Searching for beauty not just skin deep
January 24, 2011


In an article, "Zapping Fat" (Tulsa World, May 2007) science writer Cary Aspinwall writes that Dr. Leslie Masters who at the time operated Advanced Skin Solutions, was making about $2,000 a pop for Smartipo, a fat-reducing laser treatment. As successful as her advanced current cosmetic surgery practice in Tulsa, now called the Masters Clinic, must be, Dr. Leslie Masters apparently decided to write a book in which she cautions everyone against simply beautifying the body and neglecting their spiritual side--against using cosmetic surgery "simply wanting to feel better."

"The tragedy of modern society is that we have all become so consumed with being spectacularly happy that we miss the bliss of contentment," Masters writes in a chapter about "feelings." She concludes that people are attaining this "happiness" by whatever their money can buy.

Naked - This is My Story..This is Our Song...(authorHouse, May 28, 2010) is Masters' attempt to convince readers to confess their life's trials and tribulations as she has attempted to do through the use of written vignettes. Pictured at left, the casual observer sees a very attractive woman, but what Masters reveals in her book is a body torn apart by a serious car accident on black ice. She was a passenger and an inner being consequently tormented by daemons and an addiction to pain killers.

Masters' publicist in the introduction to the book tells us the author is "a 45 year old [born Oct. 1964] physician, single mother of three, soccer mom, cheer and gymnastics coach, cosmetic medicine expert, entrepreneur, small business owner, imperfect, spiritual human being."

"It is in constructing my story," Masters admits early in the book, "that I first realized how very much I did not know about myself, a thought worth pondering." But she's convinced herself that in preparing her story for others she has seen her life's zigs and zags and has revealed to herself opportunities to control its outcome, whether she capitalized on those "choices" or not.

Tearing apart one's facade is not for the feint at heart. Masters tries to build up immunity to the destruction of what self-analysis might cause by defining courage and fear and elaborating on the need to allow feelings in, yet keep resentments in check and above all to win the battle against unrealistic expectations.

"Really telling our stories means that we have to set our egos and our fears aside and become rigorously honest," Masters writes. We are to assume that she writes these revelations honestly, providing sections of her book that appear in black italics print--writings that do not seem to run in chronological order and are sandwiched in by Masters' proselytizing and citations of the work of Hegel, Freud, James, Liebnitz and Kierkegaard, to name a few others who attempted to decipher the meaning of life.

But, the reader may be a bit perplexed. How should "rigorously honest" be defined and in what context? What facts can be admitted in the rendering of our stories and what can't? And is the reader or listener gifted enough to read-between-the lines? Admittedly, what seems to be intriguing is what isn't said but what we hope to eventually be revealed. With that in mind the readers of Naked may want to hope for a sequel.


Title - Naked- This is My Story...This is Our Song...
Author-Leslie Masters, MD
Publisher - AuthorHouse (1st ed., May 28, 2010)
300 pp.
$13.64 (softcover) at amazon.com
ISBN-10: 1452015767
ISBN-13: 978-1452015767


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