The XX files

I
sauntered into the plastic-surgery palace on East Avenue cocky and
self-assured. I was attending the Botox lecture not as a woman desperate to
turn back the hands of time, but as a strong believer in inner beauty. I was on
a fact-finding mission — why would anyone submit to cosmetic procedures? What
kind of doctor would make a living “mutilating” women, to use a phrase from my
first-wave feminist parents? I was ready to hear insulting buzzwords and coded
sexist comments.

            But nothing struck me as
objectionable. At least not at first.

            The surgeon wasn’t a monster; he
wasn’t even patronizing. He started the evening’s talk with slides of the
building we were in, the Lindsay House, a historic mansion that he and his
partner renovated and expanded to accommodate their practice.

            Watching the before-and-after photos
of hand-carved wall panels and leaded glass windows lulled me into my old
art-history-student mode. The doctors had approached the building as a work of
art, sparing no expense in performing architectural cosmetic surgery to restore
a youthful look to this aging beauty.

            When the before-and-after faces of
female patients started to flash on the screen, my guard was down. We were
looking at a smattering of success stories — women who had had facelifts,
necklifts, browlifts, dermabrasion, and chemical peels.

            The “after” photos looked great.
These women had shed years off their faces. My sensors started twitching. Oh
no! I was falling prey to their mind control! Like a prisoner fighting to stay
sane by repeating the multiplication tables, in my mind I replayed gory
snippets of cosmetic surgery I had seen on cable TV.

            As my good feminist heart drummed a
steady beat — inner beauty, inner
beauty — my eyes, crinkly as they are with crows’ feet when I smile, were
transfixed.

            If you think of your face as a work
of art — and for most of us that’s a stretch to begin with — you won’t have
a hard time making the leap from using sunblock (conservation) to having
cosmetic surgery (restoration). It’s all just a matter of preserving the objet.

            When the lecture finally turned to
Botox, I had a hard time dismissing it. Compared to surgery, Botox seemed easy.
Noninvasive. Invisible. A few drops injected into your forehead can remove the
horizontal lines for up to four months. Another dose melts away that vertical
crease between your eyebrows. It’s not so bad, after all. So what if it’s
botulism? If it erases my crows’ feet…

            I came to my senses when a young
Botox adherent stepped forward to testify. She gazed out at the audience and
wrinkled her nose a bit.

            “Look,” she said, “I can’t get mad.
I’m trying to, but I can’t.”

            Huh? She can’t get mad? The doctor
was beaming. “The Botox paralyzes the muscles.” He said. “No frown lines!” The
young woman’s forehead and brow formed a serene sea.

            Now, getting mad is my favorite
thing — after sex and chocolate. My grimace is feared throughout the land,
or, at least, throughout my home where my husband and sons cower at the mere
thought of invoking my ire.

            But that’s not the point, of course.
If I had Botox injections, I would still be able to get mad. You just wouldn’t be able to see it. I would become one of the shiny, happy people: women who
have erased all traces of troubled — and troubling — emotions from their
faces.

            Botox must be a dream come true for
those guys who are always telling women to smile, not to mention to everyone
else who finds female expression intimidating.

            In fact, why stop here? Bring on the
burkas!

But who am I
to talk? On
some level, I buy into this whole cosmetic improvement thing as much as the
next gal. I spend a fortune on makeup and lotions. I fret when I find a gray
hair. And I slog through my yoga routine not because I enjoy it but because I
want to appear fit.

            With all the invisible fixes
available — Botox’s invisible wrinkles, hair dye’s invisible grays — it’s
hard to know where to draw the line. As long as it’s not too invasive or
obvious, why not?

            I’m sporting Invisalign braces as we
speak and you can’t even tell, can you? They’re completely clear plastic molds
of my teeth that fit over them and blend right in. They cost a little more, but
at least my lips don’t snag on protruding metal brackets and my husband can’t
call me “tinsel teeth.”

            As insidious as it is, the trend
toward invisible solutions to life’s little cosmetic problems is growing. My
actress friend got LASIK — invisible glasses. My Southern Belle friend got
liposuction — invisible fat. My neighbors installed an electronic fence to
contain their lunging dog — invisible obedience training.

            Even women’s undergarments have gone
underground. Once outerwear staples — in the Like A Virgin/Madonna era — they’ve been reduced to clear plastic
bra straps and floss-like panties. Like everyone else, I first balked at the
idea of thongs. But then my pantylines got the better of me and I switched to
thongs, for better or worse.

            Like the invisible fence that gives
me an uninterrupted view of my neighbor’s vast expanse of grass, my thong gives
my neighbor an uninterrupted view of my vast expanse of ass.

When Rochester
was named third most healthy city for men in a recent issue of Men’s Health, nothing so crude as pantylines or thongs was
mentioned. In fact, the Rochester section of the article was strangely devoid
of any mention of sex or sexuality. I wonder what that means.

            The piece touted the low colon
cancer and stroke rate among males as well as the easy commute. Ho-hum. For
entertainment, we got high marks for all the golf courses and places to fish.
ZZzzz. If that’s what makes a city great for men to live in, no wonder
civilization is going to hell in a handbasket.

            Not that anyone asked, but how would
Rochester rate as a city from a woman’s perspective? If we take our criteria
from a quick gander at the women’s magazines, we find women’s lives revolve
around how we look, what we weigh, and men, men, men!

            OK, so our petty concerns are not
much better than men’s golf lust and fish fancying. Nonetheless, Rochester is a
pretty good city for women based on those criteria. We’ve got a glut of hair
and beauty salons — 14 along a one-mile stretch of Monroe Avenue, for
example. Our restaurants are on board with the whole “tastings” menu trend —
“Oh, I just eat like a bird,” we say, secretly planning to devour the Ben &
Jerry’s back at home.

            And, top honors in the boy-watching
category goes to the one-way mirror in the women’s lounge at the new nightclub
Rain. After centuries of enduring the male gaze, women can sit in comfort and
stare at men for a change.

            How does it feel, boys? It’s
uncomfortable, isn’t it? Feeling self-conscious about that paunch? Those
wrinkles? I know a great cosmetic surgeon…

This article appears in Nov 20-26, 2002.