Disclaimer: This post is about me and my choices. It is up to each person to make his/her own choices. If you have had or want to have plastic surgery, that’s your choice. That is not what this post is about.
I have always questioned society’s expectations of what I do with my body. For example, when I was 19-20, I did not shave my legs or armpits. I am a hairy person. I have thick dark hair on my legs if I do not shave. It was very noticeable. I didn’t care. My thought was this: “I naturally grow hair on my body, why is it wrong? Why do I have to change myself? What’s wrong with the natural body hair I was born with?”
I also shaved my head around this time. Why does a woman need to have long hair? Am I less of a woman if I buzz my hair off? I was challenging expectations. And I liked it. I would shave my head again if it was socially acceptable in my corporate career environment. I felt super bad-ass! And if I do say so myself, I have a very attractive head. It’s also the easiest to deal with hair style.
Some people were very dull about this and would accuse me of being a lesbian (as if that were some sort of crime.) Last I checked, my sexual preference has nothing to do with the length of my hair or whether or not I shave my legs.
Is having hairy legs, as a woman, inherently gross or disgusting? If so, why isn’t it gross for men to have hairy legs? I used to say “I will shave my legs when men shave their backs.” And now apparently many of them do, so at least I wasn’t lying.
Eventually, the time came when I stopped being a teenager and I wanted to be judged on my merits instead of my appearance. So I took up the “normal” look and started shaving my legs and grew in my hair. I cover my tattoos when I go to work. I know how it is. I will play the game. I don’t gain anything by bucking these social constructs of what I should look like, at least not when it comes to my career. People, like it or not, are extremely judgmental about appearances, especially for women.
I shave my legs exactly to the point where anyone will see them. In the winter that’s above the knee and in the summer that’s up to where my swimsuit ends. I don’t do anything to the parts nobody will see other than my boyfriend. I think I’m fine exactly the way I am, even if I do have natural hair cover so many people are disgusted by. That’s their problem, not mine. I will never get a Brazilian wax because it sounds painful! Eff that, I’m fine the way I am. And if you’re going to comment on how much “cleaner” it is to wax your vajayjay and butt crack, please know that you are inferring that I am “dirty” because I choose not to. I’m not, and I won’t be shamed into doing something I don’t want to do.
My boyfriend is all about the “natural look”, by the way. I wouldn’t be compatible with someone who isn’t.
What does any of this have to do with plastic surgery? To me, it’s all part of the same spectrum of expectation we put on women’s appearances. I do not buy the idea that there’s only one way a person should look and that we have to torture ourselves to get that look.
Plastic surgery is far, far, far beyond shaving to me. Shaving is annoying and maybe you’ll nick yourself occasionally. Plastic surgery has the very real possibility of ending in death. If not death, then follow up corrective surgeries, painful recovery periods, risk of infection, etc. There are some pretty serious consequences to any surgery and to undertake one simply to change the way I look is something I very strongly disagree with. What is wrong with the way I look? Why is there only one acceptable way to be?
I have some parts of my body that many people would deem in “need” of plastic surgery. I have heard so many women say something to the effect of “I needed a breast enhancement because my breasts were droopy.” My breasts are droopy too. Going from a 42 DDD to a 36 C does something to you. My breasts look exactly the way you’d expect them to look after my weight loss and at my age. And I do not NEED breast enhancement. There is nothing wrong with me. The assumption that “imperfect” breasts need surgery to “correct” them, quite frankly angers me.
I am not broken and I do not need to be “corrected.” I am a person and there’s a lot more to me than what I look like.
I could also “need” a tummy tuck if my goal in life was to have visible abs. I have minor loose skin compared to what I’ve seen in photos of some who have lost weight. But it’s enough that I wouldn’t feel comfortable in a bikini. That’s not a problem to me, my life seems to be going on just fine, bikini-free.
I suppose while I’m at it, I would also “need” a thigh lift, because I have some loose skin and cellulite there.
And I guess I “need” to have an upper arm lift also since even though I have visible biceps, triceps, and delts, my arms keep waving when I stop.
May as well “need” a chin lift too, now that I have a little wrinkle there where my other chin used to be.
And once I had all that work done, then what? Would I be “okay” yet?
I call bullshit on this. I am okay right now. As a matter of fact, I am fabulous! No, I don’t look like a cover girl, I look like ME and I don’t want to look like anyone but me. Part of ME is the history of me. And part of that is that I used to be obese. I am not ashamed. I embrace my former self as well as my present self, scars, flaws and all.
I believe that self-esteem is something that comes from the inside, not out. Rather than changing myself through expensive, painful, life-threatening surgical procedures, I prefer to work on my mind which is, after all, the most important part of me. Yes, I feel a little bit uncomfortable showing my thighs in public. There’s a lot behind that from the way my mother talked about her own thighs to the way women’s thighs are shown in the media. This isn’t a physical problem, it’s a mental one. I will work on feeling comfortable with myself as I am. From the inside out. It’s free and it’s freeing. I only need to live up to one person’s expectations: my own.
It seems like we are forbidden from questioning plastic surgery for risk of offending someone who has had it or wants to have it. Yes, it’s everyone’s choice to do what they want, but I think there are some very valid questions that need to be discussed and shouldn’t just be swept under the rug of personal choice. Like, why is it that we expect to look perfect? Why do we treat our bodies as ever changeable pieces of clay? Why is the size and shape of a woman’s breasts so very important that we are willing to undergo these painful, expensive, and often fallible surgeries? Why do we feel like our physical appearance is so much of our self-esteem?
I believe a lot of the answers lie in the glorification of youth and the objectification of women. As women, we are expected never to age. Once we’re over 35, and look it, we disappear from the public eye. There are no actresses who don’t look young. Even our powerful female leaders like Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi are all too often criticized for their appearances. Yet we have many old, wrinkled, greying, balding, overweight men in these positions who get by on their thoughts and opinions and nobody even seems to notice what they look like. This is straight up sexism to me, and if you know me, you know I am a Feminist with a capital F. I don’t need to change; society needs to change. Hillary Clinton is Secretary of State. I don’t recall anyone worrying about what Colin Powell looked like or wore when he held that position.
A lot of it comes from the messages we receive as women that we ARE our appearances. No matter what you do, if you aren’t beautiful too, society considers it failure. This, to me, is simply another way to keep women powerless. If we’re busy feeling bad about our bodies and the way we look, we are easy to keep subjugated. To me, there’s nothing powerful about being restricted to bed rest because you just had a full body lift. And I want to be a Powerful Woman, from the inside out.
My message is all about self-acceptance. Being thin and beautiful isn’t what makes people happy- it’s what you feel on the inside. Some of the thinnest most beautiful people hate themselves and think they are ugly. That alone proves to me that the path to self-acceptance has to be separated from our outer appearance. There’s no amount of outer change that will make a person feel good enough, it must be an internal change.
To spread this message, I will start with myself. I will stand up for myself, and for any other women who would like to stand with me, and I will declare:
“I am good enough exactly the way I am.”
