Really, I don’t snoop in my friends’ bathrooms. But now and then I have occasion to see inside the bathrooms of other people’s homes, and without any cabinet-prying at all, I’ve noticed something that I find strange.

No, I’m not talking about any specific individual (though you might want to scrub that tub sometime this decade, Dave). I’m just referring to the bewildering number and variety of … what term could encompass them all? Health and beauty aids? Body, hair and skin care products? There’s so many that there’s not even one phrase that covers the lot.

Anyway, many of the people whose houses I’ve seen have shelves full, from a half-dozen kinds of shampoo through a dozen preparations for specific body parts to geologic strata of makeup.

I went home and looked at my own: soap and shampoo, a few items like razor and toothbrush, and that’s about it. Yet even those I consider to be close friends haven’t notified me that I’m notably stinkier than the average, so I’m going to assume (until told otherwise) that this minimal treatment is doing an adequate job.

Mind you, soap won’t make me an object of adulation, but what would? I don’t think anything I could buy in a bottle or tube would manage that.

My point is that the same holds true for most people. Some people are naturally attractive, some are not, and some can be with sufficient work. But quite a few are just as good-looking without frequent renovation. Others, like myself, will quickly run up against the law of diminishing returns: Past basic hygiene, even the thickest coating of beauty products won’t hide the basic shapes and textures.

Nonetheless, we’re all constantly urged to “improve” ourselves with the latest in skin and hair care, with the suggestion that one squirt will make us irresistible. A number of popular beauty-tip books came out while I worked at a bookstore in Louisville. I remember one woman coming in to ask for the most popular at the moment. She was obviously well over 90, and heavily gnarled, but every fold bore a thick coating of makeup already. She crept to the counter and asked me, “Do you have ‘Winning the Beauty War?’ ”

I was able to direct her to a big stack of that book. But all the time I was thinking, “Lady, face it – you’ve lost. It was time to haul down that flag 40 years ago.”

This isn’t limited to women and transvestites, of course. Many guys are particularly obsessed with hair, either its loss or whitening. Sure, a little work can help for a while, but when you get to dramatic comb-overs and trying to exactly match last month’s shade of dye, it’s time to give up with some dignity. You’re not fooling anyone anymore, though you do keep giggling kids entertained for a while.

All of this, I suspect, is really about the quest for youth, and its physical attributes: smooth skin, uniform hair (and not in embarrassing places), and a face and body that haven’t been knocked around too much by life. People are naturally desperate to hang on to whatever of it they can, and marketing has skillfully exploited that desire: “Just one more layer, just one more spritz, and you’ll look like 18 again!”

But nobody’s perfect, or will remain so forever. Even those renowned for attractiveness had their problems – Hollywood actresses warned one another about Clark Gable’s notoriously rancid breath, which took some of the enthusiasm out of kissing scenes.

A growing concern, however, is just what we’re plastering on ourselves. While the Food & Drug Administration closely regulates what we put in our mouths, there’s practically no standards for what we smear on our lips and faces, or rub into our hair. Just last year the European Union debated a law requiring ingredient disclosures on many beauty products, but ran into fierce opposition from the manufacturers. There’s still no such law in the United States; and while lead paint on Chinese-made toys created a furor, news of the lead content of many lipsticks passed without much public notice.

Some people, of course, do need reinstruction in basic hygiene. But they’re unlikely to get the point from anyone but themselves. In a collection of “educational” short films from the 1950s that I got recently, one of the funniest is called “Body Care and Grooming.” It’s a detailed description of how to do everything hygienic in a manner personally approved by Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower. While the motive was noble, the method is now a target for mockery (it’s been featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000, a show that threw snide comments at awful films). After all, it was targeted at college students, judging by its setting and characters. A 19-year-old who still needs to be told how to shower probably isn’t going to learn from a filmstrip.