A COUPLE of weeks ago, Senate majority leader Harry Reid unveiled a health care bill that included a 5-percent tax on elective cosmetic surgery.
It’s been hilarious watching the right wing try to spin this one. Using plastic surgeons as their attack dogs, they’ve suggested - more or less with a straight face - that the measure is sexist (because women get more plastic surgery than men!) and that it’s a tax on the working class (because not everyone who gets liposuction is rich!).
I mean, really: Do you want some government bureaucrat coming between you and your new boobs?
But the real problem with this measure is that it doesn’t go nearly far enough. If you’re going to tax vanity, why not tax the entire vanity industry?
What’s that? You’ve never heard of the vanity industry? Turn on the TV and you’ll see one nonstop infomercial for it, from your nip-and-tucked local news crew to the preening babes and chiseled hunks who populate prime time.
If there’s one thing Americans of all persuasions have been taught to covet, it’s a pretty face and a hot body. We stare at them all day - from our multiplexes to our cereal boxes - the natural result being that we’ve come to expect from ourselves impossible pulchritude.
This is the reason girls in America start dieting at the age of 7 and young men gobble drugs to plump their muscles. It’s why women pay billions every year to straighten and style their hair, and men even more to keep it. And it’s why plastic surgery has become a modern medical mother lode.
At this point, even our political decisions are infected by our beauty obsession. (If you think Sarah Palin’s ski bunny chic wasn’t integral to her selection as John McCain’s running mate, I’ve got a Bridge to Nowhere to sell you.)
No matter where you turn in this country, there’s someone lovely hoping to make a buck off your insecurity. So why not include vanity among the other vices we tax? If Reid and his honchos really want to generate revenue for job creation and health care reform, they should levy taxes on those who make a living making the rest of us feel ugly. A few possible targets:
1. Super models
Proposed rate: 75 percent (for those earning more than $1 million per year). Is it fair to penalize young men and women because they happen to have been born with perfect bone structure? No. Is it fair that they earn enough to feed the starving masses for standing on a beach in Belize, looking bored and underfed? Uh, no.
2. Movie stars
Proposed rate: 90 percent (for those earning more than $1 million dollars per picture). Finally, a tax on the super-wealthy that even the GOP can support! They’ll certainly enjoy watching Hollywood’s liberal elite throw fund-raisers to pay off the mortgage on their beach homes.
3. Adult filmmakers
Proposed rate: 50 percent (for those earning more than $300,000 per year). I think I speak for nearly all of us when I say that the proliferation of porn has made people feel much worse about their sexual fitness. Of course, there’s always a chance that taxing the industry might discourage aspirants from pursuing careers in porn. That would be terrible, wouldn’t it?
4. People Magazine’s sexiest man and woman alive
Proposed rate: 100 percent. Hey, they can always launch their own clothing lines.
I recognize that these taxes would represent an unprecedented effort to discourage mindless self-worship in our culture. Which is why I hope values voters, in particular my brethren on the Christian right, would support my proposals. As it is written in Psalms, “Surely men of low degree are vanity.’’
I’m not suggesting we punish people for being physically attractive, only that we target the cynical industries that use this beauty for profit. Shouldn’t the content of our characters be the measure of our worth?
Steve Almond is a guest columnist. His latest book is the essay collection “(Not that You Asked).’’ 
