Warning: Sometimes What Other People Think About You Is Exactly What You Need to Hear
I sat with my ankles crossed on the examining table with only a hospital gown and my underwear on. While I waited for the plastic surgeon, I looked around the room. My mind turned over how situations that were incredibly awkward and bizarre in real life were normal in the medical profession. In my daily life, I would never sit on a table and let a strange man who I just met touch my tits. Yet here I was for my boob job consult, waiting for an unknown gentleman to assess my breasts.
The kicker is I wasn’t even sure if I wanted the surgery.
A couple weeks before my consult I was chatting with a “friend” over rosé. Bethany was one of those friends — the kind that always wants to drink and is impervious to all the negative effects like hangovers and bloating. I’m not immune to those things. This particular afternoon, I was feeling like a sumo wrestler about to bust out of my jean shorts.
“Ugh, I feel so fat right now. Maybe if my boobs were bigger, I would look skinnier.” I looked down at my boobs, giving them a nudge upwards with my hands. My boobs were the only part of my body refusing to bloat.
“First off, I wouldn’t hang out with you if you were fat.” Bethany took a big slug of rosé. “But you need to stop whining. It’s so annoying. Just get a fucking boob job, feel better about yourself, and get over it.”
“Damn, okay then.”
“Now stop nursing that wine! Let’s fucking go.” She held her wine glass up.
“Cheers, bitch.” I clinked my glass to hers.
Bethany’s “pep talk” wasn’t warm and fuzzy, yet she did make a good point. To enhance or not enhance had been the question for years. Through my late teens and early 20s, I hoped my boobs would fill in naturally. By age 23, I realized that wasn’t going to happen. Since I was a poor college student, the only modification I could afford was push-up bras. After college, I married and settled into the middle-class DINK (dual income, no kids) life. My ex-husband was neutral on a boob job and preferred to invest money in boats. After years of my ex-husband telling me I was selfish to purchase anything for myself (like even a bike or spending $27 at Target), the price tag of the boob job was guilt-inducing.
The medically trained part of my brain cautioned this was a major, invasive surgery to undergo simply for the sake of vanity. Plus, I didn’t want huge boobs, only a little bit bigger. Surgery seemed quite the hassle if I wasn’t gonna go for some tig ol’ bitties. Not to mention the time commitment. I enjoyed working out and being active so the idea of adding jostling jugs to burpees or running seemed like a pain in the ass. Besides, all the women I knew with large breasts complained about back pain. Indifference rounded out my attitude toward breast augmentation.
Then I got divorced.
Stepping out after a divorce is like going through a second adolescence. There’s a fixation on the opposite sex (or the same if that’s your flavor). You want to be noticed and desired SO BADLY, like you’re collecting back payment from all the affection and adoration you didn’t get in your marriage. You want to sing “I got a divorce and I need attention now!” Unfortunately, JG Wentworth can’t help with that.
Not to mention, you feel horrendously self-conscious.
Do I need to lose weight? Should I change my hair? But not bangs — things aren’t that bad. Why the fuck am I breaking out?
Finally, at the age of 36, now divorced and single, insecurity and the not-so-supportive nudging of a drinking budding compelled me to go for the free consultation. This is why I was sitting on a table, ready to show my ta-tas to a strange old man. The plastic surgeon had the most outlandish bedside manner I’d ever experienced as a patient and former medical professional.
Dr. Cohen slid his stool beside the exam table where I sat. As he began the exam, I uncrossed my legs.
“My dick! Watch out! You almost kicked my dick!” Doctor Cohen scooted his stool violently away from me. I couldn’t help myself — I started laughing.
“Are you done with your kicking? Can we get started now?” He scolded me.
“Yes.” I kept laughing. “I’m sorry.” I wasn’t at all, but apologizing seemed necessary since he might be holding a scalpel to my chest soon. Clearing my throat, I squared my shoulders and firmly pressed my legs into the back of the table.
His dick safe, Dr Cohen moved in and removed the gown from my shoulders. “HOLY TRAPS! You work out!”
Instinctively, I crossed an arm over my chest, reaching up to cover a trap and make me feel daintier. “Um, yeah. I do.”
“Put your arms down. I need to see your boobs.” His eyes widened and he shook his hands in exasperation. “It’s a boob consult!”
I rolled my eyes and put my arms down. “I know.”
The exam began for real. As he poked, prodded, and measured my boobs, Dr. Cohen explained various aspects of the surgery, made recommendations for size, and gave me warning after warning.
“If you decide to do the surgery, this is NOT the year to get pregnant.” He pointed at my face. “Pretty face.” His finger jabbed towards my chest. “Nice tits. It could happen.”
I giggled. Did he just call me pretty? This is so weird. “Okay.”
