Wikipedia defines cyborgs, as “those creature that complicate traditional boundaries between mind (or spirit) and matter, machine and animal, evolved and invented, living and dead.” Women of color might also be though of as people who “complicate traditional boundaries.” A cyborg can transcend borders of race, class, and gender and offer affinity to those who want it. Cyborgs are a way out of dualism, something that greatly holds women of color back in our sexists, racist world.
Eyes
Eyes allow us to see. The color of one’s eyes can suggest what race someone one is. The shape of ones eye can also do this. Often times, as we get older, our eyes need assistance from glasses. If we’re young and use glasses, the high classes can chose to wear contact lenses. Eyes color can help us blend in or stick out, depending on the circumstances. Many North Americans assume all Mexican people have brown eyes and they also assume that any Latino person is Mexican. When I was in Argentina, many people had very light eyes—hazel, green, blue, even crystal blue. My light eyes were not unlike the eyes of many of my peers when I was there.
What we do with our eyes is another story. Whenever they are open, we are looking, but staring is considered rude. If we look at someone for an extended amount of time, then there can be awkwardness and confusion. Eyes allow us to physically see but often times they impair us from truly seeing all of someone.
People without functioning eyes can be cast from society and devalued as people. Many opportunities they would’ve had are lost when it is know that they are without vision. Yet blind people often times are more in touch with the rest of their five senses as they do not depend on their eyes. Often times their sense of smell, touch, taste, and hearing are among the sharpest of a community.
Eyes can both hurt and help, excite and depress, and enhance or withdraw from.
Monday, May 7, 2007
Clothing, Countries, Orlan, and the Other
1. Stretch pants, made in USA
2. White T-Shirt, made in Brazil
3. Underwear, made in Cambodia
4. Bra, made in the Philippines
5. Running shorts, made in Mexico
6. Bathing suit, made in China
7. Dress, made in USA
8. Sweater, made in China
9. Nice top, made in USA
10. Bathrobe, made in China
Linkages. Well, just by reading where the items were made, not too much is known exactly about what the people are like who made them, how they were treated, and how they are viewed in relation to each other and to the rest of the working world.
I have a rough imagination of what the conditions must have been like to make the running shorts in Mexico as I have read and seen some documentaries about Maquiladoras. But in relation to Orlan’s "self-hybridization" project, I would say the same, “lowest tier” of people whose job it is to do such tedious, manual labor, are the same people depicted in Orland art. They are the other: the people who are official seen as people but unofficially not treated as people but as subhuman. By being seen as subhuman, they are able to be treated with such unsatisfactory standards and no questions are asked.
But sometimes questions are asked. I didn’t list the first 10 items of clothing I found because almost half of them were made in USA. I was not shocked by this, as I make a conscious effort to buy clothing made in USA—expecting that the working conditions are better so as that the people who make them are treated as real people and not subhuman. But at the same time, most clothing is not manufactured in USA and the conditions are not good. Until all people are treated with respect and are not forced to work or live in horrible conditions, we will not be past the perceived historical event of putting down the “other.”
2. White T-Shirt, made in Brazil
3. Underwear, made in Cambodia
4. Bra, made in the Philippines
5. Running shorts, made in Mexico
6. Bathing suit, made in China
7. Dress, made in USA
8. Sweater, made in China
9. Nice top, made in USA
10. Bathrobe, made in China
Linkages. Well, just by reading where the items were made, not too much is known exactly about what the people are like who made them, how they were treated, and how they are viewed in relation to each other and to the rest of the working world.
I have a rough imagination of what the conditions must have been like to make the running shorts in Mexico as I have read and seen some documentaries about Maquiladoras. But in relation to Orlan’s "self-hybridization" project, I would say the same, “lowest tier” of people whose job it is to do such tedious, manual labor, are the same people depicted in Orland art. They are the other: the people who are official seen as people but unofficially not treated as people but as subhuman. By being seen as subhuman, they are able to be treated with such unsatisfactory standards and no questions are asked.
But sometimes questions are asked. I didn’t list the first 10 items of clothing I found because almost half of them were made in USA. I was not shocked by this, as I make a conscious effort to buy clothing made in USA—expecting that the working conditions are better so as that the people who make them are treated as real people and not subhuman. But at the same time, most clothing is not manufactured in USA and the conditions are not good. Until all people are treated with respect and are not forced to work or live in horrible conditions, we will not be past the perceived historical event of putting down the “other.”
Sunday, May 6, 2007
Nueromancer and The Body
Gibson deploys the body as a item ready and able for technical logical modifications. It is not a stagnant item that is wholly natural but something that can last for many years with the right technical upgrades. In some cases, the body is not necessary for a sustained life as the brain can be uploaded on to a computer and a person’s mind can live endlessly.
This is similar to many current day modifications such as plastic surgeries that make people look younger, organ transplants, and medications available to sustain life. When the natural body has a heart of liver failure, we are now able to replace these organs and sustain peoples’ lives much longer than ever previously possible. The same is true for vision impairment—we can conduct eye surgeries—bone and joint problems—screws and metal can be added—or hearing impairments—we have hearing aids. While we haven’t figured out a way to look young forever, there are many surgical procedures that we can conduct to tighten people’s skin and create this effect in a semi-permanent way.
Aside from surgical procedures, we have come up with thousands of vitamins and medications to thin blood, strengthen immune systems, and do everything else in between to sustain our lives. While people used to just get old and die, now, in the west, with all of our medical technology, people are living to 90, 100 and 100 + years of age.
While we have not come up with a way to directly upload our whole, thinking brains onto computers, we have come up with ways of preserving our greatest thoughts and ideas by storing important information on data bases both in print and electrical. In many ways, his work does have an eerie feeling of prophesy within it, which to me, at least, is a scary thought. The presentation of Gibson’s work may be categorized as science fiction but in many respects, it feels like its is more science reality that he writes about.
This is similar to many current day modifications such as plastic surgeries that make people look younger, organ transplants, and medications available to sustain life. When the natural body has a heart of liver failure, we are now able to replace these organs and sustain peoples’ lives much longer than ever previously possible. The same is true for vision impairment—we can conduct eye surgeries—bone and joint problems—screws and metal can be added—or hearing impairments—we have hearing aids. While we haven’t figured out a way to look young forever, there are many surgical procedures that we can conduct to tighten people’s skin and create this effect in a semi-permanent way.
Aside from surgical procedures, we have come up with thousands of vitamins and medications to thin blood, strengthen immune systems, and do everything else in between to sustain our lives. While people used to just get old and die, now, in the west, with all of our medical technology, people are living to 90, 100 and 100 + years of age.
While we have not come up with a way to directly upload our whole, thinking brains onto computers, we have come up with ways of preserving our greatest thoughts and ideas by storing important information on data bases both in print and electrical. In many ways, his work does have an eerie feeling of prophesy within it, which to me, at least, is a scary thought. The presentation of Gibson’s work may be categorized as science fiction but in many respects, it feels like its is more science reality that he writes about.
The Body Social
I think that women, as a group, conceptualize the body many, many different ways. First we must identify which women we are talking about. North American women? Conservative women? Liberal women? Religious women? Practicing body modifying women? Women in India? Women of what cast? Women in Argentina? Women from maquiladoras? Who? I suggest all these different groups of women because I believe that varying groups of women conceptualize their bodies very differently. And even within these groups, there’s bound to be differences.
The group of women I know best would be a middle class, North American, young women, specifically from Los Angeles. Even within this group of women, I would say my closest high school friends conceptualize their bodies differently than a the group of girls from my high school that were more interested in their looks. My group of friends, predominantly athletes, conceptualize their bodies as a vessel they move around the world in but do not associated their identities too closely with their bodies features. I believe they think less about their body than someone interested in fashion, as fashion is the art of clothing in relation to the body. Women interested in fashion probably see their bodies as highly valued elements of their self which can hold a piece of clothing very beautifully or not. I believe these women are more concerned about maintaining a specific body type and when that type is unattainable, using fashion to appear like they have that type. To some extent, this is how I see my body, but then again, not fully.
From hearing Kate Bornstein, a noted transsexual author, actor and speaker present on two different college campuses I have gained both a greater and lesser understanding of transsexuals and the way they conceptualize their bodies. I say lesser because Kate made a clear statement that she, in no way, tries to represent the transsexual community, but can only speak from her own experiences and feelings.
She said she has had a very love/hate relationship with her body as she was born the wrong gender, male, and did not convert to female until well into her life. I think she conceptualizes her body as both very much who she is and very much who she isn’t—something like a permanent crossroads. While I have even read some of her writings, I would like to learn more about how she and many other marginalized groups of people conceptualize their bodies.
ETHNOGRAPHIC INTERVIEWS ABOUT HUMAN HANDS
Interviewer: What do you associated with human hands?
Informant 1: Well kept hands, neatly cut nails, clean fingers and non-dry skin is a reflection of one's personal hygiene. Dirty hands suggest that the person doesn't care for hygiene as they touch everything with their fingers, therefore dirty fingers=complete dirtiness
This informant is a 19 year old girl who admits to being over interested in all forms of cleanieness. It is interesting to see how this kind of obsession plays out in response to a broad, general question and her first thought about human hands is about how they’re kept. Specifically in regards to nails, it is definitely a cultural phenomenon for women to have nice nails, which by bringing the woman’s attention to the nail, seems to often times progress to the well kempt-ness of the whole hand. This response, is while the informant doesn’t realize it, quite gendered.
Interviewer: What do you associated with human hands?
