Beauty, Youth and the Professional Life

(from Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary:)
youth, n.: The Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum, Cassandra has a following and seven cities compete for the honor of endowing a living Homer.

Youth is the true Saturnian Reign, the Golden Age on earth
again, when figs are grown on thistles, and pigs betailed with
whistles and, wearing silken bristles, live ever in clover, and
clows fly over, delivering milk at every door, and Justice never
is heard to snore, and every assassin is made a ghost and,
howling, is cast into Baltimost! --Polydore Smith

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On Friday night, I went to a Red Cross Recruitment event at a health spa. Out front, the organizers had strung a banner around one of the plaster columns of the strip mall: “Together, We Can Save Lives.” The window behind the banner listed the treatments available at ‘Sutera Medical Spa’: Massage, Peels, Laser Hair Removal, Laser Vein Removal, Botox. This fits perfectly, of course. In Miami, beauty is a matter of life and death.

Inside the spa—really a corridor done up in the tasteful austerity that is so desperately in vogue—were nearly 25 people, packed ever more densely as you approached the open bar. Wait, did I say people? Allow me to correct myself: Young Professionals.

In Miami, every working college graduate, each aged-high-school-dropout with a job and just about anybody who hasn’t yet received a card from the AARP is a Young Professional. Email announcements for museum nights and other social functions always promise they will be in attendance, but no need to worry if you can’t make it, for one can always join the Young Professionals Networking Association.

Of course, you will be kicked out eventually. One can’t remain a Young Professional forever. When are you out? At 42. That means I have 20 more years of professional youth ahead of me. Frankly, I’m afraid I won’t make it all the way through, especially if I keep taking advantage of the open bar. But then I remember that I’m young. And I’m a professional. And there is always the Botox in the backroom.