Beauty, ugly aren't always same as seen on TV

They sell everything on TV, and we Americans will buy anything advertised. There are the slicers and the dicers and free super dupers, all with a money-back guarantee for just the price of shipping and handling at $72.95.

Marketers sell youth, health, long life and great sex. We, the consumers, want to be young, be healthy, live long and have great sex.

Television also sells CDs from the '70s, front seats to a war and candidates for our democracy. Political-office doors are open only to those who can afford 30-second TV spots. Michael Bloomberg spent $100 million of his own money to retain the mayoral seat of New York. The cost of television advertisement was a good portion of the bill. His margin of victory was relatively small for the money spent, so it seems electoral landslides are getting out of reach even for the average billionaire.

If millions and a cute face were essential to run for office in previous centuries, we would never have had Abraham Lincoln. He couldn't have afforded the price of the entrance ticket. All the makeup in the world would not have made him as cute as John F. Kennedy or as foxy as Sarah Palin in her designer glasses. Presidential wannabe John Edwards had an affair with a videographer making a film of his campaign. It is symbolically appropriate — the pretty boy candidate, so eager for power, succumbed to the influence of the camera and the woman behind it.

With the world for sale in a visual, voyeuristic medium, it is not surprising that one of the more popular products on the block — besides power — is looks. I am not talking about ads for liposuction, growing eyelashes, or workout machines that build a six pack abdomen faster than you can say "Bud Light." It is the opposite. TV sells ugly. Television influences what is physically appealing or appalling.

A friend tells a story about a male college student who, for an assignment in his sociology class, stopped watching TV and movies, and didn't read any of the glamour press for the semester. His roommates were the comparative controls. They still spent the same number of hours in front of the flat screen.

After four months of abstinence, the young man noticed something outside of this homework for school. He started looking at young women around him and realized they were physically more attractive. Instead of one or two girls in the neighborhood, he now wanted to date a dozen or more.