The 11th Anniversary of My Plastic Surgeries

Please God make me pretty.

But God is for the poor. The rich can go to sleep and wake up pretty.

Rip
Cut
Suck
Tuck
Nip
Perk
Sew
Scar

And into little jars went the woman I was meant to be. 

Twenty-six thousand dollars worth of self-esteem plastered onto me forever, and no more t-shirts at the beach. No more hiding in the bathroom during pictures. No more getting asked out as a joke.

Drip
Drop
Splash
Shh


Eleven years later, I still taste like plastic.

Vanity and I

Ours is a love story, like so many before it, rooted in an external search for acceptance, completion, and happiness. Abusive at times, melodramatic at others, and full of resentment and bitterness, Vanity and I have had a turbulent relationship.

At 16.

I did everything I was supposed to do. I was always manicured, pedicured, waxed, exfoliated, cleansed, starved, tucked, lifted, firmed, smoothed, and glossed. My hair was always long, my clothes were always form-fitting and feminine, and my perfume was whatever the magazine told me was a man's favorite scent on a woman. If my hands were dry or my lips chapped, I'd be embarrassed, and I'd never dare take my shoes off if I was overdue for a pedicure.

Vanity was with me every single day. And for as long as there was enough money, there were solutions to everything. Needles could smooth out stretchmarks, electric shocks could stop hair from growing where it shouldn't, surgeries could lift, tuck, and sew in anything that wasn't in place. Pills could make me stop eating. She had an answer for everything.

I did not think she would ever leave me, and I certainly did not think I would ever leave her. 

When a teacher quite forcefully told me that if I wanted to be an actor I had to get messy, dirty, ugly, and, above all, let go of my vanity and ego, I was baffled. Like a slave born into a life of unquestionable servitude, blind to the absurdity of her circumstances, I was suddenly made aware of my binding chains.

At 22.

I cut off my hair. I stopped getting my nails done. I bought a dozen yoga pants. I set my make up, stomach-gripping jeans, and heels to the back of my closet. And I started eating french fries.

In order to set myself truly free, I had to let go of Vanity completely. I had to break up with her, and I was very, very angry. I was ready to break mirrors and burn bras, such was the depth of my pain. You trapped me, chained me, butchered me, controlled me, and erased me. I want nothing to do with you, ever again.

She complied. She left me alone. And I was so happy to find the freedom within stretchy pants, flats, messy short hair, and unpainted uneven nails, that I did not miss her at all. It was a blissful time, and I did grow tremendously as an actor. Vanity murders creativity. For the next couple of years, I was unstoppable.

But I was not done growing. We never are. 

It was a group of actor friends that next freed me when they proposed, gently, that I indulge in my vanity, flaunt my femininity and sexiness, and invite a little ego back. Again, I felt a light turn on in a dark room within me. In my complete negation of Vanity, I did not realize she was still controlling me. I feared her so fiercely, I never considered that we could have a healthy, balanced relationship.

As I had done years earlier when I dispelled Vanity completely, I was ready to take on the challenge of welcoming her back for the sake of my growth as an actor. 

I have been taking slow, cautious steps every day towards discovering what feels good to me, what I like indulging in, and what daily doses of Vanity I can take. I felt my hair touch my shoulder the other day and was surprised by how much I liked the feeling of it. I dug up my eyeliner from its grave and played with different ways to bring attention to my eyes. I looked at each part of my body and asked myself, How do I celebrate this body part's beauty? 

It is no coincidence that The Body Stories emerged at the same time. I am telling stories that I hope inspire others to find a peaceful relationship with their bodies. It was time I worked on mine. 

I know Vanity is not a real person who forced me to do things I didn't want to. I know that when I talk of Vanity I am talking about a relationship I had with myself in pursuit of an ideal. But sometimes it's too hard to look at myself, to touch the parts of my body I have butchered, and not want to blame it on an external source.

Here we are, Vanity and I, with our loaded past, working on our relationship. And it does take work. I'd be lying if I said she were no longer a threat, and that our relationship is always healthy and balanced. I am still mostly afraid of her. When I spend 45 minutes on my hair, I have to make sure, every other minute, that I am doing this because I want to. And, when I wear yoga pants for five days in a row, I have to check that I am not avoiding her. But, step by step, we are figuring each other out, and I am a little bit closer to true freedom.

At 26.

