ugly truth

This morning, my husband sent me a link to an image of Uma Thurman's (recently?) renovated face.  It looks great.  But it doesn't look like Uma.  Uma's face, as Mia Wallace and Poison Ivy and Fantine and Emma Peel and Beatrix Kiddo, is gone.

The sadness I felt as I stared at this new Uma face and tried to find Uma in it was the same as when I stared at Renee Zellweger's face and tried to find Renee in it.  Like looking at one of those "magic eye" stereograms popular in grade school.

What scares me about plastic surgery is not its availability, popularity, aggressive marketing at the back of every fashion magazine, or even the horror stories of botched jobs.  What scares me is that Uma and Renee, talented, gorgeous, wealthy, acclaimed, beloved, and renown, somewhere along the way, thought they were ugly.

Although I (and my husband) are philosophically opposed to cosmetic surgery, and I doubt I'd ever have the budget available to have myself overhauled even if I was for it, I know that I'm not immune to the feeling of ugliness.  Just because Uma and Renee did something about it and I probably won't doesn't make me better and them worse.  We're similar in our struggles and similar in our feeling of ugliness.

If Uma and Renee thought their beautiful, beautiful faces were ugly, what hope to the rest of us have?

So here's a possible remedy.  I've broken it up into three parts.

1. If you know a woman, love a woman, sleep with a woman, are friends with a woman, or are related to a woman, tell them they're beautiful.  Be honest.  Be specific.  Be persistent.  Be poetic.  Be brave.  If you tell a woman "You're pretty" they may not believe you, but they'll find it hard to argue with "I love how restful and radiant you looked in the sunlight yesterday afternoon".
   
2. If you are a woman, believe it.  Don't look for opportunities to negate a compliment.  If your husband tells you he loves your face without makeup on try to imagine why he would, even if it seems impossible.  When your daughter tells you she loves you because you're squishy, accept that you are the zenith of womanly beauty to her.
   
3. Finally, shut your beautiful face about your ugliness.  There will always be "flaws".  They will multiply.  But unless you want to carve them out with a knife and suffer losing all sorts of character, personality, responsiveness, and cellular integrity in the process, it's time to embrace and shut up about them.  When you say you hate your legs a little part dies inside your friends who thought your legs superior to theirs.

Happy Valentine's Day, you pretty people.

mama monday: healthy competition?

Too many of the blogs written by women trying to conceive only focus on the negative.  Not being pregnant YET.  Not having a family YET.  Not being a mom YET.  The competition with other women who are pregnant can be particularly vicious, which is something that has never made sense to me. 

I'd assume that if one is so keen on babies that one would celebrate babies wherever they are, in any circumstance that they are. 

Pregnancy isn't the only stage on which girls have showdowns.  It's found everywhere from home ownership to home decor to marriage to weddings to relationships to fashion to careers to education and alllllll the way back to the playground.  Girls can be mean.  And usually to each other.

I'd like to take this Mama Monday to celebrate the girls who aren't mean.  The ones that let other girls into their heart, no matter the cost, and keep them there.  The girls who listen as well as speak.  The girls who give the hard advice as much as the easy advice.  And here's to hoping I end up more and more like one of those girls.

Melissa and her hubby, Jon, gave birth to the littlest friend in our group on October 10, 2010 (10/10/10) at 10:15 p.m.  His name is Noah Contstance Börger and although we've been saying hi to him womb-side for 9 months, it's amazing to meet him in person.  He's very, very fortunate to have a mom who doesn't have a mean bone in her body. 

Mama's hello.
Papa's hello.