Here, for your viewing enjoyment, is a handsome pic of Horridus the triceratops dinosaur. Don’t swoon. But do try to remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. After all, it’s extremely likely that his mother or his girlfriend thought that his 2,200 lbs. physique was really hot stuff.

Such is our perception of beauty.

Last week, I told you about some of the hairdos my mom cranked out in her beauty shop, and I mentioned that the finger waves and marcels were my favorites. To me, at least, I’m still awed by how easy she made it look – with a little waving lotion, a comb and her fingers to shape the waves, and then the clamps holding them in place while the lady sat under the dryer. For the marcels, she used a curling iron on the lady’s already shampooed and dried hair.

When I was writing that blob, I kept hoping I could find a photo of Audrey Hepburn wearing a finger wave. None showed up – closest I could find was one where she was done up in a pixie cut.

While I failed to find a shot where I could use Hepburn as my finger wave “model”, she was still my idea of the kind of beauty that would have sold you on how pretty finger wave hairstyles could look.

Audrey Hepburn was an award-winning movie star, famous for her fashion, style and elegance, – and also for her kindness, eloquence and quiet humanitarian efforts. She was a truly beautiful woman. You didn’t need to be her mother to see that.

As for her “beauty regime”, she once said, “I believe in pink. I believe in manicures. I believe in primping at leisure and wearing lipstick. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day, and I believe in miracles.”

And she also said, “If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadness, not my miscarriages, or my father leaving home, but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough.”

One of her favorite readings was called “Time Tested Beauty Tips”, written by author Sam Levenson as a wise letter-poem to his grandchild. it was read at Audrey’s funeral by one of her two sons:

For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair, let a child run his fingers through it once a day.
For poise, walk with the knowledge you’ll never walk alone….
People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and redeemed and redeemed….
Never throw out anybody.
Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you’ll find one at the end of your arm.
As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands. One for helping yourself,
the other for helping others.

Somehow, botox and plastic surgery and finger wave hairdos didn’t get mentioned in the “Time Tested Beauty Tips” but it seems Audrey managed to face the world quite nicely without them.

And, apparently, so did Horridus. Of course, as you can see in his “After” photo below, he seems to have overdone it on his weight-loss program. The poor guy musta shed at least 2,000 pounds. It’s not very attractive. As a fashion dinosaur myself, even I know you can’t lose that must weight just to get skinny, toned, and featured in a museum. And he lost all that nice hair on his tail, too. I can certainly relate to that.