Authenticity Chic

Trend watchers are celebrating what Peggy Noonan describes as the end of "bland affluence" in the economic downturn, the forced return to good old-fashioned down-home American values.

"The cities and suburbs of America are about to get rougher-looking," she writes. "This will not be all bad. There will be a certain authenticity chic. Storefronts, pristine buildings—all will spend less on upkeep, and gleam less.

"So will humans. People will be allowed to grow old again...There will be fewer facelifts and browlifts, less Botox, less dyed hair among both men and women. They will look more like people used to look, before perfection came in. Middle-aged bodies will be thicker and softer, with more maternal and paternal give. There will be fewer gyms and fewer trainers, but more walking."

As an octogenarian, I've heard this song before--more than once. In the 1960s, many retreated from city life and spent up to four hours a day commuting to the country where they could chop wood, grow vegetables and rear children with small-town values.

In the following decades, as a magazine editor, I saw the rising popularity of periodicals like Country Living, Real Simple, Vermont Life et al.

Below the radar of Baby Boomer striving, there has always been a strain of longing for a better life, for authenticity--not the chic of dressing up in it.

As a lifelong walker who has never had a personal trainer or spent time in a gym, I can reassure the newly poor that they won't be giving up much.

"The new home fashion will be spare," Noonan predicts. "This will be the return of an old WASP style: the good, frayed carpet; dogs that look like dogs and not a hairdo in a teacup, as miniature dogs back from the canine boutique do now."

Man (and Woman) need not live by Botox alone.

Burritos and Botox Beat Sex

Hard to tell what cultural studies scholars will make of all this, but American web users are less interested in sex than their counterparts in Egypt, India and Turkey.

But our Internet searchers lead the world in curiosity about burritos and Iraq, and are second only to Australians in asking about botox and car bombs, according to Google data since 2004.

The Irish want to know about hangovers and Kate Moss, Italians are inquisitive about Viagra while people in Pakistan are understandably concerned about terrorism and the Taliban.

So in the long run, the average American is a lover of Mexican food who wants to erase frown lines caused by worries over the violence in the Middle East. Short term, if you check quickly, the preoccupation is with fires destroying castles in Malibu.