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Women

Bridalplasty: It’s even worse than it sounds

November 30, 2010

Nothing makes me more nauseous than the thought of planning, paying for and starring in my own wedding. I bet it’s really similar to the feeling Richard Branson gets when he thinks about poor people. But I betray myself because even though I don’t want a $5,000 dress, gardenia centerpieces or a jazz band, I love to watch people who do. It’s fascinating to me what women will pay for and put up with just to create their perfect day. A perfect day that really just ends up being an amalgam of thousands of other perfect days all involving a white dress, average food and a totally wacky DJ who probably ends up sobbing into his cumber-bun when he gets home.

So when I found out that E! was combining two of the most potent emotional and financial handicaps for women – plastic surgery and weddings – I couldn’t help myself. Well, actually I think I probably forgot about it two buttery minutes into an episode of Paula’s Home Cooking. But, thankfully, what the E! channel lacks in quality, ingenuity and talent, they make up for in repeats. So, even though I missed the premiere of Bridalplasty, I still had the opportunity to see it up to four more times since it first aired.

It follows the typical reality show format of a premiere episode: show the contestants circle around like golden retrievers trying to find the cutest (pinkest) bedroom, cut away to talking heads ranging from heartwarming to you must be internally freeze-dried, and of course, a washed up almost celebrity, Shanna “my mother was deaf” Moakler.

But Bridalplasty brings quite a few extras. Self esteem issues are in such abundance they’re almost not worth talking about. It’d be like analyzing the different glasses they drank out of. Most are so convinced of their repulsiveness that they spontaneously break into tears, all are adamant that they need to be the perfect bride (in other words, someone else completely) before getting married and some are probably just there because Bret Michaels wasn’t casting for anything at the time.

I mean, it has to be a joke. It just has to. It is, in every sense, a parody of itself. And if it didn’t revolve around a dozen women voluntarily having their noses broken and nipples sewn back on, I’d insist that it was.

After they mark their beds with Curious by Britney Spears, they head into the living room. While there, they’re introduced to plastic surgeon, Dr. Dubrow, who expresses his shock that they’re all “basically good looking.” After his backhanded compliment, he is then seen drawing on the women as if he’s playing a frenetic game of Pictionary, only no one is pretending to have fun.

And just to ensure that their self image plummets to an all time low, the women have their consultation videos shown on the flat screen for all to see. Almost immediately, horror washes across their faces as they hear things like “extra fatty tissue” and “areolas pointing downward.”

After a “Fuck it, I’m getting liposuction” meal packed with alcohol and cream sauce, they launch into their first competition. It requires Ike Turner’s most eligible bachelorettes to, once again, stare at photos of their frowning stomachs and race to solve a computer generated puzzle of themselves after their plastic surgery. However, once they finish their fifteen minutes as a lab rat, it’s obvious to anyone with at least one cataract-free eye that all of the improved bodies have been whittled down to a uniform size 2. Despite this, most of the women reveal that they want to look exactly like that for their wedding.

As a reward for those who complete their puzzles, there’s an injectable party. An injectable party. Where Dr. Dubrow and his staff (boom mic operators with nothing else to do) inject things into their faces. They’re all really excited until they have to vote off one of their own emotionally crippled cohorts. They feign tears and ultimately send home one of only two non-white women, who was perceived as selfish because she pawned her engagement ring in order to make a car payment.

It ends with Shanna remarking to the eliminated contestant that, “Your wedding will still go on, it just may not be perfect.”

My thoughts exactly, ladies.

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This is going to hurt you more than it hurts me

September 27, 2010

I participated in No Make-Up Week. Which for me is a lot like asking a fat guy to participate in “Breathe Heavily Week.” This is what I look like most days, give or take a bowl of macaroni and cheese. I sit in front of a computer and write. Then I eat. Then I think about how awesome it would be to have a Golden Retriever show up at my door step, give me a wallet with infinite cash and maybe even convince me to stop listening to Jewel. Then we’d share a cake Sixteen Candles style and playfully fight over who gets to be Jake Ryan.

LOOK AT IT

I admittedly don’t have many positive experiences with makeup. Mostly because I don’t know how to use it. I bought my first tube of mascara at around age 11, after being urged by my friend, Erica, who said that I needed it. Spoiler alert: she ended up being a giant asshole. The next day, I proudly showed up with slightly irritated eyes and lashes that looked like they had been in an oil spill. She took one look at me and said, “Why didn’t you do your bottom lashes? It doesn’t even look like you have any.”

I thought, “Bottom…lashes?” Trying to hide my ignorance and disappointment with myself for somehow being able to cause irreparable damage to my corneas while entirely missing my whole row of bottom lashes, I said something along the lines of, “Oh, guess I forgot.” I tried to be as blasé as possible, you know, like those lashes were so insignificant to me that I didn’t even care. But the look she gave me before turning away seemed to imply, “You are so hopeless you won’t have a boyfriend for at least eight more years.”

And if she had actually said that, she would’ve been right. I had the kind of parents who, outside of letting me buy a Snoop Dogg album because it was “degrading to women,” set me free to make my own choices. Since my choices usually revolved around collecting basketball cards and wearing jean shorts that went past my knees, I wasn’t socially accepted as having a vagina until around 17.

Even though I was able to make significant gains with having definable genitalia, I still struggled through many days of looking too much like citrus or too little like someone with the motor skills necessary to sketch an oval. I’ve just recently gotten into a groove where, on any given day, you’ll catch me looking almost presentable.

But not always. A few months ago, I was in LA. In my haste, I forgot to pack face wash. After settling in my hotel and eating my weight in kebabs, I scurried to a Sephora nearby and picked up my old stand-by, Purity. I didn’t stay long because I just knew I was being judged for not having an entire Sherwin-Williams store on my eyelids, which made the exchange at the register even better.