Informant 2: Hands, I associate with building. Just of hands building the world lol... ideally they're used for constructive things...but also destructive...but yeah...just that with your two hand you can accomplish anything.
This informant is a 19 year old, North American boy who attends military school. The difference in their response is fascinating! He associated his hands with building and strength and success and she associates her hands with portraying her cleanliness.
The group of women I know best would be a middle class, North American, young women, specifically from Los Angeles. Even within this group of women, I would say my closest high school friends conceptualize their bodies differently than a the group of girls from my high school that were more interested in their looks. My group of friends, predominantly athletes, conceptualize their bodies as a vessel they move around the world in but do not associated their identities too closely with their bodies features. I believe they think less about their body than someone interested in fashion, as fashion is the art of clothing in relation to the body. Women interested in fashion probably see their bodies as highly valued elements of their self which can hold a piece of clothing very beautifully or not. I believe these women are more concerned about maintaining a specific body type and when that type is unattainable, using fashion to appear like they have that type. To some extent, this is how I see my body, but then again, not fully.
From hearing Kate Bornstein, a noted transsexual author, actor and speaker present on two different college campuses I have gained both a greater and lesser understanding of transsexuals and the way they conceptualize their bodies. I say lesser because Kate made a clear statement that she, in no way, tries to represent the transsexual community, but can only speak from her own experiences and feelings.
She said she has had a very love/hate relationship with her body as she was born the wrong gender, male, and did not convert to female until well into her life. I think she conceptualizes her body as both very much who she is and very much who she isn’t—something like a permanent crossroads. While I have even read some of her writings, I would like to learn more about how she and many other marginalized groups of people conceptualize their bodies.
ETHNOGRAPHIC INTERVIEWS ABOUT HUMAN HANDS
Interviewer: What do you associated with human hands?
Informant 1: Well kept hands, neatly cut nails, clean fingers and non-dry skin is a reflection of one's personal hygiene. Dirty hands suggest that the person doesn't care for hygiene as they touch everything with their fingers, therefore dirty fingers=complete dirtiness
This informant is a 19 year old girl who admits to being over interested in all forms of cleanieness. It is interesting to see how this kind of obsession plays out in response to a broad, general question and her first thought about human hands is about how they’re kept. Specifically in regards to nails, it is definitely a cultural phenomenon for women to have nice nails, which by bringing the woman’s attention to the nail, seems to often times progress to the well kempt-ness of the whole hand. This response, is while the informant doesn’t realize it, quite gendered.
Interviewer: What do you associated with human hands?
Informant 2: Hands, I associate with building. Just of hands building the world lol... ideally they're used for constructive things...but also destructive...but yeah...just that with your two hand you can accomplish anything.
This informant is a 19 year old, North American boy who attends military school. The difference in their response is fascinating! He associated his hands with building and strength and success and she associates her hands with portraying her cleanliness.
Ethnographic Conversation about Hair and Gender Identity
Interviewer: “Have you ever cut your hair very short?”
Informant: “Actually once I got it cut from there [below my chest] to like below my ear lobes and the woman did something funky like buzzed the back shorter. So then my mom and I evened it up, so it was above my ears. And I hated it so much. I think I felt masculine. And I had dyed my hair and when it was that short I dyed it pink to make it feminine.”
Here the informant, a twenty-year old Caucasian woman, talks about the length of her hair as a symbol of her femininity. Before the cut, she took for granted the fact that her longer hair served as a symbol for her femininity. After the cut, she expressed hatred with it because she lost one of her main expressions of femininity—her longer hair. It is interested how she chose to add the color pink to her hair—a shade undoubtedly associated with femininity—as a semi-permanent alternate of expressing her femininity through her hair. This quote serves as great evidence that North American women use their hair to assert their femininity.
Informant: “Actually once I got it cut from there [below my chest] to like below my ear lobes and the woman did something funky like buzzed the back shorter. So then my mom and I evened it up, so it was above my ears. And I hated it so much. I think I felt masculine. And I had dyed my hair and when it was that short I dyed it pink to make it feminine.”
Here the informant, a twenty-year old Caucasian woman, talks about the length of her hair as a symbol of her femininity. Before the cut, she took for granted the fact that her longer hair served as a symbol for her femininity. After the cut, she expressed hatred with it because she lost one of her main expressions of femininity—her longer hair. It is interested how she chose to add the color pink to her hair—a shade undoubtedly associated with femininity—as a semi-permanent alternate of expressing her femininity through her hair. This quote serves as great evidence that North American women use their hair to assert their femininity.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Mowing the Grass
At first glance, I revert my eyes because I don’t want to be looking at another woman’s pubic hair or region. Then I look back and chuckle a little. Is it meant to be a statement about shaving pubic hair or just something funny? Does the woman who’s wearing it have a stance or opinion about shaving? I’d like to think she does.
She got this because her boyfriend of 4 years just broke up with her. While not the exact main reason, it was in part because, in the end, she refused to shave and wax her legs, armpits, and pubic region. When he first told her that he liked smooth, hairless women, she didn’t think much of it and removed her body’s hair. After her first Brazilian wax, she was shocked. It has hurt so bad to lye on that table and have a stranger scrutinize the place between her legs, violently ripping the soft and natural hair off her sensitive skin. She couldn’t believe that so many women went through that process routinely and willfully, actually paying for it to be done. And for what? For whom?
In her case at least, it was for her boyfriend. This guy who she thought she really liked and who supposedly liked her equally. But did he like her equally, if he wanted her to go though such an unnatural, unpleasant and painful process? Before she new it, 4 years had passed and she had become a regular at the local nails and waxing place. It was only after their breakup, which of course was a result of her realizing she would and could never be the person her ex wanted her to be. It was with this tattoo, that she was able to create humor out of pain—both physical and emotional—and remember never to go down that road again.
I am writing from a western woman’s position. I am a young woman with parents whom have tried to shelter me from the idea of changing oneself for others and participating in unnatural acts of using makeup, shaving, or dying hair. For the most part, I don’t mind trying things once or twice, so I can form my own opinion on things. But currently, I am in a gray area, a middle ground, where I haven’t figured out what types of modifications are ok and what kinds aren’t, or if one can even make clear opinions or generalizations about actions like that.
Ultimate Piercing or Ultimate Insight
At first, the eyes of this woman scare me. She looks terrified. Then I see her mouth. What? Really? Calm down, I think, this is just a photoshop image. But that’s a HUGE problem. This image says and does a lot. What I HATE is the caption or title at the bottom that says “Ultimate Female Piercing.” To me, “ultimate,” has a positive connotation. Like ultimate dirt biking or the ultimate adventure. Who made this? Who the hell thinks that the ultimate piercing a “female,” not woman, can get is to pierce her mouth closed? This picture does nothing to zip my mouth shut. If anything it makes me want to scream or yell. It makes me want to talk and talk and talk about the symbolism of the image and the world is trying to do to women. I want to talk about how someone, or maybe many people, would be pleased to have women’s mouths pierced closed. I want to talk about how this is represents our culture’s desire to keep women silent. This country wants women without opinions or thoughts or insight. To me this is not the Ultimate Female Piercing it is the Ultimate Truth about how the world wants women and how I refuse to be.
I am woman with a voice. I am a woman with a voice who loves and needs to be heard. I have a lot to say and I have been encouraged to say it, especially when people don’t want to listen.
*I am the toughest girl i know*
This is an interesting one. It intrigues me. I’m not completely sure how I feel about it. Why is it placed right under the breast? Did the woman overcome breast cancer or is she just trying to juxtapose the word “tough” with the assumed delicateness of the breast? Why is it in cursive, a writing style with classical, feminine associations? At the end of the day, I think I like this tattoo. I like how the skin is still read and irritated around the red stars. I wonder though, why she has to tattoo this statement on her body. Does she need to be reminded of the fact that she’s the toughest girl she knows? And why does she refer to herself as a girl. Unless she is still a teen, she is a woman. I’d like to think she is a feminist, but the pieces add up to me thinking otherwise. Does it matter?
In terms of her narrative, I’m going to go with the story that she was diagnosed with breast cancer in that right breast at the ripe age of 22 and in the world of cancers, she felt young, even still just a girl. Much to everyone’s disbelief, after having her breast removed, undergoing all the chemotherapy sessions, she was able to fight off all the cancer. She then did something she would have never done otherwise and got a breast implant, only in the one, of course, and got the tattoo at the end of it all. Now, anyone who ever sees her bare chest will have to ask what the tattoo means as she will always have a reminder of what she went through and a marking proclaiming her personal strength.
I am seeing this as a person interested in provocative, meaningful, personal, and artistic tattoos. I like the idea of getting a tattoo that makes a positive statement about ones self, whether it be through words or symbolism. I am interested in getting a tattoo about my inner strength but wonder if it will be something I regret. So far, I will keep thinking and just appreciate the ones of others.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Response to Danny Rosenblatt
If I were to get a body modification I would pierce something on my face. I have wanted an eyebrow piercing for many years but when my older sister got one first, I was put off, as I don’t want to copy anything she does. Instead of an eyebrow piercing, I was thinking about piercing my lip, but I am not sure when or if I will actually get it. Another place I was thinking of getting a piercing was below one of my eyes commonly referred as the tear drop piercing. In the genre of tattoos, I was thinking I might get one someday that has something to do with my body image issues. Maybe if I felt I had over come something about that, I would like a tattoo to remind myself of how I felt about myself and how I overcame those issues. Again, these are all in the future and I will continue to think and reflect about these modifications before acting.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
My Dieting Narrative
Growing up, I was a tall, lanky kid. The only understanding I had about my size and my body was that I was tall—very tall—especially for my age. But I never perceived myself to be fat.