The Body Stories

Alongside Jeanne Joe Perrone, a fellow Actors Studio Drama School MFA graduate and boundlessly inventive artist, I have created my upcoming theater production, The Body Stories. A year in the making, and a lifetime in my heart, we are now producing this physical theater meets live art show that lets our bodies tell their stories. After all, we believe our bodies know more than we do. We are scheduled to perform on January 22nd, 2012, in Manhattan, and we are thrilled to share this rendition of our work with you! 

I struggled from an early age with body image issues. As a teenager in Brazil, the pressure from the media, the society I lived in, and the people around me skewed my perception of myself, to the point where I had three plastic surgeries by the age of 15, battled eating disorders, and underwent countless dangerous, expensive, and painful procedures in order to attain what I perceived as real beauty. Having survived my turbulent adolescent angst and violent insecurities, I arrived at adulthood with a new task: understanding my past and finding compassion for how I treated myself over those years. The arduous road ended at the expected destination: self-love and self-acceptance.

That I lived to tell this story is not something I take for granted. I know that body image issues are present in the lives of most teenagers and adults, especially women, and I feel in my heart that I have a responsibility to tell my story. I have found an artistic expression to my innermost scars with The Body Stories, and it is the most important piece of theater I have worked on to date. It is a message I am carrying because I have to; this story lives inside me, and it always will.

Jeanne Joe and I are driven by our love of theater and our need to tell these stories; that is our compensation. But, as you surely know, our production cannot go up on love alone. We are committed to creating this show with the lowest possible budget, with a goal of raising $1500 by November 1st, 2011. We are now requesting the contribution of our friends and families in making this project possible. Donations start at $10, and every penny helps us!

Your contribution is the lifeline of this production, and we are grateful for all donations of any monetary amount. Please visit our indigogo fundraiser website to make a donation and learn more about The Body Stories.

http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Body-Stories


Our gratitude for any and all donations is infinite. We cannot do what we do without your generous support. Please share our fundraiser campaign on your social media sites and help us promote this project.

To learn more about The Body Stories and find out ways to be involved, please feel free to contact us. If your body, too, has a story to tell, do not hesitate in reaching out to us. We are here to serve the material that already lives within us, and there are no limits to how much this project can grow.

Letter to My Tummy

Dear Tummy,

I don't think we've formally met, though I've talked to you a lot over the years. I know I've never been very nice to you. In fact, I don't think I've ever said one nice thing about you or to you. You are that part of me that I am never, ever satisfied with. And, unlike cellulite, which lives in my ass where I can't see it, you are under constant scrutiny. I see you when I shower, I see you when I sit down, I see you when I look in the mirror, I see you in most pictures, and I see you reflected in other people's eyes.

I have often said to you things like, "Please go away," "I hate you," "Ugh," "Just get off me," and, in my worst moments, "Fuck off!"

I am not proud of how I've treated you, Tummy. I've called you flabs, jell-o, dinner baby, watermelon, rolling empire of flesh, and many other mean names. I've looked at you and burst into tears.

I've considered, many many times, cutting you open, sucking out all the fat you store, and stitching you back up again. The ol' nip and tuck. If I weren't afraid it might kill me, I would've done it by now- maybe even more than once.

I've crunched you up at the gym up to 5,000 times in a row, in an attempt to make you go away. I've held my breath for so many years, I half-burst into tears every time I inhale fully now. I've denied you food. I've willed you to give up the food you kept. I've put you behind slimming tights, fastening you away like a prisoner, hoping others wouldn't know you existed.

I did design a hearts meditation for myself a couple of years ago, but you were always the hardest part to get to. I just can't say it with complete conviction: "I love you, Tummy." I want to, but I can't.

That doesn't mean I'm not sorry though. And that doesn't mean I'm giving up on my relationship with you. I want to love you, I want to accept you, I want to stop trying to change you. I know that I need you. I know that my perception of you is often dangerously misconstrued. I know that my desire to change you is based on false images fed to me by bullshit sexist media and that I should know better than to think I'll be happier if I have a flat non-stomach.

I know all of this. But I still haven't figured it out. The best I seem able to do, as of yet, is not think about you at all. I can't force the positive thoughts, but I seem able to not have thoughts, to just not think about my tummy. Forget I even have one. It's how I deal with a lot of things I'm insecure about, actually. Don't think about it, because then it isn't real. I know it's not super healthy, but it's where I'm at for now.

I'm working on it, though.

