Friday, January 19, 2007

Christian: [to Gina] "You're like herpes. Every time I feel like I'm getting my life back, I have a Gina outbreak”

Season two of the fabulously salacious Nip/Tuck included a particularly gruesome story line in which former McNamara/Troy classmate Merrill Bobolit

is found to be doing cheap, illegal surgeries in the back of a Korean nail salon. Not only is he performing these surgeries in a non-sterile environment, he's addicted to the anesthetic gas. Christian gets him to go to Narcotics Anonymous, even volunteering to be his sponsor. When Christian can't make it to a meeting, Merrill loses his mind and accidentally kills a woman who Sean and Christian refuse to perform unnecessary liposuction on. The salon owner and Merrill then cut the girl into pieces to dispose of her.

This week, life has imitated art.

Don’t get me wrong – I fully understand the often-crunching social pressure to join the Waifs in Wonderbras brigades. In the age of an image-obsessed media and ample, affordable cosmetic surgery options, a little Botox injection here or a saline implant there (and there) doesn’t really sound all that bad! But the obsession has to stop somewhere, and I think it’s safe to say that the red light is here. As cases like these appear with increasing frequency, I pity those who feel so uncomfortable in their own skin that they would resort to such sordid measures.

No corn oil ass-injections for me, thanks.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have a little theory on what makes these people tick, “these people” being anyone desperate for cosmetic surgery or weight loss to the point of an eating disorder. We’re always taught to look past what’s on the outside because it’s what’s inside people that counts, but I think that what’s outside is really a reflection on what’s inside. Watching a movie like “Shallow Hall” is very hard for me to believe because I rarely find it true that good-looking people are always bad people and unattractive ones are always good. In my experience, outer appearance reflects personality, and people who become fat are often merely allowing an “inner fatness” to manifest itself. In other words, a lot of fat people have “fat” personalities, which they express either by sulking (fat men) or by annoying the shit out of people (fat girls). This goes for anorexics and bulimics too. These girls are obsessed with their waist size because what they really want to do is get rid of what’s inside (pun intended). If you’re that desperate to change your outward appearance, you must be pretty fucked up inside, so I suppose destroying your body is a nice way of warning the rest of the world about it. When I see a girl who’s anorexic-thin, my inclination is to assume that, deep-down in her heart, she’s got inside exactly what she has on the outside: Nothing.

Kelly said...

I agree with you, to a point. The way we present ourselves to the world speaks volumes about our own notions of identity, personal confidence, and respect for/adherence to social norms (see my recent post on gender). And while I can't understand how some people "allow" themselves to gain extreme amounts of weight (and could personally never allow myself to do so), I believe there are certain mitigating biological circumstances and/or ideologies regarding appearance and society that explain why your observation (that "a lot of fat people have 'fat' personalities") is an unfair, sweeping generalization. As for anorexics and bulimics... those conditions are obviously indicative of extreme psychological problems and very low respect for the self, so I agree with you there. But I wouldn't assume that every person who has gone through an eating disorder has "nothing" inside.

Anonymous said...

"Sweeping generalization?" Damn right it is! I happen to be a connoisseur of unfair, broad generalizations and, tooting my own horn as I must, I think it was incredibly artful.