Barbara Crabtree realized she was in her early forties that her legs were showing the strain of "years of pounding the pavements of New York." Spider veins were appearing, with an especially large one at the back of her knee.

"I have very light skin," she says," and when the veins are blue, they really show up." So she went through a series of treatments to her legs inline in plenty of time to get to the Barrier Beach this summer.

The legs, it has been said, are the last part of your body to age. They’re not prone to wrinkles like the face. But you may need treatment, be it electrolysis, endermologie, or schlerotherapy, to keep them young. And it needs to be done by a doctor who works in this field all the time to set things rights.

Crabtree is one of many women who, when the beach and the bikini beckon, fret about the appearance of their gams. When stockings come off, he minutest spider vein is magnified.

When Marlene Dietrich, Lauren Bacall, and Tina Turner reached a certain age they could still boast a great pair of pins. No one know whether the legs of Hollywood’s golden age had help but now a woman can achieve near perfection with the aid of a roster of specialists.

"Our patients recognize the need for a medically supervised approach to these aesthetic procedures," says Dr. Suzanne Levine, who treated Crabtree’s ankles with the advanced Apogee-40 laser at the Center for Laser Hair Removal and Cellulite Control on Park Avenue.

"With the new method, even people with darker skin can benefit from laser treatment," says Dr. Everett Lautin.

"It’s a way of making a woman feel a little better about herself and less self-conscious," says another of her patients, Irma Birnbaum, a retired C.P.A. in her late forties who lives on the West Side. "Whatever the pain, I’m willing to put up with it, because I don’t want that hair back."

Dr. Luis Navarro, who runs the Vein Treatment Center in Manhattan, says health-conscious women think legs. "Today’s women are aware of their legs because more women now are playing sports and wearing shorter skirts," he says. "They come to see the doctor earlier, even with little spider veins. The trick is to come before the skin has been damaged."

Jane from the Upper East Side didn’t come into the center soon enough. In her mid-forties, she was ashamed of her legs which were, she says, almost blue.

"I was living with leg makeup. All of a sudden, I woke up and decided, I’m going in there getting them done.

"It gives you a feeling that you’re doing something better for yourself," she says of her 98 percent recovery, "and you find you’re feeling younger. If he can do that to me, think what he could do to a young mom."

Or a young dad-because more men are going for treatment too, mainly for health though also for cosmetic reasons. "Men in New York go to the gym," Dr. Navarro says. "They see veins and don’t like it."

But men and women alike should start early. If you are only planning now to make your legs look good for summer, you’re probably too late.

"People tend to procrastinate and wait till spring," says Dr. Joseph Fretta of the New Jersey Center, who in ten years has handled 7,000 cases from the largest varicose veins to the smallest spider veins. If you don’t want to deny yourself the pleasures of summer, he says, it’s best to address the problem in September, allowing your legs plenty of time to get ready.

For most specialists, the "gold standard" treatment for spider veins and larger blue "reticular veins" is schlerotherapy-injecting a fluid to dry up the veins. If veins are more significant, they will perform a miniphlebectomy, using a local anesthetic, making tiny cuts and then hooking out the vein-"like untying a shoelace" says Dr. Fretta.

There are plenty of other treatments available for the legs. Endermologie rollers, is popular or reducing the appearance of cellulite.

New York women, says Dr. Suzanne Levine, who wrote a book on tired feet called My Feet Are Killing Me, tend to do more walking and are more style-conscious than most women. Consequently, New York women’s feet are more under stress.

In an attic studio under a high cathedral ceiling at the top of Carnegie Hall, Ruth Jeffries takes some health and figure-conscious women through their paces at the Callanetics Studio of Manhattan, tackling a perennial leg problem—cellulite.

"We work the deep postural muscles," says Jeffries. "We take people and debulk them. Saddlebags tens to disappear and the behind lifts."

A lot of women are concerned about cellulite and say it won’t go away. But is starts to disappear, she says with the non-aerobic exercises called callanetics. "There’s a spring in my step," one of her clients said after completing the course. "My legs are stronger than when I came in."

Barbara Crabtree is the first to say that today’s image-conscious New Yorker can get rid of varicose blues and put the spring back in her step. She looks down confidently at her "new" legs as she heads for the beach with her six-year-old.

"I suppose in the Victorian days," she says, "that’s the why they wore long skirts."