One day, I will look at you with love. I know it. And it won't be because I've lost the 10 pounds I always think I need to lose, or because I've done 800 sit-ups every day, or because I've just had food poisoning three weeks in a row. It'll be because I can let go of wanting you to be different. I'll see you as perfect, and I'll trust that we are on the same side.

Until that day, Tummy, I hope you'll bear with me. I hope you'll forgive my meanness. I hope you'll stick around. I hope you'll believe in me, and have compassion.

I look forward to better times,

xoxoxo

Me.

My Big Bully: Beauty Standards

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.

The Dictatorship of Thinness

Five days ago I was on a cruise with my mom, which means I was wearing a bikini most of the time, and therefore obsessing over my body. I was standing in front of the mirror in our room holding back my love handles, sucking my stomach in, standing up as straight as I could, and imagining the results of a possible liposuction. The TV was on in the background and, as fate would have it, about two minutes later, the news reported the death of Lanusse Martins Barbosa, victim of a liposuction gone wrong. She was 27 years old.
It was a "medical error" that really shouldn't have happened, and the plastic surgeon is being tried for homicide. People are calling him a criminal, and because the victim was a public figure- she was a TV journalist- she is representing the hundreds of women who have died or suffered irreparable damage during plastic surgeries.
I am left with a mixture of reactions. I am wondering who the real criminals are, the doctors who are careless, or the culture we live in that values thinness so much that women (myself included) are willing to cut themselves open and suck out their "excess fat" in order to look like something we have been told (or brainwashed into believing) is not only beautiful, but normal.

Doctors and sponsors who deal with vanity are some of the wealthiest people in the world. Products and programs that promise thinness are part of a multi-billion dollar industry. Go to the Women's Interest section in a magazine stand and you will see another multi-billion dollar industry that is benefiting from telling women that what they look like can always improve, that there's always a new way to be thinner, that self-worth grows as the numbers on the scale decrease.
It's hard- if not impossible- not to be affected by it. I haven't managed yet. Even though I regularly read feminist magazines like Ms. and Bust and Bitch, that fight, among many of the ways society oppresses women, this dictatorship of thinness, and even though I know that butchering myself in the name of beauty is not only unnecessary and ridiculous, but dangerous, I am still caught in an often overwhelming desire to be extremely thin. The kind of thin that can wear low-cut jeans with a glued-to-my-skin shirt, that can wear the smallest bikini without an ounce of fat hanging out around my waist, that can make me feel invincible.
At the same time that I have these thoughts I am completely disgusted with myself for having them. I spend an inexplicable amount of energy convincing myself, every single day, that this is all absurd, that I'm too smart to buy into this manipulative crap, that I do not need to be any thinner, that real women have curves, that the men I'm interested in don't want to date anorexic models, and that I shouldn't feed this negative voice that is not my own and tells me I am not good enough. But, when I'm really really honest with myself, when I look really deep inside, it's all still there- I still want to be really really thin. I want it so much that even after Lanusse Martins Barbosa's death, I can't say I'll never want (or have) a liposuction.
How sad this all makes me. Why can't we all have different bodies? Why do we all want the same one? Why don't I love and respect the body I have, why am I always dissatisfied? It's exhausting, it really is, and it makes me feel weak. I do not want to be defeated by the dictatorship of thinness, I want to believe I can rise above it.

Maybe my mind is split into two armies. One of them is called You Are Not Good Enough, and the other one is called You Are Perfect. I think they fight each other constantly and sometimes one wins over the other. Unfortunately the former tends to win because it has powerful ammunition- most of society backing it up. But sometimes You Are Perfect wins, even if just for instants, and that's a start. I don't think that in this lifetime I will be able to completely abolish You Are Not Good Enough, so what I'm going to hope for is that it can learn to be quiet most of the time and have less power over me. Maybe they can both come to a peace-treaty one day and I can find some sort of peace with myself and my body image issues.

A far-off fantasy, perhaps. But I'm not willing to give up yet.

Real Beauty

I was caught quite off-guard when, a few years ago, a friend told me I had an advantage in life because I was attractive. In fact, I laughed, thinking she was joking. But she wasn't. To this friend of mine, I was beautiful and, as far as she was concerned, I was born that way, and my life was easier because of it. In my mind, however, she was as far from the truth as possible.