It was during my 5th grade class’s graduation trip to the beach that I first remember feeling insecure about my body. The whole class went, almost 70 of us. And we were all in our bathing suits. Prior to the event, I must have been anticipating the feeling of insecurity because I bought a bathing suit that was “boy short” style as to cover up my butt and thighs a little more. Yet once I got to the beach, it seemed that that extra cut of fabric wasn’t enough. As I lay on my towel, stomach down, I felt nervous that everyone else was noticing the predominate size of my thighs in comparison to everyone else. In retrospect, I feel sad for my former self, as I was unable to logically conclude that if I was taller than every boy in my class and much taller than every girl (at least half a foot), it would only be natural that the width of my legs be greater or else they wouldn’t be able to hold me up right.
Sometime after the beach trip, I began to grow more conscious of my food intake and its relation to my size. My desire to actually diet didn’t come into full effect until early high school—a key transitional period in growing up. Throughout the year, I didn’t pay much attention to the fat on my body unless my skin was directly exposed—again during the summer time, when we southern California kids would hang out at the beach. I didn’t like the idea of dieting directly, as I saw some of the girls more obsessed with their looks watching what they ate at parties and so forth. I resented the fact that in social settings, guys could go right for the pizza and soda and girls would linger around the veggie trays with diet sodas. But at the same time, I too was self-conscious about what kind of junk food I would eat at a party. While I never dieted directly, I would often create elaborate plans with my friend, we’ll call her Sofia, to firm up our abs and shrink our waists by summer time. While this wasn’t really necessary, we were teenage girls living in Santa Monica, CA and caring about our bodies was almost inevitable.
A big transitional period for me was when I left my group of high self esteem friends to go off to an out of state, private college in Oregon. This was the first time since summer camp, year back, in which my new friends and me were eating all our meals in a social setting of a cafeteria. It was kind of horrific. As I didn’t know anyone prior to arrival, I naturally became friends with my roommate and hall mates. They were a fun group of girls but in terms of healthy eating habits and positive body image, they were lacking greatly. My roommate had struggled with an eating disorder two years prior and it was clear that it had always stayed with her. At meals, she was very specific about what and how much she ate. Everything she consumed was thoroughly thought out. While she did eat, I always felt self conscious when just throwing food on to my plate even if it was fried, all carbohydrates, or had lots of sugar. Another close friend was in a battle with an eating disorder—a reality I was always aware of but had never put the pieces together that it was in fact a disorder until after we went separate ways. She would eat nothing but celery and black coffee for days then sporadically binge on 30 Milano cookies. And a third friend was constantly skipping meals and living off slim fast and butter free popcorn. When she did come to meals, she would openly talk about how she couldn’t eat this or that because she was too fat and needed to watch her weigh. It is worth noting that while all these three girl were a couple inches shorter than me, I must have been 3-4 pants sizes bigger than them. In other words, they were clearly a very skinny group to begin with. This whole atmosphere hit me hard as I had never experienced every meal as a time to sit around and talk about how fat all my friends and me were. As a group, we were constantly discussing what we did not like about our bodies and how many calories we had eaten that day. Again, instead of talking to a counselor about this or changing friend groups, I attempted to resist it by continuing to eat what I wanted—or even what they wanted but never allowed themselves to eat. It was as if I was conducting my own personal protest against all the talk about dieting. In retrospect, I don’t think that was a helpful solution to the situation as I ate more unhealthily than I should have. Luckily I transferred colleges after the first year and now find my self with a group of girl friends that might not be happier with their bodies, but rarely talk about it and all eat healthy portions of food at each meal.
In conclusion, I have found that I have never really dieted—while I have thought about it a lot—and if anything, I have over eaten as an unhealthy protest to all the dieting I feel is going on around me. In the present and future, I hope to eat healthy quantities of healthy foods without putting much thought into it as to merely fuel my body in a positive manor without obsessing about losing weight.
It was during my 5th grade class’s graduation trip to the beach that I first remember feeling insecure about my body. The whole class went, almost 70 of us. And we were all in our bathing suits. Prior to the event, I must have been anticipating the feeling of insecurity because I bought a bathing suit that was “boy short” style as to cover up my butt and thighs a little more. Yet once I got to the beach, it seemed that that extra cut of fabric wasn’t enough. As I lay on my towel, stomach down, I felt nervous that everyone else was noticing the predominate size of my thighs in comparison to everyone else. In retrospect, I feel sad for my former self, as I was unable to logically conclude that if I was taller than every boy in my class and much taller than every girl (at least half a foot), it would only be natural that the width of my legs be greater or else they wouldn’t be able to hold me up right.
Sometime after the beach trip, I began to grow more conscious of my food intake and its relation to my size. My desire to actually diet didn’t come into full effect until early high school—a key transitional period in growing up. Throughout the year, I didn’t pay much attention to the fat on my body unless my skin was directly exposed—again during the summer time, when we southern California kids would hang out at the beach. I didn’t like the idea of dieting directly, as I saw some of the girls more obsessed with their looks watching what they ate at parties and so forth. I resented the fact that in social settings, guys could go right for the pizza and soda and girls would linger around the veggie trays with diet sodas. But at the same time, I too was self-conscious about what kind of junk food I would eat at a party. While I never dieted directly, I would often create elaborate plans with my friend, we’ll call her Sofia, to firm up our abs and shrink our waists by summer time. While this wasn’t really necessary, we were teenage girls living in Santa Monica, CA and caring about our bodies was almost inevitable.
A big transitional period for me was when I left my group of high self esteem friends to go off to an out of state, private college in Oregon. This was the first time since summer camp, year back, in which my new friends and me were eating all our meals in a social setting of a cafeteria. It was kind of horrific. As I didn’t know anyone prior to arrival, I naturally became friends with my roommate and hall mates. They were a fun group of girls but in terms of healthy eating habits and positive body image, they were lacking greatly. My roommate had struggled with an eating disorder two years prior and it was clear that it had always stayed with her. At meals, she was very specific about what and how much she ate. Everything she consumed was thoroughly thought out. While she did eat, I always felt self conscious when just throwing food on to my plate even if it was fried, all carbohydrates, or had lots of sugar. Another close friend was in a battle with an eating disorder—a reality I was always aware of but had never put the pieces together that it was in fact a disorder until after we went separate ways. She would eat nothing but celery and black coffee for days then sporadically binge on 30 Milano cookies. And a third friend was constantly skipping meals and living off slim fast and butter free popcorn. When she did come to meals, she would openly talk about how she couldn’t eat this or that because she was too fat and needed to watch her weigh. It is worth noting that while all these three girl were a couple inches shorter than me, I must have been 3-4 pants sizes bigger than them. In other words, they were clearly a very skinny group to begin with. This whole atmosphere hit me hard as I had never experienced every meal as a time to sit around and talk about how fat all my friends and me were. As a group, we were constantly discussing what we did not like about our bodies and how many calories we had eaten that day. Again, instead of talking to a counselor about this or changing friend groups, I attempted to resist it by continuing to eat what I wanted—or even what they wanted but never allowed themselves to eat. It was as if I was conducting my own personal protest against all the talk about dieting. In retrospect, I don’t think that was a helpful solution to the situation as I ate more unhealthily than I should have. Luckily I transferred colleges after the first year and now find my self with a group of girl friends that might not be happier with their bodies, but rarely talk about it and all eat healthy portions of food at each meal.
In conclusion, I have found that I have never really dieted—while I have thought about it a lot—and if anything, I have over eaten as an unhealthy protest to all the dieting I feel is going on around me. In the present and future, I hope to eat healthy quantities of healthy foods without putting much thought into it as to merely fuel my body in a positive manor without obsessing about losing weight.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Tools for My Daily Body Modification
note: not all items are used every day
• Spot cover up stick
• Loose powder
• Brush to apply powder
• Mascara, eyeshadow, eyeliner, blush
• Tweezers to pluck eyebrows
• Blow drier to keep hair in check
• Razor to shave legs and armpits
• Retainers to keep teeth straight
• Birth Control to Stop Ovulation
• BenzaClyn to clear up acne
• Aveeno Lotion to smooth out dry skin from BenzaClyn
• Spot cover up stick
• Loose powder
• Brush to apply powder
• Mascara, eyeshadow, eyeliner, blush
• Tweezers to pluck eyebrows
• Blow drier to keep hair in check
• Razor to shave legs and armpits
• Retainers to keep teeth straight
• Birth Control to Stop Ovulation
• BenzaClyn to clear up acne
• Aveeno Lotion to smooth out dry skin from BenzaClyn
The Search for Beautiful - The Boston Globe
An interesting article fowarded to me by my father:
Cosmetic surgery is no longer just for white women. Now record numbers of African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Hispanics are lining up for a nip here, a tuck there. Are they chasing a Caucasian ideal of beauty? Or are they aiming for racial and ethnic ambiguity?
By Anupreeta Das | January 21, 2007
For almost a century, the women who have turned to cosmetic surgery to achieve beauty – or some Hollywood-meets-Madison Avenue version of it – were of all ages, shapes, and sizes but almost always of one hue: white. But now, when there seems to be nothing that a few thousand dollars can’t fix, women of color are clamoring in skyrocketing numbers to have their faces and bodies nipped, snipped, lifted, pulled, and tucked. This is a step forward, right? In the land of opportunity, we applaud when barriers break down and more people get to partake in the good life, as it were.
