Being beautiful means being yourself. Morphological beauty has lost its significance. What really matters today is what a woman reveals of her own self — and not just of her physical self, which is of little significance if it lacks expression. What matters instead is the beauty of her behaviour and the emotions she expresses — the beauty she acquires when she is in harmony with herself.
Jean-Claude Hagège studies the development of current trends on beauty and takes a personal stand. He denounces the extremes of a stereotyped code of beauty, with its increasingly rigid canons imposed by advertising and the media, and defines and defends a more subtle type of beauty emanating from the individual: emotional beauty. It is pointless, he argues, to pursue the idea of perfect physical beauty, because beauty depends first and foremost on the expression of a harmonious personality. The new goal is to be yourself. Beauty, in a latent state, lies in each one of us, and it is up to us to reveal it. This new awareness is bound to have a beneficial impact.
Due partly to tourism and plastic surgery, beauty has become a commodity on a vast and still-growing marketplace. It has become a favourite subject on television, giving rise to both fiction and nonfiction shows.
This book, by a plastic surgeon and expert on beauty, warns against the excessive use of plastic surgery and calls for a new approach to beauty.

Doctor Jean-Claude Hagège is a plastic and cosmetic surgeon and a member of the French and International Society of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery. He is the author of several books published by Editions Odile Jacob, notably Le Pouvoir de séduire (2003) and Le Guide pratique de la beauté (2004).