"Mommy Makeovers" was the title of an article I recently read in the Denver Post. Seems a newly targeted cosmetic surgery market is women who have had the privilege to bear children. As the controversial 2004 movie put it, What The Bleep Do We Know? Except I think I really do understand the pushes and pulls of our current society. One of the latest PR sales pitches is to convince women that the aftermath of pregnancy is bad and that somehow normalcy is for the body to forever return to its pre-pregnancy state. I am all for looking good and well understand the possible benefits of easily available elective surgery (if one can afford it.) It fits in with today’s media and glossy magazine standards. What I don’t really get is how pregnancy and the pride of producing offspring has become an aberrant period in a woman’s life. The marketing of the Mommy Makeover is geared to pathologize the postpartum body. If those of us who know better don’t stop to think and to speak up, we will soon have a diagnostic category stating that women suffer from a new illness that needs fixing. (Freud’s one sided theory of penis envy may as well stick around.)
Though never a card-carrying member, I grew up in the era labeled ‘women’s lib.’ I have lived long enough to see the freedoms fought for during the sixties and seventy’s eroded on many fronts. A recent article in Time magazine cited a poll indicating a majority of younger women have never heard of Gloria Steinem or (God forbid) the late Betty Friedan. What’s a woman my age supposed to do with this information? Sit quietly and go with the flow or speak up and educate?
What troubles me, is that we women are becoming an updated model of retread objectification. Life’s realities and sometimes ravages are once more to go under cover. I’m as appalled by the notion that one’s post pregnancy body needs to be fixed as I am by the world telling me that the new sixty is really forty. Duh! Where are our brains? Why in the world would I want to be forty again? Sure, I have my past regrets. Sure, I wish I knew then what I know now. But, what is wrong with forging new paths and being a pioneer at my well earned age of 66. I am not 40 and my issues are not those of a forty year old. And while I have no issues with those of us who choose elective surgery. I do take issue with the notion that a surgeon’s knife fixes all ills.
At any age, life is an adventure with twists and turns. There are still women who believe that bearing children is worth the change their body may go through. And there are even women willing to work to get back in shape. Yes, sometimes surgery may be called for. But an automatic mommy makeover? Please, ladies, learn from those my age and older. Let your brains kick in. The idea is ludicrous.
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