There are many explanations for the new willingness of minorities to go under the knife: their swelling numbers and disposable income, the popularization of cosmetic surgery and its growing acceptance as a normal beauty routine, and its relative affordability. What’s significant are the procedures minorities are choosing. More often than not, they’re electing to surgically narrow the span of their nostrils and perk up their noses or suture their eyelids to create an extra fold. Or they’re sucking out the fat from buttocks and hips that, for their race or ethnicity, are typically plump. It all could lead to one presumption: These women are making themselves look more white – or at least less ethnic.
But perhaps not to the extent some suppose. “People want to keep their ethnic identity,” says Dr. Arthur Shektman, a Wellesley-based plastic surgeon. “They want some change, but they don’t really want a white nose on a black face.” Shektman says not one of his minority patients – they make up about 30 percent of his practice, up from about 5 percent 10 years ago – has said, “I want to look white.” He believes this is evidence that the dominant Caucasian-centered idea of blond, blue-eyed beauty is giving way to multiple “ethnic standards of beauty,” with the likes of Halle Berry, Jennifer Lopez, and Lucy Liu as poster girls.
“No way” is the answer Tamar Williams of Dorchester gives when asked if her desire to surgically reduce the width of her nose and get a perkier tip was influenced by a Caucasian standard. “Why would I want to look white?” Growing up, the 24-year-old African-American bank teller says, she longed for a nose that wasn’t quite so wide or flat or big for her face. “It wasn’t that I didn’t like it,” Williams says. “I just wanted to change it.” Hoping to become a model, she thinks the nose job she got in November will bring her a lifetime of happiness and opportunity. “I was always confident. But now I can show off my nose.”
Yet others are less convinced that the centuries-old fixation on Caucasian beauty – from the Mona Lisa to Pamela Anderson – has slackened. “I’m not ready to put to rest the idea that the white ideal has not permeated our psyches,” says Janie Ward, a professor of Africana Studies at Simmons College. “It is still shaping our expectations of what is beautiful.”
Whether or not the surging number of minority patients is influenced by a white standard, one point comes with little doubt: The $12.4 billion-a-year plastic surgery industry is adapting its techniques to meet this demand. The American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (AAFPRS), for example, has in recent months held meetings on subjects ranging from Asian upper-eyelid surgery to so-called ethnic rhinoplasty. The discussion will come to Boston this summer when the academy will host a five-day event that will include sessions on nose reshaping techniques tailored to racial groups. And increasingly, plastic surgeons are wooing minorities – who make up one-third of the US population – by advertising specializations in race-specific surgeries and using a greater number of nonwhite faces on their websites.
It could be that these new patients are not trying to erase the more obvious markers of their ethnic heritage or race, but simply to reduce them. In the process, they’re pursuing ethnic and racial ambiguity. Take Williams. With her new smaller nose and long, straight hair, the African-American woman seems to be toying with the idea of ambiguity. And maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. The intermingling of ethnicities and races – via marriages, friendships, and other interactions – has created a peculiar fusion in this country. It’s the great mishmash where Christmas and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa are celebrated in one long festive spirit, where weddings mix Hindi vows with a chuppah, where California-Vietnamese is a cuisine, where Eminem can be “black” and Beyonce can go blond. And the increasing number of nonwhites getting cosmetic surgery is helping society accelerate from a crawl to a full-bore sprint toward one truly melted, fusion community.
There were 11.5 million cosmetic procedures done in 2005, including surgical ones such as face lifts and rhinoplasties and nonsurgical ones such as Botox shots and collagen injections. One out of every five patients was of African, Asian, or Hispanic descent (separate statistics aren’t available for white versus nonwhite Hispanics). According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, the number of minority patients undergoing cosmetic procedures increased from 300,000 in 1997 to 2 million in 2005. Although the total demand for cosmetic procedures also increased – from 2 million in 1997 to 11.5 million in 2005 – the rate of increase for minorities is higher than the overall rate. (Women account for more than nine-tenths of all cosmetic procedures.)
Different ethnic and racial groups favor different procedures. Statistics compiled by the AAFPRS show that in 2005, more than six out of every 10 African-Americans getting cosmetic surgery had nose jobs. Unlike rhinoplasties performed on Caucasians, which may fix a crooked bridge or shave off a hump, doctors say African-American and Asian-American nose reshaping usually leads to narrower nostrils, a higher bridge, and a pointier tip.
For Asian-Americans, eyelid surgery – either the procedure to create an eyelid fold, often giving the eye a more wide-open appearance, or a regular eye lift to reduce signs of aging – is popular. According to the AAFPRS, 50 percent of Asian patients get eyelid surgery. Dr. Min Ahn, a Westborough-based plastic surgeon who performs Asian eyelid surgery, says only about half of the Asian population is born with some semblance of an eyelid crease. “Even if Asians have a preexisting eyelid crease, it is lower and the eyelid is fuller.” For those born without the crease, he says, creating the double eyelid is “so much a part of the Asian culture right now.” It’s probable that this procedure is driving the Asian demand for eyelid surgeries.
Breast augmentation and rhinoplasty top the list of preferred procedures for patients of Hispanic origin, followed by liposuction. Asian-Americans also choose breast implants, while breast reduction – the one procedure eligible for insurance coverage – is the third most preferred choice for African-American women after nose reshaping and liposuction. Doctors say African-American women typically use liposuction to remove excess fat from their buttocks and hips – two areas in which a disproportionate number of women of this race store fat.
Of course, the assimilative nature of society in general has always demanded a certain degree of conformity and adaptation of every group that landed on American shores. People have adjusted in ways small and large – such as by changing their names and learning new social mores. Elizabeth Haiken, a San Francisco Bay area historian and the author of the 1997 book Venus Envy: A History of Cosmetic Surgery, says ethnic minorities may use plastic surgery as a way to fit in to the mainstream, just as another group used it in the early 20th century. “The first group to really embrace cosmetic surgery was the Jews,” says Haiken. Her research indicates that during the 1920s, when cosmetic surgery first became popular in the United States, being Jewish was equated with “being ugly and un-American,” and the Jewish nose was the first line of attack. Most rhinoplasties therefore sought to reduce its distinct characteristics and bring it more in line with the preferred straighter shape of the Anglo-Saxon nose.
That people would go to such extremes to change their appearance should come as no surprise. “Going back to early 20th-century culture, there is a deep-seated conviction that you are what you look like,” Haiken says. “It’s not your family, your birth, or your heritage, it’s all about you. And your looks and appearance and the way you present yourself will determine who you are.” In the initial sizing-up, the face is the fortune. Physical beauty becomes enmeshed with success and happiness.
Plastic surgeons commonly say that minorities today choose surgery for the same reasons as whites – to empower, better, and preserve themselves. “It’s the universal desire to maintain youthfulness, and it doesn’t change from group to group,” says Dr. Frank Fechner, a Worcester-based plastic surgeon.
The culture of self-improvement that surrounds Americans has also made plastic surgery more permissible in recent years. “Making oneself over – one’s home, one’s car, one’s breasts – is now a part of the American life cycle,” writes New York Times columnist Alex Kuczynski in her 2006 book, Beauty Junkies: Inside Our $15 Billion Obsession With Cosmetic Surgery. “Doctors have sold us on the notion that surgery . . . is merely part of the journey toward enhancement, the beauty outside ultimately reflecting the beauty within.” Nothing captures this journey better than the swarm of plastic surgery TV shows such as ABC’s Extreme Makeover, Fox’s The Swan, and FX’s Nip/Tuck. These prime-time televised narratives of desperation and triumph, with the scalpel in the starring role of savior, have also helped make plastic surgery more widely accepted. Through sanitized, pain-free, 60-minute capsules showcasing the transformation of ordinary folks, reality TV has sold people on the notion that the Cinderella story is a purchasable, everyday experience that everyone deserves.
Mei-Ling Hester, a 43-year-old Taiwanese-American hairdresser on Newbury Street, believes in plastic surgery as a routine part of personal upkeep. So when her eyelids started to droop and lose their crease, she rushed to Ahn, the plastic surgeon. He sucked the excess fat out while maintaining, he says, “the Asian characteristic” of her eyelids. Hester also regularly gets Botox injected into her forehead and is considering liposuction. “I feel great inside,” she says. With hair tinted a rich brown and eyes without lines or puffiness, her beauty is groomed and serene. “I work out, I eat right, I use good products on my face. It was worth it,” she says of her surgery. Although Hester says she pursues plastic surgery for betterment and self-fulfillment, she recognizes her privileged status as someone born with the double eyelids and sharper nose so prized in much of the Asian community. “I just got lucky, because if you look at my sister, she’s got a flat nose.” Another sister was born without the eyelid crease and had it surgically created, says Hester.
The concept of the double eyelid as beautiful comes from the West. “For many, many years, the standards for beauty have been Western standards that say you have to have a certain shape to the eye, and the eyelid has to have a fold,” says Dr. Ioannis Glavas, a facial plastic surgeon specializing in eyelid surgery, with practices in Cambridge, New York City, and Athens. Sometimes, the demand for bigger eyes can be extreme. Glavas recalls one young Asian-American woman he saw who, in addition to wanting a double eyelid procedure, asked him to snip off some of the bottom lid to expose more of the white. “I had to say no to her,” he says.
