Teardrop or Round?
I get the most interesting junk comments. The latest was a company that scouts production locations.
I was driving in this morning, listening to the news reports of how that reality show murder guy was found dead in his hotel room, and how after he had finished carving up his bride, she could only be identified by the serial numbers on her breast implants. It sent me down a couple of trains of thought, one being that I now wonder how many murdered women are going to turn up without fingers, teeth, or breasts. The other, how I could sneak some breast implants into my own body without my husband noticing.
My husband is extremely anti-plastic surgery. I go back and forth. The one thing I've never wavered on was that if I had the guts and the cash, I would buy myself a better looking pair of Sweater Pets. I thought that if I could get my husband to go on a week long vacation with our son, and the Grandfather, I could have some pretty teardrops tucked into my torso, and recoup while they were visiting Old Faithful. Played carefully, it might be a couple of weeks before he noticed. (I have the same thoughts about tattoos. I think I could easily have one for months before my husband saw it. And then, instead of having the fight about me getting a tattoo, we could have the fight about how he doesn't notice me. Win-win! Except for the not really part of that.)
Anyway, I would love to have some new or at least simply improved dirty pillows. Of course, as I age and after having had a child, I look at my stomach and think, "That ain't ever going back to normal, either. I could lose a hundred pounds and be grossly underweight, and my belly button would still look like it was going down the bath drain." My vanity dies under the thought of tummy tuck, though, mainly because that seems like major surgery compared to a boob job, and I don't even have the guts for the boob job.
But after saying, "That ain't ever going back to normal," another part of me says, "Dork, it IS normal. You had a great big, healthy baby. Welcome to reality." (And that baby? I picked him up out of bed this morning and his feet were banging against my knees. Where did the baby go?!)
I was part of a conversation with a man who was telling about his wife's natural labors and deliveries of two 10+lb babies. I asked him what kind of present he bought her, and he said, "A ten-thousand dollar tummy tuck! Man, she needed it!" He was obviously grossed out by what had become of her stomach. My sudden insecurity was reflexive. "Post-partum bellies are gross? Oh god! I have one! Oh god! I'm gross! I need to have that thing cut off!"
Fortunately, the feeling went away quickly and I decided he was gross for not loving his wife's body the way it was. (But men are visual, you say. So are pigs, I say. Welcome to reality. Everything sags eventually. Everything. Yes, even that.)
I started wondering if somewhere, in some part of the world where there is no America's Next Top Model, or Vogue magazine, or Gossip Girl, if girls and young women look at the bodies of their mothers and grandmothers and hope that one day they will be able to physically emulate the soft puckers of a belly that has housed a family, and the deflated sacs that fed that family? Strong arms, strong legs, strong backs, and wonderfully soft and wrinkly everything else. Do you think?
Do you think men in those cultures are proud of their wives post-baby looks because of what those looks mean?
I think that's something of Utopia.
And I still want nicer boobs.
