The theory goes like this: advertisers present female consumers with an ideal, impossible standard beauty. They do this so women feel perpetually inadequate and insecure, which keeps them buying and buying in the hopes of achieving the unachievable, of becoming one of the magazine women. The magazine women, though, have no real world counterpart. They’re not only the product of plastic surgery, personal trainers, makeup artists and hair stylists, but of Photoshop artists. They’re a myth.

There’s a hole in that argument, but you won’t spot it by reading the above paragraph alone. If you spend some time in the Bellagio, though, you’ll spot the hole for sure. You’ll spot it walking by you every few seconds. I did last night, at least. The supposedly impossible standard of female beauty is not only possible, not only achievable, but has been achieved, by every other woman in the place.