Eat the Damn Cake

It’s been over three years since I got a nose job. Honestly, I can’t remember what month it was. Sometime during the summer.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember how much I hated my face. Enough to lie asleep while someone hacked it open. Enough to show up for the surgery even after my dad watched a live special on rhinoplasty and described it in horrifying detail to me (“and then there’s just this giant hole in the middle of your face because they flip the skin back, after they cut the piece, you know that little piece in between your nostrils? Yeah that one.”) It’s hard to remember how badly I wanted to look different. I was casual about it. I played it cool. “It’s just something I need to do, y’know?” But sometimes when I was alone, I would look in the mirror and cry because I hated my face so much. It felt unfair. So many other girls got a regular nose. And then they had regular faces. Why me? Seriously, God, what the hell?

And then I got the nose job, and, well, some of you know the story– it didn’t really make a difference.

“This has only happened to me one other time,” the surgeon told me apologetically, explaining that something had gone wrong.

Instead of my face being fantastically transformed, it was just slightly rearranged. Now my nose is a little crooked in places it didn’t use to be. It’s a little thinner at the bridge.

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When the Shabby Apple people wrote to me they suggested that my “fashionable readers” might like one of their dresses. I was flattered on your behalf. I also noticed that, although they complimented my writing, there was no mention of how fashionable I am. There’s a chance they saw some pictures of me, wearing things that hurt the eyes and the soul when combined. Or things that simply put the eyes and the soul to sleep. But never mind that. This is really, really fun.

Except that I had to pick a dress that I hoped you guys would like. It took a while. I narrowed it down to four or so, consulted five friends, agonized for days (possibly totally a week and a half), agonized even more today, when I changed my mind a lot two minutes before posting this, and then finally just picked the boldest one, reddest, most fabulous one. Why not?

So here’s the deal: I’m giving away the nothin’ like a dame dress from Shabby Apple, a very cool online boutique of women’s dresses.

This is it:

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Some people were saying in the comments the other day that I have an antiquated idea of what it means to be a woman.

Melanie said this: I think you have an amazingly antiquated view of womanhood in general. You have absorbed so many beauty standards. You spend time analyzing why you don’t conform to xxx and what is wrong w. you bc you don’t conform to xxx.

When I read that, I felt for a second as though I’d been slapped. Amazingly antiquated? Oh god. I’m terrible! Why am I so bad at being a modern woman? Is there something wrong with me for not being more confident? Since then, I’ve been thinking about what she said. It really confuses me. Which makes me want to think about it more but also makes me feel like I’m not making any progress when I think about it and after a while I just feel kinda stupid.

I don’t think there’s a big difference between having an antiquated view of womanhood and being an antiquated woman. At least not according to what Melanie says. I have an antiquated view. I have absorbed all of these beauty standards. Now they’re inside me. They’re a part of who I am. I can’t stop thinking about them. I am an antiquated woman.

What does it mean to be an antiquated woman?

Melanie suggests feeling bad about your appearance and overanalyzing it. Here are some of my own guesses (based on what pops into my mind when I hear the word “antiquated”): Cooking, cleaning, being in a marriage where your husband makes a lot more money than you, wanting babies, wearing your hair long and styled, making sure your nails are perfect all the time, reading lady mags, being bad at math, wearing tea dresses with pearls.

(source)

Or, if we’re talking, like, REALLY antiquated: lace-up corsets and therapy sessions where your doctor stimulates your clitoris for you, since you seem hysterical (that really, really used to happen. Did you guys know that’s how the vibrator was born? Because doctors’ fingers were getting so tired?)

I confess– I do some of those things on the first list. Can you guess which ones? Clue: I don’t have long hair.

But I don’t know any women who don’t do some of those things. And I don’t know any women who have never felt bad about their appearance. Which makes me think that probably all of this is part of being a woman right now. Today. In the modern age.

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Sometimes I thought that I wanted to look good for guys. Sometimes I measured my attractiveness  by how many looks I got on the street. By how many dates I got. By how many guys in class tried to whisper jokes to me when the professor turned towards the board.

I saved my best outfits for coffee with other girls, but I thought it must be the guys who mattered.

