criminally chic; Could you be guilty of crimes against beauty.

Byline: Marina Rust

Beauty victim? What's that?" asks Erica over dinner.

There are different kinds, I reply. First, there are literal victims, recipients of beauty services gone wrong: overprocessed hair, Botox droop, laser burns, teeth sensitized by bleaching. The more you do, the more you increase your odds for disaster-an eyelid sealed shut from lash glue, tattooed eyeliner that turns green. Have you ever seen someone whose Restylane's gone awry, where you can see a little squiggle of it just under the skin, in the wrinkle it's supposed to be seamlessly filling? Not pretty.

Then there's the woman who appears to be doing everything right but is so enslaved by her regimen, she has little time for anything else. This makes her a victim, too-chained to her hairdresser, her dermatologist, her manicurist, her makeup artist.

The third type is similar to a fashion victim: that person who tries every treatment and chases down every trend, even if it doesn't suit her or her lifestyle. She's trying too hard, and it shows. Like the blue Cleopatra eye at Alexander McQueen? Best left on the runway.

I remember a girl in the nineties, in New York, who constantly changed her hair-cut and color. From party to party, I could never recognize her. People say she had father issues. She eventually posed naked for Playboy.

This winter Britney Spears's hair was like a mood ring. It was a cry for help. Extensions-they're madness, both symptom and cause. I'd pick up the clippers, too.