As a child I thought beauty was Barbie, which meant I was very, very ugly. No one ever said so- but no one really ever said I was beautiful either. I had big chubby cheeks and I was cute, maybe, but people did not refer to me as a "beautiful child." And cute didn't last very long either, because I grew very tall, and tall children are not considered cute. In the first grade my teacher had us line up according to height once and I was the tallest kid in my class, taller even than the boys, so I knew at that moment that I was never going to be a princess. A devastating fact to learn at the age of 6.

Adolescence was not kind to me either. My hair was suddenly frizzy, I got pimples, and my boobs were huge. In a bra and behind a shirt, my boobs actually worked in my favor, but they were heavy and sagged- meaning I could never wear a shirt without a bra, not even a built-in bra, and going to the beach was a horror show. My nose was too wide for my face, I had to wear braces on my teeth, I had facial hair, and one of my ears stuck out (just one- which is worse than both sticking out).

But all was not lost. I lived in Brazil, after all. There were magazines telling me that Real Beauty was attainable, even for ugly plain girls like me, and there were dermatologists and plastic surgeons at every corner ready to help me get there.

And so it started. From the age of 12-17 I had 72 very painful facials, at 15 I had 3 very painful plastic surgeries, at 16 I underwent 10 very painful (and expensive) laser procedures for hair-removal that felt like I was electrocuting my face, from 14-17 I had my hair straightened twice a week, and for the past 12 years I have spent thousands (perhaps millions) of dollars on face creams, hair creams, and body creams. Oh- let me not forget the three years of physical therapy to fix my posture (which had been ruined by the weight of my breasts and my extremely low self-esteem), and the endless pursuit of thinness that haunts me still.

And so since the age of about 18 I have been able to look in the mirror and see my perfect nose, my well-behaved skin and hair, my straight teeth, my small breasts, etc. and yes, I guess I see something closer to Real Beauty than I'd known before.

Except nothing about it feels real.

At 18, a truly beautiful man, the most beautiful man I've ever been involved with to date, took an interest in me. He thought I was beautiful, and said so, many times. I had dated other boys, but no one as purely good looking as this guy. I didn't believe him, though, and our romance quickly ended as a result. That would not be the first time my insecurities got in the way of my dating life. When I meet a man who thinks I'm beautiful, I cringe. Deep inside, although I rarely reveal this, I am waiting for him to "discover" that I'm not beautiful at all. I know he'll see it- not exactly that I'm not beautiful- because the job was well done, I admit, I can fool anyone now- but that I was not born beautiful, I don't possess Real Beauty, and, above all, I still have an ugly plain girl within.

When that friend saw me as someone who belonged in the category of the few who not only possess, but take for granted, Real Beauty, I was surprised, yes, but I was also scared. Scared of my own facade, of its power and its sudden realness in my life. I explained to my friend what my reality was, and as she listened I saw her thinking of her own history with beauty/ugliness. She was one of those women who considered herself plain and ugly, and she was caught quite off-guard herself when I explained that the real difference between us was that I had the money and the cultural incentive to change what I looked like.

Do I think it's right for a young girl to have gone through everything I went through in order to fit into the mold of conventional beauty? No, I don't. I don't think teenagers should have plastic surgery, I don't think children should be aware of beauty, I don't think women should ever ever think they're fat.

But would I take away the image I see in the mirror now? Would I put back the wide nose, would I go back to the heavy sagging breasts, would I be okay with post-adolescence blemished skin, would I stop dieting? No, I wouldn't. It pains me to say so, but I know it's true. I rather be attractive, cost what it may have cost me (emotionally and financially), even if it never feels real.

I do wonder what my life would be like if I (and the society I was raised in) just accepted me as I was. Not only accepted, but recognized it as beautiful in its own non-conventional way. I have wondered many times; what if magazines were covered with models who had normal bodies, frizzy hair, a pimple or two? What if there was no air-brushing, what if naturally "beautiful" people were not valued more than "normal-looking" people? What would I look like now? How would I feel about myself? How many boyfriends would I have had? How many leading roles would I have been cast in? How many clothes would I have never bought? How many places would I have been ignored in?

Asking all these questions is futile, really, no answer can really be known. I share my story and my thoughts on beauty in hopes that one day, if I ever have a daughter, she will find her beauty without battling her own Self and wounding her soul. In hopes that one day, when someone tells me I'm beautiful, the compliment won't come with the reminder of my enslavement to it, and, more than anything, that I may be able to believe that what that person is seeing is the Real Me.