Glavas says both Asian women and men demand the double eyelid surgery because it is a way of looking less different by reducing an obvious ethnic feature. Presumably, Asian patients aren’t aiming to look white by getting double eyelids (after all, African-Americans and other minorities have double eyelids), but the goal is social and cultural assimilation, or identification with some dominant aesthetic standard.
In recent years, the dominant aesthetic standard in American society has moved away from the blond, blue-eyed Caucasian woman to a more ethnically ambiguous type. Glossy magazines are devoting more pages to this melting-pot aesthetic, designed (like the new Barbies) for across-the-board appeal. Today’s beautiful woman comes in many colors, from ivory to cappuccino to ebony. Her hair can be dark and kinky, and she might even show off a decidedly curvy derriere – a feature that has actually started to prompt some white women to get gluteal augmentation, or butt implants.
However, critics say these are superficial changes to what is essentially a Caucasian-inspired ideal – the big-eyed, narrow-nosed, pillow-lipped, large-breasted, boyishly thin apparition. “There has been a subtle change in the kind of models you see in Victoria’s Secret catalogs or Vogue,” says Dr. Fred Stucker, the head of facial plastic surgery at Louisiana State University, Shreveport. But “they take the black girl who has the high cheekbones, narrow nose, and pouty lips.” It’s not uncommon, he says, to find “a white face with dark skin.”
Going by the recent surge of minorities demanding plastic surgery, it is plausible that this attempt by canny marketers and media types to promote a darker-skinned but still relatively uniform ideal is working. After all, they are simply following the money. According to the University of Georgia’s Selig Center for Economic Growth, which compiles an annual report on the “multicultural economy” in the United States, minorities had a combined buying power of several trillion dollars in 2006. In 2007, the disposable income of Hispanics is expected to rise to $863 billion, while African-Americans will collectively have $847 billion to spend. By 2010, Asians are expected to have buying power totaling $579 billion. And all of these groups are showing a greater willingness to spend it on themselves and the things they covet, including cosmetic surgery.
Katie Marcial represents exactly this kind of person. The 50-year-old African-American is newly single, holds a well-paying job in Boston, and has no qualms about spending between $10,000 and $20,000 on a tummy tuck and breast surgery. “I’m doing this mainly because I’m economically able to do so,” says Marcial, a Dorchester resident whose clear skin and youthful attire belie her age. With her three children all grown, her money is hers to spend. “I can indulge in a little vanity,” she says. Marcial says she chose a young, Asian-American doctor to perform her surgery because “I thought she would know the latest techniques and be sensitive to ethnic skin.”
Historically, plastic surgery has been tailored to Caucasian women. Glavas says that in medical texts, the measurements of symmetry and balance – two widely recognized preconditions of beauty – were made with Caucasian faces in mind. Such practices led to a general sense among minorities that plastic surgery was for whites and kept them away from tinkering with their faces and bodies. But even as the industry now adapts to its new customers, plastic surgeons are divided over whether surgical specialization in various ethnicities and races necessarily caters better to the needs of minority patients. Dr. Julius Few, a plastic surgeon at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, hails the fact that plastic surgeons are customizing their procedures to focus on minorities, “so it’s not just the one-size-fits-all mentality of saying, well, if somebody’s coming in, regardless, they’re going to look Northern European coming out.” He even sees “a sort of subspecialty” emerging in various ethnic procedures. Meanwhile, Dr. Jeffrey Spiegel, who is chief of facial plastic and reconstructive surgery at Boston University Medical Center and has a large number of nonwhite patients, is skeptical of the notion of specialization in ethnic and racial cosmetic surgery. “It strikes me more as a marketing tool than a real specialization,” he says.
In 1991, Michael Jackson crooned “It don’t matter if you’re black or white.” Jackson’s message about transcending race may have won singalong supporters, but his plastic surgeries did not. His repeated nose jobs and lightened skin color (he has maintained he is not bleaching but is using makeup to cover up the signs of vitiligo, a skin condition) were perceived by minorities – especially African-Americans – as an attempt to look white. Doctors say that “Don’t make me look like Michael Jackson” is a popular refrain among patients. “People were put off by dramatic surgeries and preferred subtle changes,” says Shektman, the Wellesley-based plastic surgeon.
Choices have expanded since then. Minorities can now hold themselves up against more ethnically and racially ambiguous role models that may still trace their roots to the once-dominant Caucasian standard but are becoming more composite and blended. “The concept of ideal beauty is moving toward a mix of ethnic features,” says plastic surgeon Ahn, a Korean-American who is married to a Caucasian. “And I think it’s better.”
The push toward ethnic and racial ambiguity should perhaps be expected, because the cultural churn in American society is producing it anyway. Sure, promoting ambiguous beauty is a strategic move on the part of marketing gurus to cover their bases and appeal to all groups. But it’s also a reflection of reality. Not only are minorities expected to make up about half the American population by 2050, but the number of racially mixed people is increasing tremendously. The number of mixed-race children has been growing enough since the 1970s that in 2000 the Census Bureau created a new section in which respondents could self-identify their race; nearly 7 million people (2.4 percent of the population) identified themselves as belonging to more than one race.
For minorities, this new melting-pot beauty aesthetic – perhaps the only kind of aesthetic standard that befits a multiethnic and multicultural society – is an achievable and justifiable goal. Increasingly, advertisements use models whose blue eyes and dreadlocked hair or almond-shaped eyes and strong cheekbones leave you wondering about their ethnic origins. The ambiguous model might have been dreamed up on a computer or picked from the street. But advertisers value her because she is a blended product – someone everyone can identify with because she cannot be immediately defined by race or ethnicity. By surgically blending or erasing the most telling ethnic or racial characteristics, cosmetic surgery makes ambiguity possible and allows people of various ethnicities and races to fit in. For the Jewish community in the 1920s, fitting in may have had to do with imitating a Caucasian beauty ideal. For minorities today, it’s a melting-pot beauty ideal that is uniquely American. How appropriate this ambiguity is, in a culture that expects conformity even as it celebrates diversity.
Boston-based Anupreeta Das last wrote about Emerson College for the Globe Magazine. E-mail her at anupreetadas@gmail.com.
Cosmetic surgery is no longer just for white women. Now record numbers of African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Hispanics are lining up for a nip here, a tuck there. Are they chasing a Caucasian ideal of beauty? Or are they aiming for racial and ethnic ambiguity?
By Anupreeta Das | January 21, 2007
For almost a century, the women who have turned to cosmetic surgery to achieve beauty – or some Hollywood-meets-Madison Avenue version of it – were of all ages, shapes, and sizes but almost always of one hue: white. But now, when there seems to be nothing that a few thousand dollars can’t fix, women of color are clamoring in skyrocketing numbers to have their faces and bodies nipped, snipped, lifted, pulled, and tucked. This is a step forward, right? In the land of opportunity, we applaud when barriers break down and more people get to partake in the good life, as it were.
There are many explanations for the new willingness of minorities to go under the knife: their swelling numbers and disposable income, the popularization of cosmetic surgery and its growing acceptance as a normal beauty routine, and its relative affordability. What’s significant are the procedures minorities are choosing. More often than not, they’re electing to surgically narrow the span of their nostrils and perk up their noses or suture their eyelids to create an extra fold. Or they’re sucking out the fat from buttocks and hips that, for their race or ethnicity, are typically plump. It all could lead to one presumption: These women are making themselves look more white – or at least less ethnic.
But perhaps not to the extent some suppose. “People want to keep their ethnic identity,” says Dr. Arthur Shektman, a Wellesley-based plastic surgeon. “They want some change, but they don’t really want a white nose on a black face.” Shektman says not one of his minority patients – they make up about 30 percent of his practice, up from about 5 percent 10 years ago – has said, “I want to look white.” He believes this is evidence that the dominant Caucasian-centered idea of blond, blue-eyed beauty is giving way to multiple “ethnic standards of beauty,” with the likes of Halle Berry, Jennifer Lopez, and Lucy Liu as poster girls.
“No way” is the answer Tamar Williams of Dorchester gives when asked if her desire to surgically reduce the width of her nose and get a perkier tip was influenced by a Caucasian standard. “Why would I want to look white?” Growing up, the 24-year-old African-American bank teller says, she longed for a nose that wasn’t quite so wide or flat or big for her face. “It wasn’t that I didn’t like it,” Williams says. “I just wanted to change it.” Hoping to become a model, she thinks the nose job she got in November will bring her a lifetime of happiness and opportunity. “I was always confident. But now I can show off my nose.”
Yet others are less convinced that the centuries-old fixation on Caucasian beauty – from the Mona Lisa to Pamela Anderson – has slackened. “I’m not ready to put to rest the idea that the white ideal has not permeated our psyches,” says Janie Ward, a professor of Africana Studies at Simmons College. “It is still shaping our expectations of what is beautiful.”
Whether or not the surging number of minority patients is influenced by a white standard, one point comes with little doubt: The $12.4 billion-a-year plastic surgery industry is adapting its techniques to meet this demand. The American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (AAFPRS), for example, has in recent months held meetings on subjects ranging from Asian upper-eyelid surgery to so-called ethnic rhinoplasty. The discussion will come to Boston this summer when the academy will host a five-day event that will include sessions on nose reshaping techniques tailored to racial groups. And increasingly, plastic surgeons are wooing minorities – who make up one-third of the US population – by advertising specializations in race-specific surgeries and using a greater number of nonwhite faces on their websites.
