INDY'S WEEKLY ALTERNATIVE NEWSPAPER HIGHLIGHTING ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Plain as the nose on my face

If you"re already having "one of those days," I recommend against spending the afternoon having a stranger circle all of your physical imperfections with a felt tip pen. Somehow, no one was on-hand to give me such sound advice, which is how I got here: standing breath-fog distance from my mirror, squinting at a once-familiar physiognomy, wondering how I"ve gone 25 years having never seen it. It is, literally, as plain as the nose on my face. I"ve just returned from an aesthetic surgery consultation. The last of five. And while I"ve always professed not to judge or condemn folks who opt for cosmetic surgery, I"ve also always rejected it as a bandwagon on which I"m willing to leap. But standing here, possessed of this new knowledge - that for every devil I knew there were a dozen I didn"t - I saw the truth in a favorite quote: "When you see the bandwagon, it"s too late." But, now, I had to know - was it too late? Because all of a sudden - in spite of myself - I wanted nothing more than to board that wagon. Skiing the unusual slopes My fascination with plastic/cosmetic/aesthetic surgery began only recently, while watching one of those Bloody Hell! Facelifts that Went Horribly Wrong and Ate Liverpool documentaries on the BBC. I was overcome by a bizarre impulse Ö and after I gave someone I didn"t know a bouquet of flowers, I had another. I wanted to find out, firsthand, what the cosmetic surgery biz was all about and whether fingering the knife myself - even out of curiosity, alone - might give me greater insight into its purveyors and its patients. What I discovered first is that plastic surgery has become one of the world"s most accessible drugs. Whereas ladies who lunch were once the only population likely to become ladies who lift (and nip and tuck), the last decade has seen everyone from affluent suburbanites to blue collar single parents lining up to right what they feel nature has wronged. I suppose, in retrospect, I knew that everybody and their remarkably-youthful-looking brother were going under the knife these days. Hell, I even knew friends who"d done it. And, while I always thought surgery as a silly social salve rather than a solution, I had always figured that aesthetic surgery was what personal freedom was all about: life, liberty and the pursuit of 34 DDs. And who was I to judge, I thought? What did I know anyway? (If you"d ever seen my upper thighs, you"d know: not much. And if you HAVE seen my upper thighs, don"t think I"ve forgotten that you owe me dinner.) But the more vinyl chairs I warmed, savoring my copy of Highlights and waiting for "the doctor to see me now," the less detached and righteously indignant I became at the prospect of a made-to-order body. My waiting room compatriots didn"t resemble the miserable, traumatized people I"d ached for on the BBC. And no one was crouching behind the potted plant screeching, "I AM NOT AN ANIMAAAAAAL!" Maybe, I mused, it is possible to exercise your own good judgment, take the reigns and change what you dislike about your outside (while remaining grounded on the inside) at little or no emotional cost Ö if my relaxed musings had screeched to a louder halt, they"d have heard it in Missouri. Because what I didn"t know, cradled in that womb of a waiting room, was soon imparted to me by a wise man with nary a forehead crease. And the news rocked me to my very foundation. My breasts are unusually sloped. I KNEW IT! This was the Rosetta Stone I"d sought for the last neurotic decade. The key to every failure, every disappointment, from watching Mondale get trounced by Reagan when I was 7 to finding out that Joanie didn"t really love Chachi. Damn you, girls, DAMN YOU and your unusual slopes. (Insert indignant fist-shaking at the heavens here.) So I listened politely as the doc continued to offer up solutions for my presenting complaint: that my body, regardless of weight loss and exercise, always seemed vaguely out of proportion. He gently explained my options: liposuction, augmentation and sending his children to Stanford. I left his office a little shaken by the news ("unusually sloped?") but feeling OK. I may be physically insecure but even I knew I didn"t need THAT. As I consultation-ed my way through the coming weeks, though, the whole experiment began to feel less like research that I could eschew as "just one Dr. Chad Feelgood"s opinion" and more like being smacked in the face by a good-sized board. And the beat(ing) goes on Ö Over the next four office visits, I came to understand that cosmetic surgeons are a lot like James Joyce novels: There are a few I like, a few I can respect and a lot that confuse and infuriate me. The quality and professionalism seemed to vary a great deal, as did their, shall we say, enthusiasm for prettying up this horror (me). Three of the surgeons I met maintained what I"d deem an appropriate manner for a cosmetic consult. I told them what I didn"t care for about my body and they explained what procedures matched which complaints (liposuction was the topic of choice, for the most part). Each of the three discussed, in bare-assed honesty, the potential risks (infection, dissatisfaction, scarring, painful recovery and temporary results) along with the ultimate costs. These "good guys" also made a point of explaining the need for realistic expectations and personal awareness. Cosmetic surgery isn"t a magic wand to be used to animate your self-esteem into a frenzy of shiny, sexy, confident beauty. In fact, as I walked out (practice breasts in hand) of Doctor No. 3"s lair, he shook my hand and sagely said, "If my patients truly feel badly about themselves when they walk in, they"ll feel badly when they walk out. They just may be able to hide it a little better." Sadly, the sage train soon screeched to a halt as I met my aesthetic nemesis: No. 5. I wasn"t in his office for 20 minutes before he snapped my picture with his digital camera, taped it to his wall and slapped Sharpie scribbles all over it. Circles. Arrows. Even an exclamation point. And, you know, I wouldn"t have been at all surprised to find that there was an animated exclamation point hovering over my head right then, ý la Wiley Coyote. Hell, if I had a sign to hold up to the audience that said, "YIKES!" I would have whipped it out. How could THIS much be so horribly wrong with me? And what was so wrong with me that I was sitting there listening to it? By the time I kicked the car into second gear and booked it out of No. 5"s parking lot (my transmission is still there, if you happen to need one), I was near tears. Something about my last consult tweaked the wrong nerve. Maybe it was looking at a picture of my own face, with the familiar features crossed out Ö erased - the same facial features that had worn mortar boards (at graduations, sure, but sometimes just to look smart), seen loved ones die, watched others live. Or maybe it was sheer confusion at seeing the bump in my nose (the same nose that was a constant source of amazement to my friends because it is so freakishly small) circled, not once but twice. I didn"t even know I had a bump in my nose. Whatever it was, it was the biggest red flag that cosmetic surgery was not for me. Well, maybe it was the second biggest. It came in a distant second to my constant fear of receiving a written reprimand from Naomi Wolfe or Gloria Steinham on a glossy postcard with "Feminism: You Are SO Out" splashed across it in red. Yet, as sure as I now am that I am not a good emotional candidate for "aesthetic improvement," here I am, staring at the improbably bumpy nose sniffling back at me from the other side of the mirror. Hell, at least it"ll distract everyone from my unusually sloped breasts.