eyelashes. They were very thick, very dark, and very much wasted on a guy - but they were gorgeous nonetheless!

Amanda and Jamie were both fortunate enough to inherit dear old Dad's eyelashes and I rather doubt that either of them will ever be forced to use fake eyelashes. I've got passable eyelashes that can be made to look quite decent when I bother to apply some mascara so I've never gone the fake route either and, frankly, don't know that I would ever want to. Heck - I can't put in eyedrops never mind glue on lashes! Truth be told, I don't think about eyelashes very often ... they just are.

However, that apparently is not the case for some women in the world as I found out while falling asleep on the couch in front of "Extra!" this evening. It was another one of those little feature stories that while you're watching it you think to yourself - "you have got to be kidding" - but I guess that anything that comes out of Hollywood these days shouldn't really be all that surprising.

It seems that a new "beauty secret" for those women who suffer from thin, pale eyelashes is now available in the form of an "eyelash transplant". Yes, ladies, that's right - for a mere $3,000 per eye you can now have some of the hair from the back of your head transplanted into your eyelids in a 2-1/2 hour operation that will give you darker, thicker eyelashes (that need to be trimmed on a regular basis or they will grow down to your chin!).

You might be asking yourself - why would anyone consider an eyelash transplant?

"Longer, thicker lashes are an ubiquitous sign of beauty. Eyelash transplantation does for the eyes what breast augmentation does for the figure," said Dr Alan Bauman, a leading proponent of eyelash transplants.

Okay, well, sure but at least with breast augmentation your breasts don't keep growing and need to be trimmed regularly like the eyelashes! Oh - ew ...

Sigh ... it seems that whoever said "Vanity, thy name is woman" knew what he/she was talking about (though apparently there are some men doing this, too!).

Here's looking at you, kid!