Pursuing beauty – and youth

I remember a movie starring Elizabeth Taylor who portrays a middle-aged woman trying desperately to save her floundering marriage. Her tactic of choice: visiting a clinic in Switzerland where she undergoes drastic cosmetic surgery.

It wasn’t a horror movie by any stretch of the imagination, but I remember the dread and horror I felt upon catching sight of the actress’ postoperative state. Her head was bandaged, but her eyes looked horribly swollen, with deep purple bruises, her lips almost gray. Of course, in later scenes Ms Taylor’s beauty shone through, though I don’t think her desperate measures were enough to save her marriage.

Still, the scene forever colored my views about plastic surgery in general. Nothing, not even a man I loved, could ever compel me to go through the procedure, I thought—at that time.

Just recently, my daughter went with her friends on a trip to Korea and one of the things she reported upon her return was how common cosmetic procedures were there. “Teenage girls would walk down the streets with bandage on their noses and eyes,” she observed. And it was quite common, she said, that parents would give their daughters as high school graduation gifts facelifts, nose and eye jobs, or even breast augmentation.

Maybe it’s because I’m older now, or that the view in the mirror each morning has become increasingly distressing. But I quite understand the motivations of the woman in the Liz Taylor movie. Maybe it wasn’t just the desire to hold on to her perfidious husband. Maybe it also had a lot to do with boosting her self-esteem, or preserving the vestiges of youth before the wrinkles and age spots and sagging skin took over.

And maybe that’s what’s kept places like The Zen Institute in business for the past 12 years. Dr. Mary Jane Torres, “MJ” to friends and valued clients, says that to her, “beauty is a journey,” and is defined more by “inner peace, a positive outlook and a love-filled life.”

Although The Zen Institute offers a wide range of treatments, Dr. MJ herself believes that “noninvasive treatments are more effective since [these] encourage individuals to change their lifestyle altogether.” Included in the menu of services that The Zen Institute offers are nutritional advice, detoxification,
personal training, as well as weight management, along with body sculpting and face contouring.

To mark its 12th year of operations, The Zen Institute offers “MJ Ultimate Wellness,” which offers a package of services tailored to the individual needs of clients that include detoxification, weight management, hormone balancing and regenerative cell therapy.

Ageless beauty Boots Anson Roa, a Zen Institute regular, in a video tribute, added another dimension to its appeal. It is, she said, a place where she goes to for relaxation and destressing, such that she walks out the door after each visit feeling rejuvenated and youthful again.

Veronica Baluyut Jimenez, a TV newscaster, who joined our Bulong Pulungan group for lunch, volunteered herself as a walking example of The Zen Institute’s services. With no embarrassment, she readily admitted to undergoing services like facelifts and skin firming, body contouring and even internal cleansing. The last she particularly endorsed: “You feel so clean and energetic afterwards!”

Perhaps those days of secret trips to Switzerland and going into hiding while one’s stitches and bandages are no longer visible are long gone. Every woman, after all, follows her own path to beauty and to healthy aging. And if you have the means and the motivation, a woman — or a man — has nothing to apologize for in pursuing the elusive rewards of eternal youth.