By Marianne Szegedy-Maszak
From UnderWire

They look great, don't they? Demi Moore and Sharon Stone. Lauren Hutton and Elizabeth Hurley. Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss. In the world of beauty, these women are the elect, the standard bearers, the ones the rest of us look at with admiration or resentment, or with a newly wide-eyed assessment of our own sheer inadequacy. Through some magic alchemy of genes and good luck, they are simply, effortlessly beautiful. The rest of us can only bow down in respect.

Liz Hurley and Elton John are just two of the stars who shine for celeb photo- grapher Patrick McMullan. Learn his secrets: chat Dec. 14, 6 p.m. PT, 9 p.m. ET.

Well, wait a minute. I am with you so far, but let's think about this "effort-
lessly" adverb. Reflecting on how much time and money all this "natural beauty" takes is an antidote to the twin poisons of envy and inadequacy. 

Here is a little exercise: Just for a minute, let's not look at these stars as women at all (and I know that if a man were writing this there would be outrage here, but stay with me for a moment). Let's look at them as, say, great pieces of real estate. 

When you look at the fabulous paintings, the glorious grounds, the stunning patios in showcase houses, is there ever a feeling that YOUR house is a shabby inadequate shack in comparison? OK, maybe there is that feeling every once in a while, but it is easy for us to remind ourselves that if we only had the money, we certainly have the taste to live like that. Mansions, therefore, are a breeze to keep securely in the realm of the impossible luxury. Why? Because everyone knows that there is one thing that makes great real estate possible and that is money. 

But looking at a beautiful celebrity we forget all this. What we remember is all the discomfort of high school where there was always one girl who managed to slip through those perilous shoals of adolescence without even a zit. She was always perfectly dressed, knew what to wear and do with her hair. It goes without saying that she dated her male counterpart. Beauty, then, was a gift from the gods. It took some good luck (OK, some great luck), self-discipline and a good hand with blow dryers and makeup brushes. 

Well, let's wake up, ladies; that is just ridiculous. The gorgeous women who populate our television sets, magazines and movie screens don't just dab on a little Maybelline mascara (ever notice how it's always the cheapest drugstore mascara they say they wear?) and jog around the block to keep trim. We are talking serious money here, for basic appearance maintenance. The kind of money that would put a lovely addition on that ranch-style home of yours. 

How much money? Well, frankly, I just don't know because these balance sheets are not exactly in the public domain. But consider that a breast job will run about $8,000. A personal trainer like, say, Ray Kybartas, whom Madonna booked for three hours a day, six days a week, costs $150 an hour TWO YEARS AGO. (I will do the math for you: That is at minimum $450 a day or $2,700 a week, or $140,000 a year, and that assumes that his rates haven't gone up in two years, which is unlikely.) And that is without, say, your personal stylist who will run between $1,500 and $5,000 a day just to help you reconsider the way you have been packaging yourself. 

Hungry? You can always do what Jennifer Aniston and Neve Campbell do, which is to get annotated restaurant menus so they won't make any caloric mistakes. Or when Alicia Silverstone needed to drop some weight, she hired this woman to make three cooked, portion-and-calorie-controlled meals a day for a mere $230 a week. Which, I must admit, sounds pretty good to me. 

You may have noticed that I didn't even mention the basics like skin care, hair stylists, makeup artists, clothes and accessories. Sure, a number of them get freebies — in the grand tradition of them that's got get — but there is still an appalling entourage for all this. Remember, we're talking about a place where a child's birthday party once ran $1 million. 

Dan Deutsch, the sunglasses czar of Hollywood who owns Dan Deutsch's Optical Outlook, explains that people there really NEED those $1,500 gold-rimmed Cartier sunglasses. "If you are taking a meeting and need to impress someone, it's not like you can bring around your $3 million house," he confided to Cosmopolitan. "You need something else." 

And thus my real-estate metaphor makes a full circle. Part of spending all this money is as a vehicle to impress people. The other part is that these huge price tags for primping are simply the cost of doing business when your business is about appearance. 

Here's what we mere female mortals must remember the next time we feel that atavistic, high-school twinge when looking at Sharon Stone: She is just walking around with her house.