It could be that these new patients are not trying to erase the more obvious markers of their ethnic heritage or race, but simply to reduce them. In the process, they’re pursuing ethnic and racial ambiguity. Take Williams. With her new smaller nose and long, straight hair, the African-American woman seems to be toying with the idea of ambiguity. And maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. The intermingling of ethnicities and races – via marriages, friendships, and other interactions – has created a peculiar fusion in this country. It’s the great mishmash where Christmas and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa are celebrated in one long festive spirit, where weddings mix Hindi vows with a chuppah, where California-Vietnamese is a cuisine, where Eminem can be “black” and Beyonce can go blond. And the increasing number of nonwhites getting cosmetic surgery is helping society accelerate from a crawl to a full-bore sprint toward one truly melted, fusion community.
There were 11.5 million cosmetic procedures done in 2005, including surgical ones such as face lifts and rhinoplasties and nonsurgical ones such as Botox shots and collagen injections. One out of every five patients was of African, Asian, or Hispanic descent (separate statistics aren’t available for white versus nonwhite Hispanics). According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, the number of minority patients undergoing cosmetic procedures increased from 300,000 in 1997 to 2 million in 2005. Although the total demand for cosmetic procedures also increased – from 2 million in 1997 to 11.5 million in 2005 – the rate of increase for minorities is higher than the overall rate. (Women account for more than nine-tenths of all cosmetic procedures.)
Different ethnic and racial groups favor different procedures. Statistics compiled by the AAFPRS show that in 2005, more than six out of every 10 African-Americans getting cosmetic surgery had nose jobs. Unlike rhinoplasties performed on Caucasians, which may fix a crooked bridge or shave off a hump, doctors say African-American and Asian-American nose reshaping usually leads to narrower nostrils, a higher bridge, and a pointier tip.
For Asian-Americans, eyelid surgery – either the procedure to create an eyelid fold, often giving the eye a more wide-open appearance, or a regular eye lift to reduce signs of aging – is popular. According to the AAFPRS, 50 percent of Asian patients get eyelid surgery. Dr. Min Ahn, a Westborough-based plastic surgeon who performs Asian eyelid surgery, says only about half of the Asian population is born with some semblance of an eyelid crease. “Even if Asians have a preexisting eyelid crease, it is lower and the eyelid is fuller.” For those born without the crease, he says, creating the double eyelid is “so much a part of the Asian culture right now.” It’s probable that this procedure is driving the Asian demand for eyelid surgeries.
Breast augmentation and rhinoplasty top the list of preferred procedures for patients of Hispanic origin, followed by liposuction. Asian-Americans also choose breast implants, while breast reduction – the one procedure eligible for insurance coverage – is the third most preferred choice for African-American women after nose reshaping and liposuction. Doctors say African-American women typically use liposuction to remove excess fat from their buttocks and hips – two areas in which a disproportionate number of women of this race store fat.
Of course, the assimilative nature of society in general has always demanded a certain degree of conformity and adaptation of every group that landed on American shores. People have adjusted in ways small and large – such as by changing their names and learning new social mores. Elizabeth Haiken, a San Francisco Bay area historian and the author of the 1997 book Venus Envy: A History of Cosmetic Surgery, says ethnic minorities may use plastic surgery as a way to fit in to the mainstream, just as another group used it in the early 20th century. “The first group to really embrace cosmetic surgery was the Jews,” says Haiken. Her research indicates that during the 1920s, when cosmetic surgery first became popular in the United States, being Jewish was equated with “being ugly and un-American,” and the Jewish nose was the first line of attack. Most rhinoplasties therefore sought to reduce its distinct characteristics and bring it more in line with the preferred straighter shape of the Anglo-Saxon nose.
That people would go to such extremes to change their appearance should come as no surprise. “Going back to early 20th-century culture, there is a deep-seated conviction that you are what you look like,” Haiken says. “It’s not your family, your birth, or your heritage, it’s all about you. And your looks and appearance and the way you present yourself will determine who you are.” In the initial sizing-up, the face is the fortune. Physical beauty becomes enmeshed with success and happiness.
Plastic surgeons commonly say that minorities today choose surgery for the same reasons as whites – to empower, better, and preserve themselves. “It’s the universal desire to maintain youthfulness, and it doesn’t change from group to group,” says Dr. Frank Fechner, a Worcester-based plastic surgeon.
The culture of self-improvement that surrounds Americans has also made plastic surgery more permissible in recent years. “Making oneself over – one’s home, one’s car, one’s breasts – is now a part of the American life cycle,” writes New York Times columnist Alex Kuczynski in her 2006 book, Beauty Junkies: Inside Our $15 Billion Obsession With Cosmetic Surgery. “Doctors have sold us on the notion that surgery . . . is merely part of the journey toward enhancement, the beauty outside ultimately reflecting the beauty within.” Nothing captures this journey better than the swarm of plastic surgery TV shows such as ABC’s Extreme Makeover, Fox’s The Swan, and FX’s Nip/Tuck. These prime-time televised narratives of desperation and triumph, with the scalpel in the starring role of savior, have also helped make plastic surgery more widely accepted. Through sanitized, pain-free, 60-minute capsules showcasing the transformation of ordinary folks, reality TV has sold people on the notion that the Cinderella story is a purchasable, everyday experience that everyone deserves.
Mei-Ling Hester, a 43-year-old Taiwanese-American hairdresser on Newbury Street, believes in plastic surgery as a routine part of personal upkeep. So when her eyelids started to droop and lose their crease, she rushed to Ahn, the plastic surgeon. He sucked the excess fat out while maintaining, he says, “the Asian characteristic” of her eyelids. Hester also regularly gets Botox injected into her forehead and is considering liposuction. “I feel great inside,” she says. With hair tinted a rich brown and eyes without lines or puffiness, her beauty is groomed and serene. “I work out, I eat right, I use good products on my face. It was worth it,” she says of her surgery. Although Hester says she pursues plastic surgery for betterment and self-fulfillment, she recognizes her privileged status as someone born with the double eyelids and sharper nose so prized in much of the Asian community. “I just got lucky, because if you look at my sister, she’s got a flat nose.” Another sister was born without the eyelid crease and had it surgically created, says Hester.
The concept of the double eyelid as beautiful comes from the West. “For many, many years, the standards for beauty have been Western standards that say you have to have a certain shape to the eye, and the eyelid has to have a fold,” says Dr. Ioannis Glavas, a facial plastic surgeon specializing in eyelid surgery, with practices in Cambridge, New York City, and Athens. Sometimes, the demand for bigger eyes can be extreme. Glavas recalls one young Asian-American woman he saw who, in addition to wanting a double eyelid procedure, asked him to snip off some of the bottom lid to expose more of the white. “I had to say no to her,” he says.
Glavas says both Asian women and men demand the double eyelid surgery because it is a way of looking less different by reducing an obvious ethnic feature. Presumably, Asian patients aren’t aiming to look white by getting double eyelids (after all, African-Americans and other minorities have double eyelids), but the goal is social and cultural assimilation, or identification with some dominant aesthetic standard.
In recent years, the dominant aesthetic standard in American society has moved away from the blond, blue-eyed Caucasian woman to a more ethnically ambiguous type. Glossy magazines are devoting more pages to this melting-pot aesthetic, designed (like the new Barbies) for across-the-board appeal. Today’s beautiful woman comes in many colors, from ivory to cappuccino to ebony. Her hair can be dark and kinky, and she might even show off a decidedly curvy derriere – a feature that has actually started to prompt some white women to get gluteal augmentation, or butt implants.
However, critics say these are superficial changes to what is essentially a Caucasian-inspired ideal – the big-eyed, narrow-nosed, pillow-lipped, large-breasted, boyishly thin apparition. “There has been a subtle change in the kind of models you see in Victoria’s Secret catalogs or Vogue,” says Dr. Fred Stucker, the head of facial plastic surgery at Louisiana State University, Shreveport. But “they take the black girl who has the high cheekbones, narrow nose, and pouty lips.” It’s not uncommon, he says, to find “a white face with dark skin.”
Going by the recent surge of minorities demanding plastic surgery, it is plausible that this attempt by canny marketers and media types to promote a darker-skinned but still relatively uniform ideal is working. After all, they are simply following the money. According to the University of Georgia’s Selig Center for Economic Growth, which compiles an annual report on the “multicultural economy” in the United States, minorities had a combined buying power of several trillion dollars in 2006. In 2007, the disposable income of Hispanics is expected to rise to $863 billion, while African-Americans will collectively have $847 billion to spend. By 2010, Asians are expected to have buying power totaling $579 billion. And all of these groups are showing a greater willingness to spend it on themselves and the things they covet, including cosmetic surgery.
Katie Marcial represents exactly this kind of person. The 50-year-old African-American is newly single, holds a well-paying job in Boston, and has no qualms about spending between $10,000 and $20,000 on a tummy tuck and breast surgery. “I’m doing this mainly because I’m economically able to do so,” says Marcial, a Dorchester resident whose clear skin and youthful attire belie her age. With her three children all grown, her money is hers to spend. “I can indulge in a little vanity,” she says. Marcial says she chose a young, Asian-American doctor to perform her surgery because “I thought she would know the latest techniques and be sensitive to ethnic skin.”
