What Can HD Do for You?

It had to happen sooner or later--my darling hubby, who is both an electronics geek and a frugal buyer, finally found an HDTV that met his exacting tech standards and skinflint budgeting requirements. I was happy for him, but I didn't think having a brand new 52" HDTV would change my life much. Boy, was I wrong.

HDTV is the biggest boost my self-esteem has had since that summer when I was 19 and I got approached by three casting scouts in the same week (a week later, I found that two just wanted to pick up on me, but until then, I was floating.) .

Here's the thing: Everyone looks bad in HD. Everyone.

Well, not bad, per se, but real. Average. Not so different from you or me. Brad Pitt has a rough road map of little lines on his face--not the greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Area, but definitely a small city with a complex transportation infrastructure and a pothole problem. Cate Blanchette has freckles and little lines (that only make me love her more). And the cast of Lost? They really do look like they've been trapped on a desert island with no sunblock. Or, at the very least, they look their ages.

Thanks to HD, I have seen wrinkles, freckles, under-eye bags, stray hairs, secret moles, scars, thick make-up and camouflaged break-outs on people who previously looked flawless. Now, when I look in the mirror, I don't feel so bad about the little lines I notice starting in my forehead and around my eyes, the fading scars from the "teenage" acne I didn't outgrow until after college, or the smattering of stationary moles/freckles across my cheeks. People who are professionally good-looking have all those flaws and more.

Modern technology has well and truly revealed the Hollywood glamor machine for the fragile facade it is. Thanks, HD!