“I’m serious!” His face was angry and crazed. It was giving “Here’s Johnny!” from The Shining vibes.
“Understood.” I stopped giggling.
“Now, the other thing you can’t do is work out!” Dr. Cohen looked at me, one eyebrow arched.
“I get -”
“FOR WEEKS!” He shook both hands at me. “If you get this done and then do yoga or pull-ups or whatever you do, it will be a total waste of your money.”
I sighed. “I get that working out too soon post-surgery would be bad.” No longer needing a dramatic interruption, he let me get a complete sentence out.
“I’m serious. If you don’t think you can sit still and not work out, you shouldn’t do the surgery.”
Oh my God, my traps aren’t that big. Fuck. “I got it.”
I left the consult with a partial decision made. If I got the surgery, I wanted Dr. Cohen to do it. Although he was nuts, I could tell he was knowledgeable, experienced, and had too big of an ego to botch a surgery. I trusted him to make a nice rack. But I still didn’t know if I wanted bigger boobs.
A few days later, I was telling my yoga teacher, Brittney, about the experience.
“Show me your boobs,” Brittney demanded.
“What?” I laughed. I looked around the room even though Brittney and I were the only ones in the studio.
“Yaaaas!” Brittney snapped her fingers. “I’m for real! Show me your boobs!”
“Okay.” I lifted my sports bra. “Here they are.”
Brittany looked at my breasts and then into my eyes. All the playful, hype energy she had moments ago vanished. “Claire, your boobs are perfect.”
I looked down at my chest. “I actually quite like my boobs.” I brought my gaze up to match Brittney’s. “They’re cute, like mini cupcakes.”
“Don’t mess them up with surgery.”
“I don’t even want big boobs.” I took a deep breath. “But I’m not a small woman.” I waved my hands up and down my body. “Like I’m tall and athletic and have muscles but I have these little tits that seem out of proportion to the rest of me. If my boobs were bigger, maybe it would make the rest of me look smaller.” The words rushed out of me like I was confessing something I needed to get off my conscience before I lost the nerve.
Brittney shook her head. “That’s not a good reason to have someone slice into your perfect boobs and mess them up with gummy bear implants or whatever.”
I shook my head. “No, it’s not.” My lower lip puffed out to a pout. I felt defeated. If boobs weren’t the answer to feeling better about myself, then what was?
“Claire, do you realize how many women look at you and want your body?”
My head reeled back enough to make a double chin followed by a shudder as all my thoughts glitched out. Holy shit. “I’ve never once thought that.” She blew my damn mind.
“It’s true.”
“Oh my God. You’re right.”
Until that moment, I’d spent the entirety of my life looking at other women and seeing all the things they had that I didn’t. I’ve envied almost every single thing you could imagine. I’ve wished my hair was curly, blonde, black, or thinner. I’ve wanted my eyes to be blue or all green instead of my brown-green camo eyes. I’ve cursed my height but also wished I was taller. I’ve borderline starved myself to lose three pounds (and this was before it was a joke in Mean Girls). There’s not a single body part from my toes to my fingertips that I haven’t wanted to be different than how it is. And that’s fucking absurd.
I put so much mental energy into fixating on what other women looked like, and not once did I consider that someone might look at me and see something desirable. My self-view was through a distorted lens of insecurity. I looked in the mirror all the time but I wasn’t truly seeing myself. And my self-vision was especially cloudy since moving from the Midwest to South Florida. Surrounded by women with fake boobs, BBLs, surgically sculpted waists, and enough Botox to drown a person in even before the paralysis kicked in, my perception of beauty was becoming more distorted by the day. On top of culture shock, the post-divorce vulnerability had sent my body dysmorphia into overdrive and kept a big secret from me: I had no fucking clue how beautiful I was.
When I got home after yoga, I looked in the mirror with a different perspective. Without the optical illusion of self-doubt, I saw a beautiful woman who didn’t need fake boobs and more importantly, didn’t even want them. The solution to my insecurity wasn’t plastic surgery to change my body. Brittany showed me that I needed to look at myself through someone else’s eyes.
We’re taught not to let other people’s opinions define us. While that is valid in many cases (like with my rosé ‘friend’), it overlooks a harsh truth: we’re frigging mean to ourselves! This is why we need to listen to what others have to say about us sometimes. People who love you and care about you will see a much clearer picture of you. If you only listened to the asshole voices in your head and people who are “assholes in bestie’s clothing,” you might find yourself walking around with fake body parts you don’t even want, still feeling unhappy. Next time you look in the mirror, don’t use your own eyes. Borrow the eyesight of your best friend. I bet you’ll see someone completely different (pssst… it’s you and you’re awesome).