Secretly, without even telling myself I was thinking it, I imagined that one day I would get married and stop worrying about the way I looked. I’d have this man who thought I was perfect and gorgeous and sexy beyond belief, and that would be that.

This may come as a huge shock to you guys, but: yeah, it wasn’t. It wasn’t that.

I’ve been married for a year now, and the other night I woke up and Bear was asleep next to me and this is the precise transcript of my thoughts: “Whoa, who is that guy? He’s really good looking. He has big muscles. This is my husband. God, I’m lucky. Wow, I can’t believe this is my life. YES!!!”

But being married hasn’t made me feel hot all the time. Or even reasonably pretty. It sometimes makes me think it’s probably OK if it turns out that I’m ugly. Bear will still think I look good, even if he’s the only one.  He can’t even admit that I’m not as pretty as famous actresses and models. He stubbornly repeats “You’re prettier,” as I roll my eyes and feel enormously grateful.

If anything, being married has made me realize how little my relationship with my appearance has to do with my relationship with a man.

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I keep reading stuff about how women don’t negotiate for more money. Apparently, we don’t ask for raises. We definitely don’t ask for signing bonuses. At first, I thought it was just a myth. There are plenty of women who do these things! Tons! Right? Who’s with me? Strong women who demand more money? Are you there?

I’m beginning to wonder if I’m wrong.

I have a friend who recently, after a long, miserable year of searching and prepping and sneaking out early to interviews, got a job making double what she did before. She left a work environment that at times sounded downright abusive for one where she’s comfortable and her ideas are valued. She asked for a certain salary, and was granted it. Hell yeah.

But that is, um, the only case like that I can think of.

And she is also a girl with hair that is so lustrous it might actually be emitting light, who is slender and gorgeous and also, magically, has really full breasts. So maybe she’s the exception?

I’m getting worried. Because I know I’m not the exception. When someone offers to pay me, I get all sweaty and excited and nervous and I’m crossing my fingers and praying that they don’t change their mind and I’m nodding and grinning and thanking them a lot. The last thing I want to do is mess it up. Recently, I was asked to name a price for an essay that someone wanted to publish, and I went through about forty-five minutes of agonizing deliberations that sounded (in my head) a little like this:

So do I start high? Then we can negotiate down, but I’ll look like an idiot if it’s too high. Worse, I’ll look really cocky. I’ll look totally obnoxious. She’ll hate me. And then she’ll change her mind. But I shouldn’t start too low, because that would be wimpy. And women are supposed to ask for more money. And I’m a strong woman. OK, I’m not a strong woman. Shit. I should go for the middle. What’s the middle? Does anyone know what the middle is?

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These are the things my belly does now: it rolls over the top of my jeans when I sit down. I think things I never used to think, like, “Maybe I shouldn’t wear jeans, since I’m gonna be on the train a lot today.” And “Maybe I shouldn’t wear jeans, since I’m gonna be eating a lot today.”

It has a big, happy reaction to food, and it puffs itself proudly out, to celebrate, whenever it’s fed. I catch myself thinking new things, like, “Which dress can I wear to dinner that won’t emphasize my bellybutton?” and “Do I own any dresses that don’t emphasize my bellybutton?”

It doesn’t go flat, even when I lie on my back. It occurs to me that I used to be proud of it for going concave when I did that. I used to feel sort of smug about it. My belly used to look like the belly of a Victoria’s Secret Model. Even if my face was, um, not like the face of a Victoria’s Secret Model. If Victoria’s Secret had decided to do some just-bellow-the-boobs-to-the-hips shots for a new sexy campaign, I could’ve been a candidate. Now the whole putting-on-a-bikini thing gives me a newfound appreciation for winter. The cold, dead heart of winter.

Last night, as I was lying in bed, being normal, I caught myself sucking in my stomach.

No one was looking at me. Bear was reading something on his phone. I was reading something on my phone. We were just being a regular couple during the Age of Smartphones. He was probably not sucking his stomach in, but I definitely was. Why? Who knows? Culture. Society. Victoria’s Secret.

“Why are you sucking your stomach in?” I asked myself, embarrassed.

“Because I always do,” I said back to myself. (This was not out loud.)

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