Someday we will be able to choose our looks and abilities, we will engineer our dreams on scientific terms, and even that will just change and not end our competition for an elusive ideal. But for now, people go to extremes to find the future, to locate the fountain of youth. Case in point: the “pretties” of Thailand. From Jonah Fisher at the BBC:

“They’re beautiful, well dressed and for the right price will promote anything from washing powder to luxury cars.

But working as a product promoter or ‘pretty’ in Thailand is an occupation where image counts for everything.

At 32, Athitiya Eiamyai had reached the age when most ‘pretties’ start to find demand for their services falling.

For a decade she had batted her eyelashes and flashed a ready smile to promote everything from luxury cars to new mobile phones.

But for Athitiya, or Kratae as everyone knew her, retiring gracefully from this $100-a-day job was not an option. She had parents and siblings who depended on the money she earned and she told her friends she was determined to fight ageing every step of the way.

In the last five years of her life, she had invested thousands of dollars into altering the way she looked. Her skin had been lightened and she’d had several rounds of surgery to change her nose, narrow her jaw and augment her breasts.

But according to her best friend and fellow pretty Pim Saisanard, she still wasn’t happy.

‘Kratae used to say if you want to be a beautiful woman you must put up with pain,’ she said. ‘She wanted bigger hips to match her bigger breasts. And she said that would make her perfect.'”