Historically, plastic surgery has been tailored to Caucasian women. Glavas says that in medical texts, the measurements of symmetry and balance – two widely recognized preconditions of beauty – were made with Caucasian faces in mind. Such practices led to a general sense among minorities that plastic surgery was for whites and kept them away from tinkering with their faces and bodies. But even as the industry now adapts to its new customers, plastic surgeons are divided over whether surgical specialization in various ethnicities and races necessarily caters better to the needs of minority patients. Dr. Julius Few, a plastic surgeon at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, hails the fact that plastic surgeons are customizing their procedures to focus on minorities, “so it’s not just the one-size-fits-all mentality of saying, well, if somebody’s coming in, regardless, they’re going to look Northern European coming out.” He even sees “a sort of subspecialty” emerging in various ethnic procedures. Meanwhile, Dr. Jeffrey Spiegel, who is chief of facial plastic and reconstructive surgery at Boston University Medical Center and has a large number of nonwhite patients, is skeptical of the notion of specialization in ethnic and racial cosmetic surgery. “It strikes me more as a marketing tool than a real specialization,” he says.
In 1991, Michael Jackson crooned “It don’t matter if you’re black or white.” Jackson’s message about transcending race may have won singalong supporters, but his plastic surgeries did not. His repeated nose jobs and lightened skin color (he has maintained he is not bleaching but is using makeup to cover up the signs of vitiligo, a skin condition) were perceived by minorities – especially African-Americans – as an attempt to look white. Doctors say that “Don’t make me look like Michael Jackson” is a popular refrain among patients. “People were put off by dramatic surgeries and preferred subtle changes,” says Shektman, the Wellesley-based plastic surgeon.
Choices have expanded since then. Minorities can now hold themselves up against more ethnically and racially ambiguous role models that may still trace their roots to the once-dominant Caucasian standard but are becoming more composite and blended. “The concept of ideal beauty is moving toward a mix of ethnic features,” says plastic surgeon Ahn, a Korean-American who is married to a Caucasian. “And I think it’s better.”
The push toward ethnic and racial ambiguity should perhaps be expected, because the cultural churn in American society is producing it anyway. Sure, promoting ambiguous beauty is a strategic move on the part of marketing gurus to cover their bases and appeal to all groups. But it’s also a reflection of reality. Not only are minorities expected to make up about half the American population by 2050, but the number of racially mixed people is increasing tremendously. The number of mixed-race children has been growing enough since the 1970s that in 2000 the Census Bureau created a new section in which respondents could self-identify their race; nearly 7 million people (2.4 percent of the population) identified themselves as belonging to more than one race.
For minorities, this new melting-pot beauty aesthetic – perhaps the only kind of aesthetic standard that befits a multiethnic and multicultural society – is an achievable and justifiable goal. Increasingly, advertisements use models whose blue eyes and dreadlocked hair or almond-shaped eyes and strong cheekbones leave you wondering about their ethnic origins. The ambiguous model might have been dreamed up on a computer or picked from the street. But advertisers value her because she is a blended product – someone everyone can identify with because she cannot be immediately defined by race or ethnicity. By surgically blending or erasing the most telling ethnic or racial characteristics, cosmetic surgery makes ambiguity possible and allows people of various ethnicities and races to fit in. For the Jewish community in the 1920s, fitting in may have had to do with imitating a Caucasian beauty ideal. For minorities today, it’s a melting-pot beauty ideal that is uniquely American. How appropriate this ambiguity is, in a culture that expects conformity even as it celebrates diversity.
Boston-based Anupreeta Das last wrote about Emerson College for the Globe Magazine. E-mail her at anupreetadas@gmail.com.
The History of the Modification of My Body
The continual modification of my body began when I was a child. As the youngest of three girls, I was always trying to be included in the activities and practices of my older sisters—many which included the use of makeup, the dying or hair, or the piercing of ears. My mother is the perfect example of someone uninterested and against personal body modification as she does not wear makeup, has never shaved her legs or armpits, wears clothes just to be covered and preaches to me that she is against piercing because it is “barbaric.” With this as the model, it’s not hard to see how body modification intrigued and enticed my sisters and me early on in life.
My first encounters and attempts to wear makeup occurred at home as my sister Roz, five years my senior, was dabbling in Wet ‘n’ Wild lip gloss, eye shadow, and blush. Most likely deemed inappropriate by my mother, I was eager to paint my face like my sisters and felt excited by the end result, which left me looking something like a clown. These early experiences left me interested but not obsessed. From elementary to high school, I only wore make up on special occasions such a sleepovers when I was younger, and Friday nights when I was older.
Unlike many babies of my generation, my ears were not pierced straight out of the womb. After observation of my female peers during preschool, kindergarten, and first grade, I came to the conclusion that it was necessary to have pierced ears and joined the force of my sister in their plea to pierce their ears. My mother had no piercings of her own as she felt the act of creating an unnatural hole in one’s body was unnecessarily barbaric. In an attempt to maintain rules and power, my mother told my sisters and me that we had to wait until we were older to pierce our ears. Roz finally gained permission against my mother’s recommendation and got her ears pierced sometime in middle school. Ellen, the second born, two years my senior, and I weaseled our way into not having to wait until middle school but only until second grade. When second grade finally came for me, I was excited and nervous for my trip to the jewelers in the mall. Besides the two gold earrings I would be receiving to go along with my piercings, I felt I was moving up in the world, since in my mind, everybody who was anybody has pierced ears. I also felt a sense of accomplishment and triumph over my mother, as I knew she did not approve of my actions, but was taking me to do it anyway.
For most of my life I have been seen and known as the girl with long, bright blonde hair. There have been only two periods when I did not have long hair and two when the natural blonde coloring was modified. The first time I went from long to short was in fourth grade. I really only remember going in for a generic cut but during the cut, I gave the stylist permission to go short. She ended up cutting it to a little above my chin—a change I later regretted. I think, in the moment, I wanted to something different, something people weren’t expecting, but I didn’t think it through very well because from then on, I was on a mission to grow it out long again. There is one picture of my from that era when I always joke that I look like boy as my scrawny, tall build, my short hair, and my style portrays a very androgynous person.
Once my hair had grown out, I moved towards hair dye as an impermanent way to modify my look. Again, both my older sisters had begun dying their hair various shaded of green, blue, purple, and pink and I wanted in on the action. One day, when a friend of mine was over, we decided it would be a fun activity to dye my naturally bleach blonde hair with streaks of magenta using a Manic Panic, a dye my sister had not finished off as there was enough remaining in the container to do a little damage to my head of hair. It was one of her many colors which she had bought at Hot Topic, a painfully punk rock poser store mostly filled with preteens looking for a wild shirt, hair dye, or chained belt to buy and shock their parents with.
In only a few hours, my friend successfully painted six streaks—from root to tip—of magenta into my hair. Such an experiment was exciting for the 12 year old me, as I was the first in my friend group to modify my body in such a permanent way. The color eventually faded, but the feeling of excitement and pride were the more lasting marks left.
A year and a half later, it came time for me to graduate from middle school and move up in the world to high school. While many other people experienced most of their development in later years, in 8th grade I was 5’11” and almost the same weight I am now—6 years later, age 19. I was very aware of my body and how other people saw me. I was a healthy14 year old with a body that could easily pass for 18. Just as my sister Ellen had done, I was determined to look wonderful on this special occasion and shopped all over Los Angeles for an appropriate dress. With the main concern being my body image and how confident I felt in my outfit, I persuaded my mother to buy me a designer summer dress from Bloomingdales.
The only issue was that I did not like how my stomach, hips, and butt looked, as the fabric was light and did not suck in or hide very much. It was at this time—again, against the advice of my mother—that I did as my sister Ellen had did, and bought a “Body Slimming” undergarment that is built to suck in one’s stomach, hips, and butt. Aside from the fat that squished out from it where it pinched at the waist, and the fact that is was tight and uncomfortable, I was very satisfied with how it as it made my figure look slimmer in the dress. While I have never gone to lengths great enough to surgically remove the fat that I do not love in those reigns of my body, I have used the same body slimmer more than once and enjoyed the sense of confidence it give me when someone might be looking at me from behind or from the side. It is almost like the constant pressure that I feel against my body as I’m wearing it is a constant reminder of how I am looking tighter and more compact in my midsection.
A month or so after my graduation and first weeks in a high school summer course, I died my hair again. This time, a friend painted the last 3 and a half inches of my 18 inch long hair a vibrant shade of red. For me, this was just another brief display of the unpredictable, wild side of me as I enjoyed attention and standing out.
Two years in to high school, I was introduced to the art of the push up bra. Tagging along on a movie and shopping trip with my neighbor Martine and her friends, all of whom I was familiar through Ellen, I found myself in a Victoria Secret dressing room with five girls all trying on the same push up bra in various sizes. I was shocked at the difference the bra could do for even the flattest girls and as 32 A, I immediately wanted one. The following school day, without hesitation, I informed all my friends of this wonderful discovery and lead my own expedition back to “Vicky’s Secrets” to let everyone see for themselves. The inevitable purchase of this $43 bra was done after I had acquired a partner in crime willing to buy her own and had saved up enough money to actually afford it. The rare and special occasions that I wore the bra, again, gave me a boost of confidence and sex appeal that I found so rare and valuable during my high school years. While some of my friends harbored minor amounts of judgment and disapproval, I did not dwell on their feelings as I felt that eventually, they would value my attempts to alter my appearance in minor, noninvasive ways and probably come to follow my lead. And now, almost five years later, this has proven to be true.
Something else I happened to experience before most of my good friends was the involvement in a long time relationship for 15 months. While I do not regret anything that occurred, Keyvan and I are not together now, as we decided that in November of 2006. There were many reasons for the inevitable end, but one element that I believe affected me more than others was not feeling beautiful enough for him.
