Sharleen Johnson McCooey can't remember the exact day she found herself thinking about her looks again. She just knows that at some point in her mid-40s, she caught herself looking in the mirror with the scrutiny of an adolescent.

The moment came as a surprise. "I grew up when feminism was becoming prevalent," says the Victoria, British Columbia-based writer. "I always had a chip on my shoulder about the media's influence on women and how they should look."

But there she was, thinking the unthinkable: Was it time for plastic surgery?

Unlike the 7.4 million Americans who decided in 2000 that cosmetic surgery was the answer to one perceived bodily imperfection or another, Ms. McCooey chose a different route. She wrote a novel, "It's My Body and I'll Cry If I Want To," in which she wrestles with her questions through the experiences of a female journalist who explores the world of beauty clinics and cosmetic surgery.

"The simplest way to solve the issue is for women, or anyone, to appreciate their uniqueness, which is really simple, but who can do it?" she says. "How do you get to the point where you don't judge yourself against media images?"

McCooey isn't the only one struggling to find satisfaction with what she sees in the mirror. A culture fixated on youth and aging has emerged in recent years, from the highly-publicized case of Fox news anchor Greta Van Susteren, who made front-page news with her recent decision to have cosmetic surgery, to the millions of Americans who fuel what's estimated as a $30 billion business in anti-aging treatments and products.

Statistics testify to the trend: According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), cosmetic plastic-surgery procedures nearly tripled between 1992 and 2000. Popular procedures ticked up dramatically, with liposuction increasing by 386 percent, and breast augmentation by 476 percent. In 2000 alone, 786,911 people had botox injections - to erase wrinkles by paralyzing facial muscles.

And while plastic surgery used to be the domain of older women, 35- to 50-year-olds now account for close to half of patients, with men accounting for more than a million procedures in 2000.

Experts on aging, beauty, and popular culture caution against judging individuals for the choices they make to feel better about themselves. But they argue that the huge growth in the anti-aging business is a dramatic reflection of American society's increasing obsession with youth, particularly as it relates to women, and its negative feelings about growing old. Those attitudes, they say, have deep cultural implications that deserve broader attention.

"We ought to have prevalent public conversations about who this appeals to, and why," says Timothy Burke, a professor and expert in popular culture at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. "We're close to normalizing things which, when you step back from them a little bit, at the very least require you to go, 'Whoa.' "

Experts say it's too easy to blame the media alone for the nation's youth fixation. Hollywood images certainly flood cultural consciousness. But more subtle factors are also at play. Some center on workplace relations and perceptions about who gets promoted and why. Increasing strains of consumerism, with their promises that satisfaction can be had for a price, also play a role - as does the presence of more disposable income and the falling prices of some antiaging procedures. Then, of course, there's an aging baby-boomer population that has long defined itself in terms of youth culture.

Helen Dennis, an expert on aging, employment, and retirement, says the trend also suggests something even more unsettling: a growing cultural distrust that individuals, especially those who are older, will be judged on the basis of who they are and what they have done.

"Individuals aren't going to risk either being nonhireable or noncompetitive or less desirable," she says. "It's a feeling that our physical presentation is of enormous importance.

"The feeling is that people are making up their minds about other people in 20 seconds, based on appearance," she says, "and that youth is better than looking old, whatever looking old may be."

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