Marked for Life

The other day I was looking at my blemishes, lamenting. I’ve made it clear that I don’t want to change my body aesthetically through plastic surgery or anything chemical that may be poisonous to the human body—I don’t believe in doing anything that unnatural to myself. And yet, I found myself caught up in that whirling dervish of a mind trip: what if I didn’t have (insert random blemish here)? Does it take away from my looks? Do people notice it and focus on it, too, like I’m doing right now? Jeez!! I never used to get caught up in all that bullshit, but now, sometimes, I do. And here’s the thing: I do photo re-touching sometimes in my job, so I, of all people, KNOW that published photographs are air-brushed, or PhotoShopped, to the hilt, to take away skin blemishes that makeup couldn’t cover. Not only that, tummies are tucked, chins and jowls and eye pouches are lifted, turkey necks and cellulite are smoothed out, laugh lines are erased, hips are shaved down...all kinds of surgeries take place, under the steady hand of the PhotoShop maven. I’ll let you in on a little secret: on the street, celebrities look just like the rest of us schmoes. Even the young ones get zits and tan lines, my friends.

So it occurred to me, as I was examining my blemishes, that they are my “markings”. They are my own personal markings, as a tiger or a zebra or a tabby cat has markings. Instead of being on fur, they’re on my skin, but they’re mine and no one else has them, and they make me unique. Why would I want to erase my markings? My spider veins are my dryad tree roots. My freckles on my shoulders are my spots. I am not a glossy page in a magazine. I’m real, and I shouldn’t look like whoever’s popular this week. I should look like ME. And I should never, ever feel bad about myself because I have markings. Would it be totally insane for a giraffe to feel insecure because it has spots and a lion doesn’t? Well, then...the same principles apply, even though animals aren’t self-aware (as far as we know)...We’re still animals, too, and we should be proud of our markings, instead of trying to hide or remove them.

Now I know many of you are flipping me off as you read, but I have to tell myself this, because if I don’t, the media wins. The consumerist culture makes a buck off my buying product (or many bucks off my having surgery!) to take away my blemishes, and I feel like shit about myself until I look “normal”. I don’t want to feel like shit, and I don’t want to feed the machine anymore. So, I am a little revisionist and I use my imagination to change my thinking so that I don’t feel bad about my imperfections. And I like that I have the power to change a negative into a positive and look at something with an artist’s eye. “And then I don’t feeeel soooo baaaad!”

So if you’d like to join me in symbolically saying “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore”, please do feel free!! And if not, that’s good, too. It’s “free to be you and me”, around these parts.

(I’m suddenly quote-happy, for some reason...Quote-happy!!)