Eat the Damn Cake

I try not to read the comments on articles about cosmetic surgery. People are always yelling. They are always disgusted and horrified. They are always saying things like “then what?” If you are willing to do that to yourself, than what else are you willing to do? What’s next? A clone army? Vanity babies that are genetically manipulated to look like your favorite Sports Illustrated bikini model? Anything could happen.

Sometimes I forget I got plastic surgery. I don’t feel like someone who would do it. I don’t look like someone who did it. It’s easy not to think about it.

The New York Times is talking about how, most notably in New York City,  there are ethnically preferred cosmetic surgery procedures. Like, Italian women get knee fixes and Dominicans get butt lifts and Koreans get their jaws thinned. What was interesting, the article implied, was that the Long Island  women were getting their butts reduced while the Washington Heights women were getting theirs enhanced. In other words, cosmetic surgery is no longer just about fitting into your adopted culture (as it often was for Jews and Irish and blacks), it’s about fitting into your ethnic group.

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I usually assume I’m the one who is failing a little. Like at wearing those particular gigantic earrings with that particular purple spotted dress. And at conversation. I’m probably the one who isn’t quite quick enough, or is a little too eager; just the slightest bit miscalibrated. In Manhattan, I’m the one who is always missing the trend by a hair (or every single hair). Oh, we’re wearing jumpsuits now. Wait– we aren’t anymore? But I got this purple spotted one for 80% off! It’s true, I always get the cheap version. I’m not willing to commit completely. I don’t have faith in fashion the way so many people seem to.

I read about faces. About the ones that men prefer most. The ones that babies prefer most. The ones that both men and babies rate the highest, while having a beer. There’s all this information about averages. People gravitate towards the generic. Those even, flat features composited from a hundred thousand other sets of features on a computer in a lab where sex scientists stare at screens with faces on them all day (feeling worse and worse about the way they look), those are the ones people on the street choose, when they’re handed the leaflets and asked to identify beauty.

I have a face that refuses to be average. It refuses to be dull. It runs yelling in the opposite direction. It’s yelling, “I’m free! I’m free!” It’s delusional. It doesn’t fit in.

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So, a belated happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I’m back in Manhattan, where you can hear traffic from absolutely anywhere, and people wearing frighteningly stained blankets walk alongside people wearing Bergdorf Goodman, and I live in a little pale yellow apartment with Bear, a lot of diet soda, the cookies he always brings me, and a toilet that is happy to run for hours.

We spent a week in California, by the bay. Is it The Bay? It sounds that way when people say it. By the bay, where you can look into the distance and see more than five hills at once, and the eucalyptus trees hang their bark in dramatic, tired strips, and homes that belong to people who are now my family nestle against hard inclines. I didn’t notice any running toilets. Or at least, they politely stopped after an appropriate amount of time.

I suddenly have a much bigger family, and suddenly I was eating turkey with them. And sitting on their couches, and laughing at their jokes, and opening their refrigerators without asking. Continue Reading »

Objectivity is a bad idea. Maybe it’s a necessary idea, but it does a lot of damage. Maybe groups of people arrive at it automatically, in order to structure a frighteningly chaotic, inexplicable world. Well, not entirely inexplicable. The sun exists to light the earth, so that things can grow, and people can see where they’re walking. And it goes around the earth because that’s what God told it to do. Everyone can agree. Or, at least, everyone could agree…And later everyone could agree that objectively, there was no way people would ever be able to invent a machine that could fly. And when women were upset about anything, they were hysterical, because their uteruses were releasing strange woman gases that made them act funny. And a scientist wandered through the streets of London in the mid 19^th century, counting beautiful women. He found that there was a much higher percentage of them there than in the countryside. Beauty, he concluded, comes with intelligence. The countryfolk were clearly less intelligent, which was why they were out there, plowing and stuff.