While we were together, he would joke that if I ever died or cut my long blonde hair, he would break up with me. While we were both catty and blunt from time to time, this comment was not one I let go of easily. Towards then end of our fall down, I became very annoyed with my long hair and suggested to my friend that without telling anyone, I might just cut it all off. In the end, the day after our break up, I cut 16” of my hair and dramatically altered my look. It was a liberating experience as it had been 10 years since I had had short hair. Essentially, the adult version of me had never looked too different.
Cutting my hair helped prove to my self that I am my own person who does things for myself and no one else. Like many women, I felt that the new look gave me a clean slate to wash the pain of that relationship off of me and start fresh again. I also feel that long hair is associated with the typical, classic beauty and to be confident, and sexy with short hair is a much harder feat. Before the cut, I truly believed that my best physical asset was my hair. Now I am able to see myself beyond the curtain of hair, and it feels great.
As a 19-year-old sophomore in college, I have done many things to modify my body, but I know the process is far from over. Although I have not pierced any more holes in my body yet, I have harbored the idea of an eye brown piercing for a while. I wanted one ever since I saw MTV’s The Real World, sometime during middle school, where one of the cast members, Elka, gets her eyebrow pierced during the season. I was particularly drawn to this member, as I admired her natural beauty, unique name, and thought her British, punk rock, boy friend was equally enticing. I always assumed I would pierce my eyebrow during my college years as I felt it didn’t fit my image in high school. Unfortunately, my sister, Ellen, pierced her eyebrow two years ago. Now that I am older, I want to do my own things and move away from copying my older sisters’ every move. Bitter that she pierced the one item I always thought to pierce for myself, I have withheld from such a piercing and am still thinking it over.
So far, I am not interested in any surgical procedure to alter my body, but when reflecting on the modifications of my body thus far, I wonder, is there much difference between my intentions to modify my body and the intentions of those who get surgeries?
My first encounters and attempts to wear makeup occurred at home as my sister Roz, five years my senior, was dabbling in Wet ‘n’ Wild lip gloss, eye shadow, and blush. Most likely deemed inappropriate by my mother, I was eager to paint my face like my sisters and felt excited by the end result, which left me looking something like a clown. These early experiences left me interested but not obsessed. From elementary to high school, I only wore make up on special occasions such a sleepovers when I was younger, and Friday nights when I was older.
Unlike many babies of my generation, my ears were not pierced straight out of the womb. After observation of my female peers during preschool, kindergarten, and first grade, I came to the conclusion that it was necessary to have pierced ears and joined the force of my sister in their plea to pierce their ears. My mother had no piercings of her own as she felt the act of creating an unnatural hole in one’s body was unnecessarily barbaric. In an attempt to maintain rules and power, my mother told my sisters and me that we had to wait until we were older to pierce our ears. Roz finally gained permission against my mother’s recommendation and got her ears pierced sometime in middle school. Ellen, the second born, two years my senior, and I weaseled our way into not having to wait until middle school but only until second grade. When second grade finally came for me, I was excited and nervous for my trip to the jewelers in the mall. Besides the two gold earrings I would be receiving to go along with my piercings, I felt I was moving up in the world, since in my mind, everybody who was anybody has pierced ears. I also felt a sense of accomplishment and triumph over my mother, as I knew she did not approve of my actions, but was taking me to do it anyway.
For most of my life I have been seen and known as the girl with long, bright blonde hair. There have been only two periods when I did not have long hair and two when the natural blonde coloring was modified. The first time I went from long to short was in fourth grade. I really only remember going in for a generic cut but during the cut, I gave the stylist permission to go short. She ended up cutting it to a little above my chin—a change I later regretted. I think, in the moment, I wanted to something different, something people weren’t expecting, but I didn’t think it through very well because from then on, I was on a mission to grow it out long again. There is one picture of my from that era when I always joke that I look like boy as my scrawny, tall build, my short hair, and my style portrays a very androgynous person.
Once my hair had grown out, I moved towards hair dye as an impermanent way to modify my look. Again, both my older sisters had begun dying their hair various shaded of green, blue, purple, and pink and I wanted in on the action. One day, when a friend of mine was over, we decided it would be a fun activity to dye my naturally bleach blonde hair with streaks of magenta using a Manic Panic, a dye my sister had not finished off as there was enough remaining in the container to do a little damage to my head of hair. It was one of her many colors which she had bought at Hot Topic, a painfully punk rock poser store mostly filled with preteens looking for a wild shirt, hair dye, or chained belt to buy and shock their parents with.
In only a few hours, my friend successfully painted six streaks—from root to tip—of magenta into my hair. Such an experiment was exciting for the 12 year old me, as I was the first in my friend group to modify my body in such a permanent way. The color eventually faded, but the feeling of excitement and pride were the more lasting marks left.
A year and a half later, it came time for me to graduate from middle school and move up in the world to high school. While many other people experienced most of their development in later years, in 8th grade I was 5’11” and almost the same weight I am now—6 years later, age 19. I was very aware of my body and how other people saw me. I was a healthy14 year old with a body that could easily pass for 18. Just as my sister Ellen had done, I was determined to look wonderful on this special occasion and shopped all over Los Angeles for an appropriate dress. With the main concern being my body image and how confident I felt in my outfit, I persuaded my mother to buy me a designer summer dress from Bloomingdales.
The only issue was that I did not like how my stomach, hips, and butt looked, as the fabric was light and did not suck in or hide very much. It was at this time—again, against the advice of my mother—that I did as my sister Ellen had did, and bought a “Body Slimming” undergarment that is built to suck in one’s stomach, hips, and butt. Aside from the fat that squished out from it where it pinched at the waist, and the fact that is was tight and uncomfortable, I was very satisfied with how it as it made my figure look slimmer in the dress. While I have never gone to lengths great enough to surgically remove the fat that I do not love in those reigns of my body, I have used the same body slimmer more than once and enjoyed the sense of confidence it give me when someone might be looking at me from behind or from the side. It is almost like the constant pressure that I feel against my body as I’m wearing it is a constant reminder of how I am looking tighter and more compact in my midsection.
A month or so after my graduation and first weeks in a high school summer course, I died my hair again. This time, a friend painted the last 3 and a half inches of my 18 inch long hair a vibrant shade of red. For me, this was just another brief display of the unpredictable, wild side of me as I enjoyed attention and standing out.
Two years in to high school, I was introduced to the art of the push up bra. Tagging along on a movie and shopping trip with my neighbor Martine and her friends, all of whom I was familiar through Ellen, I found myself in a Victoria Secret dressing room with five girls all trying on the same push up bra in various sizes. I was shocked at the difference the bra could do for even the flattest girls and as 32 A, I immediately wanted one. The following school day, without hesitation, I informed all my friends of this wonderful discovery and lead my own expedition back to “Vicky’s Secrets” to let everyone see for themselves. The inevitable purchase of this $43 bra was done after I had acquired a partner in crime willing to buy her own and had saved up enough money to actually afford it. The rare and special occasions that I wore the bra, again, gave me a boost of confidence and sex appeal that I found so rare and valuable during my high school years. While some of my friends harbored minor amounts of judgment and disapproval, I did not dwell on their feelings as I felt that eventually, they would value my attempts to alter my appearance in minor, noninvasive ways and probably come to follow my lead. And now, almost five years later, this has proven to be true.
Something else I happened to experience before most of my good friends was the involvement in a long time relationship for 15 months. While I do not regret anything that occurred, Keyvan and I are not together now, as we decided that in November of 2006. There were many reasons for the inevitable end, but one element that I believe affected me more than others was not feeling beautiful enough for him.
While we were together, he would joke that if I ever died or cut my long blonde hair, he would break up with me. While we were both catty and blunt from time to time, this comment was not one I let go of easily. Towards then end of our fall down, I became very annoyed with my long hair and suggested to my friend that without telling anyone, I might just cut it all off. In the end, the day after our break up, I cut 16” of my hair and dramatically altered my look. It was a liberating experience as it had been 10 years since I had had short hair. Essentially, the adult version of me had never looked too different. 
Cutting my hair helped prove to my self that I am my own person who does things for myself and no one else. Like many women, I felt that the new look gave me a clean slate to wash the pain of that relationship off of me and start fresh again. I also feel that long hair is associated with the typical, classic beauty and to be confident, and sexy with short hair is a much harder feat. Before the cut, I truly believed that my best physical asset was my hair. Now I am able to see myself beyond the curtain of hair, and it feels great.
As a 19-year-old sophomore in college, I have done many things to modify my body, but I know the process is far from over. Although I have not pierced any more holes in my body yet, I have harbored the idea of an eye brown piercing for a while. I wanted one ever since I saw MTV’s The Real World, sometime during middle school, where one of the cast members, Elka, gets her eyebrow pierced during the season. I was particularly drawn to this member, as I admired her natural beauty, unique name, and thought her British, punk rock, boy friend was equally enticing. I always assumed I would pierce my eyebrow during my college years as I felt it didn’t fit my image in high school. Unfortunately, my sister, Ellen, pierced her eyebrow two years ago. Now that I am older, I want to do my own things and move away from copying my older sisters’ every move. Bitter that she pierced the one item I always thought to pierce for myself, I have withheld from such a piercing and am still thinking it over.
So far, I am not interested in any surgical procedure to alter my body, but when reflecting on the modifications of my body thus far, I wonder, is there much difference between my intentions to modify my body and the intentions of those who get surgeries?
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