I see how it is. Two weeks ago, I gave you a challenge, simply asking you to email me some requests for Music Monday, and I didn't receive a single request! How is that possible? I have maybe six, seven readers, surely at least one of you can think of something. With that said, we will have to wait for another couple of weeks for the Reader Request Music Monday theme, and hopefully I'll have something then.
I'll stop being the mean old school marm now. However, I won't be doing a Music Monday today because I am not a well woman. Listening to music and writing about it is going a bit above and beyond my limits right now, as I am likely slowly deteriorating from a deadly sinus infection. As I twittered earlier, I even had a bloody nose, the contents of which promptly went all over my white duvet and the laptop. Awesome. I'm assuming my second period of the month will start presently.
Since my brain is slowly leaking through my nose, I'm going to stick with the superficial today. No deep thoughts here today, since I doubt I could formulate any if I tried. I guess that watching Damages was probably not the best programme to watch on my sickbed, as my head hurts even more now thanks to its serpentine plot developments.
In some of my internet browsing time, I like to look on TMZ's "Where Are They Now?" feature. They find formerly famous people and show you whether time has been kind, or a bitch. I'm a nosy cow, so I enjoy features like this far more than is normal. It makes you realise how unrealistic people are - they completely tear apart celebrities who have not aged well, usually insinuating that plastic surgery should be had to lessen the wrinkles, but then shower others with accolades for not bowing to the evil pressures of surgery. Obviously, you can't win as you age. You get plastic surgery and you've sold out, pandering to the whims of the irrational standard of beauty, but if you don't, people have to point out what a wrinkly old hag you are.
Now that I'm on the wrong side of 30, my perspective on plastic surgery has changed somewhat. Having a baby and seeing how that changes your body so completely has also contributed no doubt. I have big old boobies, and as soon as those things start swinging low sweet chariot, shit's gonna change. I can't stand them as they are now, stupid lumps of fat always getting in my way. The saving grace is that they don't brush my knees, so if that happens, I will be sure to perk them up a bit.
I was talking with an ::ahem:: bloggy ::ahem:: friend the other day (I think you all know who, since I am widely perceived to have one friend), and we were talking about body parts as one ages. Said friend is worried about eye bags and jowls, which, if her assertation about pale people of Scots-Irish and German origin being more prone to such things is true, I am well and truly fucked. I'm not so much on the post-op feline look,so a full-on face lift frightens me. However, if I was looking down the barrel of a droopy face, anything could happen. Thanks ancestors!
As I confessed to this friend, my biggest vanity-related fear is...cankles. Good Lord do I fear the cankles. You know how early experiences frame future perceptions? Well, I had a teacher in fourth grade, Mrs Wetzel, and this woman had the cankleist cankles that ever cankled. She was a young, attractive woman, but sweet baby Jesus, the cankles. When we sat on the floor in front of her for storytime, all I could focus on was the fat ankles. I felt bad that despite her best attempts to be otherwise attractive, she had to lug those things around. She was thin, which to me is the most terrifying aspect of cankledom - you can weigh 100 pounds, but if the Fates of Genetics decide that cankles should be yours, they will be. This is the thought that keeps me awake at night. Added to that, as far as I know there is no plastic surgery for cankles, so if I woke up with them one morning, they would be with me for life. It doesn't bear thinking about.
I know you are a feminist-minded bunch. How does this sit with your views on plastic surgery for women? Do you think your idea of the price of vanity has changed as you've gotten older?
11 comments:
Oh no! I didn't email you, I fail. I have a few suggestions. I'll email you here in a sec..PROMISE! I'm totally down for plastic surgery. I've always been a fan of botox. I've never used it, but I will soon! I've love to get my boobies realigned. One is a little bigger then the other and tends to hang out a bit closer to my belly button then the other. They need to be at the same level, ya know?
You can bet that after Blob, I'm going to find the first willing plastic surgeon to straighten out this horrifying, stretch marked, floppy monstrosity that used to be my belly. Fuck the flab.
what rockmama said. and this: if i have plastic surgery to make myself feel more attractive--not obviously, the daver who wouldn't notice if my head fell off--then rock on.
i don't think i'd do it specifically for someone else, tho. just me.
