13 DECEMBER 1997, Page 32

Under the skin

Sir: Melanie McDonagh's piece Nutting it fine', 6 December) on Western society's lat- est Faustian pact is brilliant. When cosmet- ic surgery moves onto the mainstream want list, we have yet another sign of how lives of affluence may conceal desperate emotional poverty — under the skin, as it were. The pathos of the decision to submit to this par- ticular knife often lies in the wrong answer to the right question: why am I unhappy?

Howard McLean

corc@ibl.bm