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"Don't hesitate to be as revolutionary as science. Don't hesitate to be as reactionary as the multiplication table."
- Calvin Coolidge
In the Pentagon City mall, through which I walk each day to my Metro train station, there sits the Arlington branch of Modern Day Spa. As if to prove just how modern it is, it lists a number of their more exciting beautification services, one of which always catches my eye, nestled between the "Botox/Restylane" and "Thermage: Non-Surgical Facelift": it is called "Fraxel: Laser Resurfacing."
Laser Resurfacing? It sounds like something you might do to your driveway, or possibly a mob informant. Since the procedure is not (yet) a household term, I had to look it up to find out what the hell it is, exactly.
The official Web site for the Fraxel Laser (http://www.fraxel.com) is almost frighteningly vague, describing it only as a "safe, non-invasive procedure that allows you to rediscover the fresh, healthy skin of your youth." Basically, it is the fountain of youth, doled out in the form of extremely concentrated light waves.
It occurs to me that lasers have come a long way since I was a kid. In the 1980s and before, lasers were considered primarily as weapons apparatus, playing prominent roles in Star Wars: The Movie and Star Wars: The Missile Defense System. The G.I. Joe and Transformers cartoons of my childhood eschewed contemporary bullet-oriented warfare in favor of laserrific blasters that fired little blasts of light and instantly cauterized any incidental flesh wounds.
In the 1990s, though, lasers began to gain broader acceptance, to the point where people now routinely ask "doctors" to fire lasers into their eyeballs and slice off little bits of cornea. We use stupid little laser-pointers to punctuate our stupid little PowerPoint presentations. And the most common illicit activity utilizing lasers is the inveterate electro-mechanical duplication of copyrighted entertainment material.
So I think it's a little ironic that this Fraxel: Laser Resurfacing is now being utilized to indulge the vanity of a certain demographic population, the same population whose enduring image of lasers is probably the one slowly ascending toward Sean Connery's privates in Goldfinger. My guess is that by the time my generation is trying to get rid of its wrinkles, Modern Day Spa will be using something we today think of as deadly, like smallpox, cigarette smoke or Celine Dion.
- Calvin Coolidge
In the Pentagon City mall, through which I walk each day to my Metro train station, there sits the Arlington branch of Modern Day Spa. As if to prove just how modern it is, it lists a number of their more exciting beautification services, one of which always catches my eye, nestled between the "Botox/Restylane" and "Thermage: Non-Surgical Facelift": it is called "Fraxel: Laser Resurfacing."
Laser Resurfacing? It sounds like something you might do to your driveway, or possibly a mob informant. Since the procedure is not (yet) a household term, I had to look it up to find out what the hell it is, exactly.
The official Web site for the Fraxel Laser (http://www.fraxel.com) is almost frighteningly vague, describing it only as a "safe, non-invasive procedure that allows you to rediscover the fresh, healthy skin of your youth." Basically, it is the fountain of youth, doled out in the form of extremely concentrated light waves.
It occurs to me that lasers have come a long way since I was a kid. In the 1980s and before, lasers were considered primarily as weapons apparatus, playing prominent roles in Star Wars: The Movie and Star Wars: The Missile Defense System. The G.I. Joe and Transformers cartoons of my childhood eschewed contemporary bullet-oriented warfare in favor of laserrific blasters that fired little blasts of light and instantly cauterized any incidental flesh wounds.
In the 1990s, though, lasers began to gain broader acceptance, to the point where people now routinely ask "doctors" to fire lasers into their eyeballs and slice off little bits of cornea. We use stupid little laser-pointers to punctuate our stupid little PowerPoint presentations. And the most common illicit activity utilizing lasers is the inveterate electro-mechanical duplication of copyrighted entertainment material.
So I think it's a little ironic that this Fraxel: Laser Resurfacing is now being utilized to indulge the vanity of a certain demographic population, the same population whose enduring image of lasers is probably the one slowly ascending toward Sean Connery's privates in Goldfinger. My guess is that by the time my generation is trying to get rid of its wrinkles, Modern Day Spa will be using something we today think of as deadly, like smallpox, cigarette smoke or Celine Dion.