Funny you should mention this, I was brewing a post (in my head) on this subject for this month (a big birthday). Ten years ago I would've screamed . . .no wait, I *did* scream that plastic surgery/implants were HORRIBLE! Patriarchal bullshit foisted on us BY THE MAN! Implants were DANGER! I actually once got into an argument with my father (a scientist) about the danger of breast implants in a restaurant wherein I practically shouted something about putting sillicone into his scrotum. Apparently a bit to loudly.
And now here I sit, two pregnancies and one child later, my body is just complete shizz. I hate it. *I* hate it. My husband claims I'm beautiful and all that noise, but you know what? I am no longer adamantly opposed to enhancing and perking up my wee droopy boobies. I joke about it, but I think there's a kernel of seriousness in there. Like, If I were to win two free boobs? I wouldn't turn them down.
I'm still a bit freaked about shooting botulism into my face.
Hey, in your readers defense, I sent you some ideas! They may have been BAD, but it was an idea! Or did your email reject my email? My email is getting rejected elsewhere. Need to shut down my side-spam biz, I guess.
Its funny - I think we all have things we find acceptable to change and those that aren't. I have already stated that as soon as I'm having kids I'm getting my boobs done. Right now they're large-ish but proportionate and they'll either disappear (like my mother's did) or get even bigger (like several friends did) either way I can't imagine life without them or dealing with them if they're any bigger so its already been discussed that I'll have pretty, happy, perky boobs bought for me after the last baby. That said I can never imagine injecting poison into my skin!
Yeah I don't think I could go through with it. I hate doctors and anything surgical. However, while cankles don't run in my family, jowls and that turkey flap under your chin definitely runs on one side while the flabby arm and multiple moles (nibblettes as my sister calls 'em) runs on the other side. Now that I'm on the other side of 40 (and soon to be way on the other side) I see both sides converging and its not a pretty sight.
I spent my teen years wishing my almost-B-cups would be bigger, and now that I'm almost 34, THEY ARE (we're talking DD) and I HATE THEM. HAAAATE THE BOOBS. When I do find shirts that fit my over-wide shoulders, they gap in the bosom area. Forget finding a bra that fits and is attractive when you rock the 42DD.
As for the rest of the body... meh. I don't wear makeup so I can't imagine I'm going to get too het up about wrinkles and whatnot. The hair, though... if that starts thinning, we're going to have some issues. Grey doesn't bother me, but the balding-old-lady look is not an attractive one.
And I apologize about the music requests - I have been listening to the new U2 offering pretty much nonstop since I acquired it three weeks ago (shhh illegal!) and so... yeah.
I was going to send you a music request thinger, but I didn't because my suggestion was lame.
As for plastic surgery, hooooooo-boy. In my time as a reporter, I did a story on plastic surgery. The doctors, and mind you, these were small time guys, were so REPULSIVE in their view of a woman's body and how it needed to be perfect, that I could NEVER EVER support that industry. It was every creepy patriarchal anti-feminist cliche you can imagine, although it was all clothed in subtle "you deserve it" and "look at this elegant procedure and how it will give you back your life" feminist-entitlement speak. The one guy's wife was nipped and tucked virtually into immobility in what was clearly an attempt to keep up with the specimens her husband worked on daily. I was squicked for weeks.
Ahh, honey, I'm sorry I never emailed! Was gonna... and didn't. My bad. Delving randomly into iPod, I get Big 10 Inch from Aerosmith, She Will Have Her Way by Neil Finn, Slip-sliding Away by Paul Simon and Smoke 'Em by the FLC. You choose!
The cankles frighten me. Mightily. I've had 'em through sheer immobility (3 day Greyhound bus trip and a 10 day NICU stay: thanks!) and been UTTERLY repulsed, as the one part of my body that never generally runs to fat is my lower leg.
Too scared-cat of the knife, though I do idly fancy a new improved Me.
Or how 'bout Long Distance by Turin Brakes? Liking that one currently.
My biggest dislike is the skin texture change. When you are young, everything is supple and firm and then as you get older, skin becomes this soft almost petal texture. It's one of the reasons I don't date men more than 5-7 years older than I am. Although it hasn't happened yet, I know crepey-skin is on the way and I loathe it.
As for plastic surgery, loads of people come here for cheap surgery. I call them the "cat people" because they all have narrow eyes and feline faces from too-tight face lifts.
I may not be lucky enough to win the lottery but I am def. "lucky" enough to have some serious complications with the anesthesia resulting in my untimely, surgery related demise so no thanks!
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