Then I think of the conference I was at yesterday. All
these successful important people. All of them under 50 looked like they could
launch second careers as catalogue models. I wonder if there is no hope for an
ugly woman like myself. Who would ever want to be involved in anything I
headed? Who could take me seriously? It seems absurd, but I'm keeping score and
the last time I saw an ugly woman under sixty running anything was exactly
never. Never. I know correlation is not causality, but it's impossible not to
notice precisely no woman as ugly as I am gets anywhere I want to be. Yes,
there are people even uglier than I am, and so what. The world has different
standards for men. And as to the ugly women in my life most did not start out
that way, but slid there after they had accomplished everything: husbands,
children, careers, financial stability. The one counterexample I can think of
survived on the largesse of generous parents, and a socialist state while she
wrote a book of poetry, alone in her room. I have a sneaking suspicion if she
had to sell the book by appearing on TV, sales would plummet. At any rate, I
can't write poetry, and I'm not living in a socialist state.
I have finally decided to bite the bullet and have plastic
surgery. The only question is when. I am still undergoing fertility treatment
on the vain hope I'll get pregnant. So it would be an obvious shame to fix
myself, get pregnant and fat, and then need to fix myself all over again. Truth
be told I have much less of a problem with my body than many women. I lack the self-discipline
or mental illness or whatever it takes to develop an eating disorder. My ass is
huge, and I'm OK with that. My thighs are starting to look like I already had
several kids, and I think its fine. Just motivation for me to actually
exercise. My belly is becoming more round by the day, and somehow it doesn't
bother me. But I can barely look at my own face in the mirror. From the
shoulder's up, I wish I could erase everything and start all over again. I
would do it if it meant breaking every bone in my face; but there are no guarantees
it would work.
I have come to a certain peace with the fact that I
am an ugly woman. Not the ugliest woman. But certainly not the woman of
anyone's fantasies. What I cannot quite get past is my mess of a chin, or more
precisely the fat hanging beneath it. I fixed it once. At one point I went to
the gym 6 days a week for over an hour a day for months. I ate lots of lettuce.
I lost 20 pounds. Most of my face looked scary...but my chin looked the best it
ever has. Before the days of plastic surgery women spoke of a tradeoff between
the face and the ass. You lose control of your expanding rear end, but you keep
a round, young face; or your keep slim and trim and let your face fall. In my
case the tradeoff was the face or the chin or just finally go get some plastic
surgery.
For me this surgery will be a breaking free of society’s
expectations I'm almost proud of. My whole life people have lied to me.
"It's what's on the inside that counts!" Really? I suppose that's why
I've never seen an overweight or ugly female reporter in my life. Skinny people
have more intelligence inside? This is just one of countless lies I have been
told. They all seem to revolve around the idea that it is permissible for me to
be ugly as long as I continue to be kind and intelligent. Basta. Enough. I live
in a society of superficial people so concerned with what Kim Kardishian's did
yesterday, they have no mental space to even understand who Marie Curie was.
The obsession with the surface seems to only grow worse the higher up the power
chain one goes. And unfortunately, at the top everyone has money to fix
themselves. Every woman has Botox, and hair dye, and trips to the spa to get
everything tweezed and plucked. And then goes around hypocritically pretending we should all care less about the way we look.
I could change the way I am processing this. I could
practice meditation, self-acceptance, and go to even more therapy. But I fear
it has not worked. And further, I'll never change the way the world processes
me. I understand for many of the positive outcomes of beauty in my life, it is simply too late. I can't undo the past. I'll never forget the humiliating moments...the disgusting men who let me know they were interested in having sex with me yet did not want to be seen in public with me, all the times a man would open the door for women in front of me to slam it into my face as if I were invisble, all the boyfriends who not one ever told me I was beautifull: because I wasn't. So I'm going off to try to start living my dream: to finally stop being
this pitiful pitied ugly woman whatever that means in the context of being an old single barren witch. I'm only a few operations away from finding out.
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