I think we’ve all been there: freshman in college, way drunk after a party, decide to get a tattoo with your roommate, fancy yourself an artist for the first time in your life, draw yourself a little something ruhl’ quick with all the things you love, you confirm that you are indeed the next Picasso, wake-up the next morning and go, “wtf?!” Wait. Was that just me? Was I the only one to surprise myself by a Jesus cross with a treble clef and some music notes encased inside a purple heart strategically positioned under my bikini line?? Apparently, yes. Yes, I was the only one. My roommate, Lawanda, had herself a beautiful rose that she let the tattoo artist design and also strategically place under her bikini line. I…had a purple blob.
All I could hear in my head was my mother’s voice: “Tattoos are forever. Don’t ever get one. You’ll regret it. It’s against the Bible.” The Bible part didn’t scare me as much as the “forever” part and there I was; taking care of the blob so it wouldn’t become infected and finding my only solace in knowing that no one else could see it.
Fast forward to 15 years later. My two sons were toddlers that had been sufficiently nursed and the milk bags were showing quite a bit of wear and tear. I never had great tits, but they were good tits. They weren’t too big, they weren’t too small, they weren’t exactly modeling muses for champagne coupes like Marie Antoinette or Kate Moss, but at least I wasn’t ashamed of them. Now? I was. I most often referred to them as my “deflated balloons.” Sometimes they were “wet socks”. Other times they were “flat jacks”, because even flapjacks had more bounce. After a couple years of feeling like an old cow who was put out to pasture, I started looking into something I said I would never do: get a boob job.
I began by asking some friends who had theirs done. There were many-a-bathroom moments after preschool drop-off where I would be showing other moms my boobs and they would let me feel theirs up to see what felt more natural, ie Karen’s choice to go saline vs. Cameron’s choice to go silicone. I fondled my hair colorist who said she went to South Beach in a bikini two days after surgery to show off the “girls”. I even inspected my publicist’s nipple incisions because I heard that there could be loss of feeling and her response was, “I had too much feeling there. It was a blessing!” So many opinions, so many thoughts and sooooooooOOOOooo many suggestions on what size to choose, but the overall consensus was, “No regrets. I wish I’d gone bigger.”
To be honest, I didn’t even want implants. I didn’t want to be bigger I just wanted them to be better. At the end of the day, it didn’t really matter what they looked like to me as long as my husband liked looking at them. But, when I talked to him about it, he was pretty excited about the idea of me getting surgery. Perhaps a bit too excited. So, that was my answer. The decision was made and in true “Lisa” form, I researched the best doc, decided on silicone (because it looked and felt more natural), and scheduled my surgery within a month.
The morning of, I heard my mother’s voice in my head again: “Your Aunt Betsy got fake tits and they hardened-up like Magic Shell on ice cream. You know they may have leaked in her body and caused her schizophrenia? Plastic belongs on the outside of things, not on the inside.”
Would this be another tattoo moment in my life? Would I wake up and find not one blob, but TWO blobs of regret? The closer we got to my doc’s on the Upper East Side, the more I had to tell myself that nowadays, nothing is forever, tattoos can be lasered-away and breasts can be fixed. So, I did it…despite the possibility of becoming a schizophrenic with Magic Shell tits.
When I finally came-to, my husband Jason was there to take me back downtown. Oof. That was one rough car ride home. Every minuscule bump in the road was felt in places I didn’t even know I had. Jason mentioned something about getting something done in a few weeks, but honestly, I wasn’t listening. I was in terrible pain and wondering why I chose to do this. When we got back to the apartment, my kids ran up to me with their big adorable eyes, arms stretched wide for the homecoming hug like always, but I couldn’t give them one because I couldn’t lift my arms. Tears began streaming down my face and I cried a big ugly cry which made my kids cry and then everyone was crying, then I went to bed.
So many thoughts rolled into my head, most of them I can’t print here because the world is woke and my inner voice isn’t.