The cashier swipes my card and notices that I’m a V.I.B.. This means nothing other than the fact that I’ve wasted over $500 at Sephora and that apparently, instead of a very important person, I’m a very important beauty. Big difference in that one is totally fake. The term makes me want to choke myself, honestly. And not in a good way.

She’s then obligated to offer me a free gift, all while maintaining a look not unlike the one I received 12 years prior. This time there was just more confusion as she attempted to travel through the mental maze of how this person in front of her, looking like a plate of eggs with eyes, could spend so much and seemingly do nothing with it. I’m fairly certain she landed on assuming that I probably confuse most of their products for candy. Which is half true.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t as gullible as Erica was when I tried to convince her that my over-used concealer was actually beige lipstick and that it was totally cool how it blended perfectly with her skin tone, making it look like she had no lips at all.

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Well played, Jill

July 26, 2010

Today, I ‘liked’ Planned Parenthood on Facebook. As with most things, I didn’t really know what that meant. I figured that at best, it would stir up some suspicion that I just came home from an abortion, half drugged and thankful that I didn’t have to say goodbye to Peanut Butter Nipple Wednesdays.

Instead, I got this:

This is gonna be good

Alicia has either missed the point entirely or well…that’s about it. I thought about sharing my reaction so I could be part of a mob for once in my life, but I couldn’t put this into words:

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SILS: The Diva Cup

June 21, 2009

I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m moving. Since this is less like the kind of move where you are offered a job and compelled to leave your familiar yet comfortable surroundings because 150k plus benefits is just too good to pass up, and more like the kind where you are completely nauseated by the fact that there are at least 15 cash advance establishments nearby and need to get out as soon as possible even though there’s no guarantee of employment or housing, I feel the need to save money wherever I can. So far, I’ve gone back on birth control to cut out the cost of condoms, and now, I’ve finally dropped $20 on a Diva Cup so that sinking $5-7 a month in tampons can be a thing of the past. The money I save not buying condoms and tampons equals out to about $300 a year ($240 for condoms*, $60 for tampons), which means one less month I have to pimp out my boyfriend to service the fine gentlemen of the Pacific NW.

I’ve contemplated the Diva Cup for years now, lurking on the many forums dedicated to it, trying to figure out if it was something that could work for me. I’ve noticed a lot of apprehension about it–concerns about whether it would actually fit, stay in, or even work properly without causing leaks. It’s easy to get behind the fear associated with something that can only be found in between the patchouli oil and cacao nibs at Whole Foods, but I assure you it’s unwarranted.

divacup1

There are a lot of wonderful things about the Diva Cup, but the name and package design aren’t among them. For a product that is ahead of its time in health and environmental consciousness, it is way behind in debunking the myth that women will buy anything pink and will pay double for anything with flowers on it. That aside, since the Diva Cup can be used for up to 10 years (although they recommend that it is replaced once every year), there is an undeniable economic advantage over tampons and pads . Other more comforting aspects include the fact that you’re no longer promoting the growth of landfills or putting yourself at risk for Toxic Shock Syndrome. As far as comfort and insertion are concerned, I can’t say that I notice much of a difference. I did have to learn a new method of insertion by folding the Diva Cup into a ‘U’ shape, but after a few tries, it became second nature and is now just as comfortable as a tampon. As an added bonus, I can use the Diva Cup after sex as a semen catcher which automatically makes it worth double the original cost.

I admit that part of me mourns the loss of the overly pink and perfumed feminine care aisle, because while I wouldn’t say I was proud to buy tampons every month, it was a tradition that involuntarily became part of my identity as a woman. As superficial as it is to buy a box of tampons displaying an unnaturally happy woman doing a toe touch and call it being a woman, it was something I was able to relate to, and in retrospect, something that I am ultimately glad to be rid of.

*If you happen to be in the market for an obscene number of condoms, I recommend  http://www.undercovercondoms.com/ and more specifically, the Trojan Supras.

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Somehow these commercials strip adult diapers of their good name

June 3, 2009

Kimberly-Clarke, manufacturers of Depends adult diapers, have recently added to the pot of men vs women, dogs vs cats, bacon vs tampons bullshit with a new ad campaign for their line of adult diapers specifically designed for women and men. Since I’m not quite kinky enough to claim that I’ve ever used adult diapers, I assume that this is good news for those who do. However, the commercials possess a Miss Arizona-esque brand of what the fuck. While I realize that they probably came to life with some consideration of the audience they’re targeting, it’s insulting to assume that everyone over 60 has this idea that women are only good for making Apple Brown Betty and men are good for drinking Cognac and talking about WWII.

So far, there’s one commercial featuring white people, and one featuring…everyone else, or “coloreds”, if I’m to assume Kimberly-Clarke’s stance on how people over 60 think. One focuses on who rules the world, the other, driving. They both share this strand of totally wacky and endearing banter between one self assured man and one expectedly passive woman and you’re just like, “Aww, old people…is there anything they won’t say?” It’s really not even necessary for me to sum them up based on the embarrassingly predictable topics, but it suffices to say that the men are adamant that men rule the world and are better drivers while the women are kind of loosely committed to the idea of anything not involving grandchildren.

depends2 Somehow, these subjects exceed at being both painfully irrelevant and socially damaging. It’s kind of like when Billy Baldwin is allowed on TV–no one really cares, but you know it can’t be good.

It’s possible, however, that I’m over thinking things and missing the point that it doesn’t really matter if men or women rule the world or know how to effectively merge, as long as whoever is in charge is wearing a cable knit sweater. Regardless, why am I going to take the opinion of someone who can’t even keep their urine under control? Talk to me when you have tips on how to blame your soaked crotch on faulty plumbing.

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