Ten years ago, I watched the video of my 15th birthday party with my parents and started to scream because of how ugly I looked on the screen. My huge nose, my ear that stuck out, my heavy sagging breasts, my blemished skin, my tiny teeth; all blown up and immortalized on the TV screen. I had never felt pretty, as I've blogged about before, but now it wasn't just a self-esteem issue existing only in my head; there was evidence in the form of digital media, and it was beyond devastating. Not a day went by after that when I didn't complain about being ugly. Self-hating behavior soon followed: cigarettes, drinking, not eating, overdoing it at the gym, and so on. Coupled with an untimely rejection from the boy I had a crush on at the time, it set me into a depressive spiral, and my parents started worrying about me. Shortly after, I made the decision to undergo plastic surgery. Thanks to Brazilian culture, my parents were unshaken by plastic surgeries, as well as desperate for a solution to my unhealthy self-image, so they allowed it.
On June 12, 2001, an ungentle doctor injected me with a general anesthetic, I passed out cold, and the woman nature intended me to be got cut, tucked, nipped, sculpted, stitched and sewn up, never to be seen again. Six hours later, I awoke throwing up blood and peeing myself, but I had a narrower nose, tucked ears, and smaller, perkier breasts. Not that I could see any of it- I was so bandaged and drugged I could barely remember my own name, but the team of doctors in their aqua-green uniforms were very cheerful and optimistic. All had gone very, very well. June 12th is Valentine's Day in Brazil and, as she wheeled me back to my room, the nurse said, "Happy Valentine's Day! Do you have a boyfriend?" I groggily shook my head no. "Oh, that's okay," she said and stroked my bandaged head, "You'll be so pretty now, next year you'll surely have a boyfriend." Although I was completely doped, I prayed that she please be right.
I forced my ugly-duckling self to blossom into a swan, because I did not know what else to do. Now that I'm an adult and deal with women's self-image issues on a daily basis, I am appalled that no one sat me down and said, "There's nothing wrong with you. Your insecurities are normal. You will survive adolescence, and changing your exterior self will have very little to do with it." Sure, I probably wouldn't have heard them and it may not have stopped me, but it's rather unsettling to think that no one even tried. A 15-year-old girl said, I'm insecure, I feel ugly, I'm going to have three plastic surgeries, and no one tried to stop it. No one tried to find a different (perhaps less permanent/painful/dangerous/expensive/risky) way to help me get through my teenage angst. Not one single person sat me down and tried to tell me I was good enough just as I was. It makes me want to start an "It Gets Better" campaign for plain and unpopular teenage girls. I think the pop-culture and media that standardizes the chase of socialized beauty ideals and profits from the insecurities of teenagers is a big fat bully, and someone should be protecting impressionable young women from it.
Although I have always said I don't regret any of the procedures I went through, the truth is it all happened when I was so young I really have no idea if I've turned out to be the best (or healthiest, or happiest) version of myself. I never got to see myself as an adult pre-surgeries. The irreversible nature of it all meant that what I ended up with was now what I'd live with- I would never again be 100% natural. Unlike medical surgeries and scars people end up with throughout life, these changes in me were self-imposed and forced. Plastic surgeries, much like lying, have the stubborn aftertaste of inauthenticity, and something about me would always feel slightly fake.
I recently heard an older woman talk about wanting to get plastic surgery and remarking, "My boyfriend loves me just the way I am, no one's ever complained, this is just for me," and I felt a pang of jealousy. She got to see who she really was, she found a way to accept it, and she got to be loved for who she was, flaws and all, before making the decision to change it. That is something I have never known.
I never tried to watch that video of my 15th birthday party again, but I still have it. I am pretty sure that if I watched it now I would not be mortified by my ugliness, though. If anything, I'd probably be disturbed by how misconstrued my own self-image was and left wondering, yet again, why there was no attempt to make me aware of that.
The truth is that it was easier, for me and everyone around me, to give in to beauty standards than try to change them. It was also easier to fix the exterior "problems" than deal with the interior battle, and I got what I wanted in the end. When I saw my prom pictures a few years later, I had the thought, Well, look at that. I'm pretty.
And the nurse's prediction was accurate. On June 12th, 2002, I didn't spend Valentine's Day alone.
Image from here.
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