Objective beauty has been around forever. For much longer, I’d imagine, than people have been plowing fields. People are constantly comparing things. I mean, it’s really how we’re still around. “These are both berries, but this one reminds me of the berries from the poisonous berry bush of death, whereas this other one looks like it might just be a blueberry. I’ll eat the blueberry.” “I want a mate, and both of these people are capable of mating with me, but this one lost his foot on that hunting trip, and he can’t run as fast as the other one, so he won’t be able to catch as many animals, and prove his manhood, and the other men will come to look down on him, and then my offspring will be mercilessly teased because their father is lame, and I’ll eventually be driven from the group and forced to fend for myself, which will probably result in my death. So I should go with the guy who has both feet.” You know, stuff like that. We’re always trying to figure out what is better than what. Who is better than who. And beauty is an important measure of “betterness,” because it’s on the surface. In other words, we can all see it, so we can all judge it.

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The first time I went for a consultation with a cosmetic surgeon, I wore high heels. When he held the mirror up to show me where my nose had failed at beauty, I liked my face. I wasn’t supposed to. But just in the moment when I was supposed to hate my face the most, I thought it was beautiful. I thought that he must be thinking, “Why would this girl ever want to change anything about the way she looks? Oh well, I’ll make some money…” He probably wasn’t thinking that. Except the last part.

Maybe it was some sort of perverted little survival instinct. My brain was like, “HE’S GOING TO CUT YOUR FACE OPEN!!! QUICK! SELF-LOVE!” It didn’t work. I went ahead with the surgery. I’d made my decision. I felt empowered. Hey, being able to decide to change yourself can be very empowering. Penelope Trunk and I need to have a conversation about this, when I become famous enough to talk with her a lot. In her last post, she said she was obsessed with the idea of plastic surgery, but she’s squeamish, like me. Honestly, I’m not sure at this point what I’d tell her.

When he took the cast off my face, I thought I’d look completely different. I was so ready for it, I almost saw it. I mean, I did look different. I had giant bruises under my eyes. But I could see the new beauty, just behind those bruises. Continue Reading »

(click here for original source. I’m citing things now! No more illegal web behavior!)

I saw Sex and the City 2. I couldn’t help it. It was like this massive magnet just pulled me into the theater. I was completely helpless. It was fate. The gods. It was a part of my destiny that will lead to other things of which I know nothing yet. Mysterious things. Sparkling, fabulous things.

I knew it would be terrible. I mean, come on, everyone in the world knew that. I knew I wouldn’t laugh at most of the jokes. I wouldn’t appreciate many of the outfits (Samantha wears gigantic silver spikes on her shoulders at one point). Everyone seems really wealthy in it. Everyone has to change their outfit every five minutes. Carrie’s breasts have miraculously grown. No one has a stomach. They don’t even eat very much when overflowing banquets are laid before them (oh my god. Take me to that FOOD! I’ll show them how this works). There are a lot of problems with how Muslims are portrayed. And on and on.

But I wanted to wear high heels to a movie. By myself. And also, there’s something about Carrie that always pulls me in. I’ve mentioned Sarah Jessica Parker on here before. It’s a big nose thing. I feel like we’re kin. I mean, I will never ever ever be that thin, nor do I hope to be, but the woman has a face like no one else in Hollywood, and I feel I owe it to her face to support her career. Continue Reading »

As I write this, I’m having a little bit of trouble breathing. It’s like I have a perpetual cold. I’m completely used to it, but when I think about it, I realize that it wasn’t always like this. In fact, the reason it’s like this now is that I feel bad about my face.

My college boyfriend talked me out of getting a nose job. He was appalled by the idea, perhaps to his credit. But I couldn’t talk myself out of it.

When I finally went to the cosmetic surgeon he took one look at my nose and said, “Oh yeah. Could definitely use some work done.” He was a very blunt guy, and I appreciated that about him. I appreciate him a little less after two surgeries and a nose that doesn’t look significantly different but doesn’t function quite as well. Continue Reading »