Reason No. 672 that we as a species are doomed: Doctors are now prescribing a glaucoma drug to patients, not because they have glaucoma, but because it also makes eyelashes grow longer.
I repeat — IT MAKES EYE LASHES GROW LONGER!
This, many of you probably know, is quite desirable to certain people. In fact, many of you might want to get on the horn right now to your medical professionals.
But don’t. You’re eyelashes are long enough! Leave them be! You’ll look like palm fronds if you’re not careful.
I just don’t know what’s wrong with the world. I thought I had heard it all when they came out with Botox, which just happens to be made from the same toxin that causes that all-too-pleasant and very deadly food poisoning called botulism.
I’ve always wanted to know who the first person was to come up with injecting deadly food toxin into your face. Did they lose a bet? Was it a dare by bored scientists trying to pass the time in the lab? “OK, Ed, you successfully lit your face on fire and survived. Now I dare you to shoot up a little botulism.”
How many inventions and major discoveries throughout history came during heavy drinking? No matter, they’re billionaires now, and can afford to inject rabies into their buttocks if they thought it might reduce cellulite. I read about the eyelash-lengthening drug in the Wall Street Journal the other week and was just flabbergasted. Mind you, like most men, eyelashes are no big deal to me. Most of the time we don’t even know we have them, unless a grill soaked in too much lighter fluid flames up and burns them off. Then we notice.
What do they do besides keep the mascara industry afloat and get into your eyes at the most inopportune moments, like during a tricky, precision maneuver with the car? How can a little, tiny lash cause so much excruciating pain? You’d think barbed wire was in there or a beetle was burrowing into your cornea. You rub until your eye is raw, cry for three hours straight, and after flushing 80 gallons of water in there, some microscopic hair emerges. If eyelashes are supposed to protect the eye from foreign material, they’re doing a dandy job of it!
Men aren’t big on the eyelashes, and we sure don’t want them lengthened. In fact, I don’t need any hair on my body lengthened. Hair length will never be a problem with me. A hair-stunting drug I could go for, but the Sicilian in me already makes my eyelashes thick like a blow-dried squirrel.
And I don’t understand the fascination women have with them. Is there any scientific proof that if their lashes flop about like elephant ears we’ll fall ga-ga over them? And mind you, I’m not being critical of lashes themselves. Just the need to take a glaucoma drug to make them longer. Can’t people just grow them the old fashioned way, with a little sunlight and watering. Maybe some Miracle-Gro in the morning, and talking gingerly to them before bed. You know, you always have to prune them back in the winter to promote healthier growth in the spring. Have you winter pruned your eyelashes yet?
The solution to every single one of our problems doesn’t have to be another drug. Especially when it comes to beauty. There are plenty of natural ways, like smearing avocado on your head and putting cucumbers on your eyes. (They do that on TV, so it must work.) Besides, the quest for beauty isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Maybe we need to take a stand right here. No more artificial beauty-izers! Be happy with the eyelashes you were born with, ladies. You look great as it is. Just remember, a longer lash is going to hurt like hell in your eye, and it’ll happen while you’re parallel parking.