Potheads worse than boob-job addicts?

...and not just because the "before" mother, as drawn, is more likely to make real women snort "Ha! You think *you've* got problems, bimbo?" than to sympathize with her.

Well put, Erin. The art of the book simply drips with the same sort of maddening, false, and hopefully mostly unconscious assumptions about women's appearances which its target audience know doubt already swims in: this mother, who wants to look "prettier," is already a Barbie-propotions beauty, with requisite bare midriff. Simply ridiculous.

[T]he marijuana book is clearly fiction....[whereas] the few pages of the plastic Mommy book available to look at online don't ring so immediately false.

Good observation. I've no doubt that there's some small set of parents in upscale corners of the nation who really do act in ways similar to that portrayed in the first book, but overall I agree: with all its stock characters (the marijuana farmer, the wise doctor, the hip black troublemakers, etc.), it tells a story that is more obviously stylized and fictional than the other, whose earnestness is all the more troubling simply because it doesn't have to stretch for a patina of "normality"--the project of rebuilding the self is simply taken at face value, the only possible downside being a child who might misunderstand all those bandages.

Plastic surgery, on the other hand, isn't something you have to worry about people hanging about on street corners trying to sell to your kids. At least not yet.

True--but there are advertisments on the street corners selling images and expectations which plastic surgeons (and fashion designers, etc.) enourage young women to embrace, with consequences that I, at least, suspect may well be worse that those offered by the pot dealer. At any rate, I'd rather live in a place where I can keep my daughters mostly free of both.

"Marijuana's not completely harmless."

Though much less harmless than say, alcohol or cigarettes.