The next day was more of the same; terrible pain, no movement, and regret. My husband was up at 6 a.m. for work and looking at himself in the mirror. When I slooooowly rolled over to the side of the bed he turned to help me up and said, “I’m getting lipo”. “Lipo?”, I asked? He said, “Yeah. I talked to the doctor about it yesterday when you were in recovery. I’m gonna get my spare tire done in a couple weeks.” I didn’t know what to say. So many thoughts rolled into my head, most of them I can’t print here because the world is woke and my inner voice isn’t. Let me put it this way, I was viscerally repulsed. This was my man? He went on to say that it just didn’t matter how much he went to the gym, he had his mother’s “fat gene” and he didn’t want to have a belly anymore.
I acted supportive, but in truth, I wasn’t. I felt like he was cheating. Yeah, I know I was being a bona fide hypocrite but I couldn’t help it. He didn’t earn it. I EARNED my tits by feeding insatiable children, pumping that liquid gold in filthy airport bathrooms and makeshift “lactation rooms”. What? He just didn’t feeeeel like going to SoulCycle anymore?? From the moment he said he was going to get lipo to the moment I was driving him home from the Upper East Side, hitting every pothole I could on purpose, I was pissed…nevermind the fact that he had to wear a compression girdle that resembled Borat in a wresting singlet to recover. Again, this was my “man”??? The whole thing was…unattractive to put it mildly. It angered me that I was having to take care of HIM when I could still barely move my own upper body. I needed help or I was going to do or say something unforgivable.
My therapist reminded me that anger is a secondary emotion to one or both primary emotions: fear or sadness. I wasn’t afraid of him getting surgery, so what was I sad about?? And then, as Oprah puts it, I had an “Aha!” moment. I was hurt that he made my surgery about him. When I was most vulnerable about a thing that many women are most vulnerable about, being naked and looking fuckable, he stole that from me and made it about him being naked and looking fuckable. And that made me not want to fuck him. I saw it as weakness. I saw it as feminine. I saw it as…myself. And I hated it.
So, there we were, two insecure humans trying to fix something on the outside that we couldn’t on the inside. That one revelation could have been the poster child for all the problems in our marriage but as they say, hindsight’s 20/20. He went on to brag to all his male co-workers about his wife’s new tits while we hid his lipo from everyone including his own mother. My implants were a source of pride to be paraded around; two trophies for the trophy wife, while his fat-suck was a source of shame. I guess it’s just a woman vs. man thing. It shouldn’t be…but it is.
Since then, I’ve grown a LOT in the compassion department. I see how unloving I was about my husband’s insecurities, and I see how unloving I was about my own. The more I began to love and respect myself, the more I wanted to BE myself and that meant getting rid of the tits. When it came time to replace them, (silicone needs to be replaced every 9-10 years or so), I asked my doctor about just removing them and not getting new ones. He refused. He said that they would look heinous if he did that, even worse than before. I asked if he had any pictures of women who had them removed and not replaced and he said “no.” So, I got a second opinion and I got the same reaction. “No.”
This was not a tattoo. You can’t just laser-away boobs. At best, I would have to replace them or look like some sort of monster. After much research, I decided to replace them with saline instead of silicone. With saline you don’t need to ever get them done again unless something goes wrong, you don’t run the risk of having Magic Shell-on-ice cream tits and if they leak, there’s zero possibility of becoming schizophrenic like Aunt Betsy. (*medical disclaimer, her schizophrenia-by-fake-tits was never a proven medical diagnosis. Obviously.)
Not all of us can be Kate Moss with her 14-year-old boy-body and perfect, champagne coupe tits after having a kid. My guess is, she never breastfed. But then again, I wouldn’t want to be. I’m a 48-year-old woman in a 48-year-old body with my one blob-tattoo and two blob-boobies. I have a man who loves me for me and isn’t interested in trying to change me to relieve his own insecurities and vice versa. Best part…we are both fuckable. As for Jason, I heard he recently got his thighs fat-sucked.
In Laughter,
LStL
p.s. Paid subscribers will soon be able to HEAR these stories outloud in my forthcoming LAUGHING MATTERS podcast!
Your writing is spectacular and so are your insights. And, always remember, TITS RULE THE WORLD !