ces of furniture if you made them all
exactly alike.

And since efficiency means economic predictability, and since
predictability means stability, Standardization quickly became the
watchword in the world's new industrial economy.

So, in time, virtually every product manufactured was standardized.
From the smallest bolts and screws in a wristwatch, through automobile
license plates, to clothing styles; everything manufactured was
strictly standard equipment.

Of course, the only unpredictable factor in this structure was the
human element, therefore the logical answer was a standardized
consumer.

The trend had started, undoubtedly, in Hollywood. The Art of
Cinematography had not existed long before becoming the Motion Picture
Industry. And, naturally, an industry must be efficient.

The Hollywood tycoons had decided that the best way to reduce the
margin of risk on any new movie star was to create an arbitrary
criterion, and to require the potential star to measure up to that
standard.

Charles was absently aware that the female standard of beauty had been
exemplified by a woman named Marilyn, and that the masculine standard
had been represented in someone named Marlon.

So, gradually, all of the new female stars that were selected by
Hollywood resembled Marilyn as much as possible, and male leads were
selected to look like Marlon. If anyone had a nose that wasn't quite
right, or large ears, a little plastic surgery quickly remedied the
problem, and if a female starlet happened to have brown hair, peroxide
was always handy.

And in time, it became increasingly difficult to tell one movie star
from another.

Then the standard, idealized faces and their standards, idealized
personal mannerisms became socially fashionable, and with modern
cosmetics and readily available plastic surgery, the fashionable men
and women in society began to imitate the ideal.

It became not only fashionable to wear the Standard face, but indecent
_not_ to do so. Social conformity was encouraged as much as possible,
and the end result was the closest thing to a Standardized,
predictable consumer as there ever could be.

This might have produced difficult problems, because with all women
and all men wearing identical clothing and identical faces, it might
have become impossible to tell one person from another, which was not
desirable even in a Standardized world.

Along with the Standard face had come name tags by which a pers