PALM SPRINGS, CA—The last year of the century has been an outstanding one for America’s pretty women, the president of the National Organization For Pretty Women said Monday during the group’s annual convention and spa retreat in Palm Springs.
“This will forever be known as the Year Of The Pretty Woman, for her achievements have been exceptional and notable,” said NOPW president Sherrie Roberts in a keynote address before nearly 36,000 members. “From breakthroughs in breast-augmentation technology to advances in pretty-woman casting in big-budget Hollywood blockbusters, 1999 has truly been a banner year for us.”
Roberts based many of her claims on statistics gathered in a recent survey of NOPW members. Among the impressive gains for pretty women this year: A full 100 percent of fashion ads featured pretty women, up from 99 percent in 1998; pretty women were featured on the cover of 99 percent of women’s magazines and 99.6 percent of men’s magazines; and pretty women could be found in abundance in such lucrative, high-profile fields as advertising, marketing, public relations, modeling, acting, network anchoring and trophy-wifing.
“Pretty women are very much like other women,” Roberts said. “Like them, we are businesspersons, entrepreneurs, authors. The only difference is that we are much, much prettier.”
Quality of life, the survey found, also continued to rise for pretty women in 1999. A record 98 percent of NOPW members got what they wanted in the first half of this year, up from 95 percent during the same period in 1998. Only 3 percent experienced any runs in their pantyhose, and a scant 1.5 percent had to pay for their paella or sushi.
“What a long way we’ve come since our very first convention back in 1983, held in a Chicago hotel that didn’t even provide facials for its customers,” said Kellie Peters, NOPW’s lovely and talented director of media relations. “But we who have been with NOPW since its inception knew we would someday realize our lofty goals, and we enter the new millennium with great optimism and expectations.”
NOPW credits much of its success to years of activism in the community. In addition to sponsoring eyeliner drives and 10K charity fun runs against split ends, the organization has also reached out to thousands of young, at-risk girls.
“Before NOPW, tolerance of imperfection was seriously lowering standards of prettiness across the country,” Peters said. “So, in 1985, NOPW began visiting schools, teaching pretty girls to bring out the best in themselves by first recognizing their ’self-center,’ then esteeming their own interests above those of others and, finally, learning such valuable skills as how to destroy a vulnerable young person’s ego with a single remark. Today, there isn’t a single girl who hasn’t felt the effects of our work.”
NOPW vice-president Jennie Walsh, 22, is part of a younger generation of pretty women that has been influenced by the organization.
“Oh, my God, Sherrie has been, like, such a fantastic president all these years,” Walsh said. “I remember how she came to my high-school in, like, 1992 or something. She’s been just so influential in my life. It’s amazing how she hasn’t let stuff like gray hair and crows’ feet stop her. Believe me, Sherrie, if you ever want to take a sabbatical or finally get that tush lift you’ve been needing for so long, I’d be happy to take over for you.”
A visibly touched Roberts embraced Walsh and gave her two quick air kisses, claiming she didn’t want to “harm her makeup job, which covers her enormous pores so well.”
“What we should all try to remember is that prettiness is not just skin deep,” Roberts said. “It also involves hair and nails.”
