I feel pretty ... oh so pretty ...

I'm not on the cutting edge of anything. Period.

You're more likely to find me in ripped-up jeans and an old concert t-shirt than a houndstooth skirt and an understated black blazer. I don't wear makeup on the weekends. And I haven't cut my hair since, um, well ... since before I went to L.A. And that was two years ago next month.

That's not to say that I don't know how to be pretty. I mean, I own a copy of Beauty: The New Basics. I also own copies of Kevyn Aucoin's two books, Facing Forward and Making Faces.

I even did a stint with Mary Kay right after I got married. Didn't take long for me to find out that (a.) I'm about as adept at selling things as a pile of cat litter, and (b.) it's a frickin' cult. (Seriously. Worse than religion. More on that some other time.)

I actually still order MK about once a year, because it allows me to get my makeup half-price. And, hey, a little lipstick never hurt anyone (except for the people who believe in this urban legend).

Anyway, I picked up my copy of Beauty the other night — it looked kind of lonely on my bookshelf, among Paul's sci-fi books, my graphic novels, and a smattering of video game guides. And I came across something in the book I'd never noticed before: "The Face Time Line," a seven-page look at beauty rituals, etc., through the ages.

On the timeline:

• 1400s: Upper-class Frenchwomen use white or beige water-soluble paste on their faces, and some make a concotion of asparagus roots, wild anise, and the bulbs of white lilies steeped in the milk of asses and red goats, aged in warm horse manure, and filtered through felt—to improve the skin.
• 1800s: "Enameling" the face with white lead salts is a fashionable—and sometimes fatal—practice.
• 1880s: Women consume prussic acid, corrosive sublimate, and caustic polish—all toxic substances—to improve their complexions.
• Early 1900s: Injections of carmine (a red substance derived from the cochineal insect) promise to recapture the "bloom of youth," but instead create bumps and pimples that, unlike the "bloom," never go away.

The timelines (the book also includes hair and body timelines) are full of interesting and/or positive things, too — ancient west African dreadlocks, the regulation of toxic products in cosmetics, Sun Protection Factor ratings, etc.

But it's kind of disturbing to see the things that people — men and women alike — have done to themselves through the ages in the name of looking "pretty."

And it makes me wonder which of our rituals will be fodder for the people of the future. Face lifts? Liposuction? Lip-plumping? Botox? Tattooed eyeliner? Hair transplants?