I have a list of gossip sites that I like to peruse on a daily basis as my guilty pleasure before scrounging through my email, paying bills online and working. So imagine what kind of face I made when I found this: "My Beautiful Mommy," a book that a Florida plastic surgeon wrote to help mothers communicate to their children why they get plastic surgery.
I'm still somewhat speechless. My first instinct was the nasty look - the kind of nose sneer that you do when you smell the effects of a meal gone terribly wrong - and an incredibly huffy attitude when the book explains that Mommy is getting surgery to help her feel "better." Um, Doc? You might want to explain the difference between having a busted spleen out versus a confidence boost. Feeling "better" because of the pain of an injured organ of the body isn't the same as feeling better about one's image they have to look at in the mirror every day.
But then I sat down and thought about it for a while. Kids are scared when their parents have to get surgery, no matter what the reason, and if it's going to happen, then who better than a plastic surgeon to help choose some gentler words to explain it to kids who think their mommy is hurt and in trouble?
The mother who Newsweek first profiles says she got a tummy tuck because her stomach looked "pruney" (a term her child used) after pregnancy. Yea, I'd probably want that fixed, too. Then again, the mother in the book gets a boob job, a nose job and a tummy tuck. Good golly Ned. What kind of self-image issues would that parent's daughter have? How do you explain that to your child? "Honey, Mommy's not happy with the genes she was given, so I'm going to let someone fix them for me."
There are always things that we all - and I'm talking to the ladies out here, mostly - want to have fixed. Maybe it's the weird-looking veins that started popping out of our legs after pregnancy, or the stretch marks that ripped us apart, or the facial acne scars we'd like to have lasered away from childhood. But what kind of mindset are we setting up our kids for when we reject the physical traits that our parents gave us? Sure, there are parts that might not be up to Hollywood standards, but... all right, that's probably not the best example in the world, but it's the standard that American girls pine after.
The book probably has its place in pop culture history, but I don't understand why parents are so worried about explaining their choices to their kids. Kids have a curiosity and reasoning that so much simpler than ours, and some days I wonder if we should let kids ask the tough questions and help us think about why we do the things we do. For example, the comedian Lewis Black mentions in his "Rules of Enragement" album that instead of letting the CEO crooks (think Tyco and Adelphia) be convicted in conventional manners, they should like a 9-year-old kid take care of that. He imagines that the kid, upon being questioned on what he thinks of three people taking a $1 billion, he would probably say "That's f$%*ing NUTS!"
What I'm worried about is not my self image, but the one I'm teaching my daughter. If she sees her mom hating on herself all the time, she's going to learn the same thing and do it to herself. So I know that, if I ever decide to go under a cosmetic knife, I better be prepared with a statement for my daughter that is 1) easy to understand, and 2) should tell her that Mommy still likes herself.
Besides, plastic surgery is one of those habits that are probably best left to less than moderation. Like gambling and drinking, most folks use it to feel better about themselves until they eventually don't recognize who they were in the first place.
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