He told me that she was going to have it done a couple of weeks ago. He said that she's always hated her nose and she finally decided to change it. It actually didn't seem that strange to me. (Not her nose....but the idea of changing it!) She HATED it, she had the money and she thought it would make her feel better, so why not? To each his own, I thought. I really thought it! Believe it or not, this is a phrase I'm working on adopting.
The day of the surgery I sent my friend a text to pass on my good wishes to his wife. I tried to insert a smiley face with a smaller, cuter nose. I searched the keyboard to come up with something unique but ended up resorting to "options" and picked one of the readymade faces. This made me smile and wonder if you could actually google "nosejob" and there might be an "options" heading and you could pick your new nose. Probably.
Anyway, I met my friend for lunch a few days ago and he said that everything went well with the nose, but then he started talking about her jaw. Her jaw? I thought it was her nose? He said, "Yes. She had rhinoplasty, but she also had her jaw reshaped." I asked him why. I'd accepted the nose job relatively easily, but the jaw I didn't get. He told me that the doctor had proposed it and it seemed like it would really look great, so she did it. And this is where I'm still in the adoption phase of that famous phrase. Why could I "to each his own" her nosejob, but not her "jawjob"? And instead of just silently accepting the idea (which you know I find impossible) I went on for a bit about how this seemed different because she'd really hated her nose and she'd finally done something about it, but she'd never really hated her jaw and then changed it on a whim. Shouldn't we just accept what we have? Shouldn't we be strong enough to believe in ourselves "as is" with hopes that how we look shouldn't make that big of a difference? I had a lot more of those "shouldn't we..." ideas that I shared with him, but will spare you.
When I was sure that he'd had about enough of me, I went back to the studio to clean. That's when I found an envelope filled with little handcut snowflakes that I'd made a long time ago for a Christmas card. I considered throwing them away but instead, opened the envelope and took them out one by one for a closer look. It was just as I'd expected. No two were alike. They were really cool! And the fact that they were all different made them even cooler. But is it true that no two snowflakes are alike or was this another one of those things I'd been taught as a kid and was foolish enough to go on believing? I checked. According to a National Geographic article from October 2010, experts are in agreement the likelihood of two being identical is next to impossible.
As I pedaled home I thought about writing something about the nosejob. Then I thought about writing about the snowflakes. That's when it hit me that they could go together. One is about someone going to great lengths to change her differences and the other is about finding beauty in something because it's different. To each his own, I guess.
So I started writing and putting the two together and thinking about how it made me feel. It really hadn't dawned on me earlier when I'd delivered my "shouldn't we accept" monologue, but here's something that makes me think I owe someone an apology. I color my hair. I do it because I think it makes me look better and I like how it makes me feel. Sound familiar? I didn't accept what I had. And apparently I wasn't strong enough to believe in myself "as is" with hopes that how I look shouldn't make that big of a difference. It seemed to me like I was coloring my hair for the same reasons that she was having plastic surgery.
I've run this idea by a few people (including my hairstylist) and no one agrees with me. They say that a nosejob and reshaping your jaw are much bigger deals than coloring your hair. Okay. I agree that a nosejob is major surgery and risky and permanent (at least until you google nosejob and click on "options" again) and changing your hair color isn't any of that. However, my rant on the jaw reshaping had nothing to do with the idea of the risk of major surgery. It was merely a rant on how crazy I thought it was that someone would consider changing something about their appearance instead of accepting it. And if I make it that basic, I think I'm guilty of the same offense. It seems like now's the time to sign the adoption papers on that phrase and own it. (so to speak!)
To each his own.
Who would've thought that finding a little envelope full of snowflakes would lead to my acceptance of plastic surgery? Some of you may be reading this thinking that I'm the last person in the world to say, "To each his own." It's funny, as much as I like to use it on myself or have it used on me (living in an apartment in Paris with the bathroon in the hall, wearing miniskirts on my bike, buying secondhand clothes, eating Big Boy hot fudge cake for breakfast) it's true (but sad) that I'm not always the first to accept those differences in others. But, this whole "rhinoplasty hair coloring comparison" has really started to make me think before I speak and with enough practice I'll stop speaking and then eventually hopefully I won't even think the judgmental thought!
And last but not least, in my research for this blog (you're right, it's not really worthy of research) I googled the phrase. Then I did my usual cross-referencing in Italian. I decided to see if there was something similar in my Dictionary of 1000 Italian Proverbs. It seemed rather unlikely that I'd find anything under the word "own" but I tried it. It lead me to the word "pasta" (don't all roads lead to pasta in my life?!) and here's the proverb:
Ognuno puo' far della sua pasta gnocchi.
My amateur translation of that is, "Everyone can make gnocchi from their pasta." The English equivalent that appears below it is, "Be bold with what is your own." That's my kind of phrase, no? But doesn't that really mean that I shouldn't be coloring my hair?
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please don't leave comments on Blogger. If you do, they might never make it to me. And if they make it and you don't sign your name, I'll never know who you are. You can contact me at tenleyves@yahoo.com. Thanks.