"It must be murder to be an aging beauty, a former Tadzio, to see your future as an ignored spectator rushing up to meet you like the hard pavement. What a small sip of gall to be able to time with each passing year the ever-shorter interval in which someone's eyes focus upon you. And then shift away."

What a brilliant, if not painful insight. So beautifully written. I've been reading and re-reading these words of Rakoff's all day and finding that they help make sense of the rush to nip, tuck, pull, suck and fill.

Sadly though, I often find my eyes shifting quickly away from some of the more carefully reconstructed faces because the result of so much surgery is sometimes less attractive than its natural alternative. Even so, I think I'm beginning to understand why it's at least worth a shot for some people. Grace in the thrall of aging isn't an easy thing to accomplish. Harder still is dealing with the pain of becoming invisible.

Thanks to Mr. Rakoff for helping me understand the phenomenon a little better and nudging me a little closer to compassion in the process.

I've been a subscriber to Salon for several years and will continue to be so even if they occasionally include content that I'm not interested in. Would be kind of difficult to tailor every feature story to the needs of a very eclectic readership. As a photographer working in the entertainment industry for example, the occasional article about celebrities and their "fluff" has as much relevance to me as political essays have to those of you who earn your living in careers that are heavily influenced by what's going on politically.

Hollywood and its players generate an extreme amount of revenue in our culture and I think that makes an article about Ms. Aniston at least somewhat newsworthy considering how much cash her name and face have generated this year for a lot of people. It's a cultural phenomenon that I think is worth exploring and I personally have no problem with it being done here on Salon because it's part of a bigger picture that Salon does a great job of covering.

Not for the world would I consider canceling my subscription to Salon because it occasionally features columns and/or essays about things I'm not interested in. If something doesn't interest me I don't click on it.

The deeper I got into David Amsden's essay the more I thought I was reading something I'd written thirty years ago. Oh to be in my twenties again, thinking I had all the answers and sharing them with everyone vis-a-vis broad sweeping generalizations and idealized notions of what life is all about.

As well intentioned as I'm sure Amsden's thoughts were, they suffer from the myopic hubris of youth, which his articulate writing doesn't do a very good job of masking. As another letter writer observed, this was an essay that felt like it should have been on Amsden's blog rather than on Salon.

Is it too late to append Salon's biggest misses of the past ten years?