We'll still wear makeup, but we won't need it as much because everyone will be gorgeous. The line between health and beauty will be increasingly smudged as beauty products go from external to internal, with better results. The cosmetic bag as we know it will be more like your personal beauty pharmacy, with bottles of pills next to the eyeliner and blush.

There will be a beauty pill that will make your skin look tan without getting leathery from baking in the sun. A pill to change your hair color, shape and texture. Even gimmick-averse Leonard Lauder, head of the Estee Lauder cosmetics giant, predicts that the switch from external to internal beauty products is coming. "Chances are very strong," he says, "that before the end of the next century, we'll take a pill that will make our skin look a lot better."

Technology will change beauty habits in other ways. Teeth will become a fashion accessory, changed as often as your outfit, like fake nails. And get ready for the ultimate Judy Jetson moment: you'll be able to literally put on your public face (with invisible pegs) before leaving the house. "If you want big eyes, you can have big eyes," says Dr. Howard Murad, a Los Angeles dermatologist, "The way things are moving now, it could be 10 years out."

Which raises the question, How will we tell one another apart if everyone looks like Claudia Schiffer? Well, maybe we won't want to, says Dr. Alan Matarasso, a New York City plastic surgeon. With globalization, he predicts, the new beauty ideal will evolve from blond, blue-eyed Nordic to a darker skin look that's a more heterogeneous blend. When more of the population can fit under the beauty tent, we won't feel so compelled to change our looks. That will be the most potent beauty pill of all.

Charla Krupp is editor in chief of the beauty website eve.com

Back to Question Page

Will Women Still Need Men?