Thoughts on Bristol Palin
I’m a very liberal Democrat. I have opinions about Sarah Palin, most of them negative. But generally, I try to ignore stories about her children, because it’s unfair for them to be stuck in this media circus, and the media’s treatment of them tends to make me uncomfortable.
Well, the latest news has made me uncomfortable enough to speak out. Bristol Palin has a new face. She says it’s orthodontic. Others are saying it’s plastic surgery. And my stance is that it could be both or neither but either way it doesn’t matter.
My face is not the one I was born with. After six years of orthdontics, my doctors realized that no amount of headgear was going to shrink my massive Hapsburg jaw. It needed to be cut to size.
I resisted. Mostly I was afraid of the surgery itself, but part of me was afraid of the permanency, and what this would mean for my identity. What if I didn’t like the result? What would my adult face (I was fourteen at the time) have looked like without it? Didn’t only vain people with low self-esteem change their faces?
My doctors said I’d have to have eight teeth pulled and still end up with dentures in old age if I didn’t get the surgery. They also made a compelling argument about how I was going to end up with a Jay Leno chin and sunken in cheeks if I didn’t get the jaw surgery and cheek implants.
Yes, cheek implants. Not only did I have mismatched jaws, but I had unnaturally sunken cheekbones. They were not affecting my teeth in any way. But they went badly with my very strong jawline and would look even worse as I aged.
I think I would have been okay with the jaw surgery, in the end, but the cheek implants grated on me. Everything made sense--the surgeon was going to be in there anyway, and it was a major cosmetic issue, but... This was plastic surgery. I was a feminist, and I didn’t do this sort of thing.
Except I did, because I was a teenager and I did what my parents told me to do. And, like everyone else, I am a little bit vain. I didn’t want to be an ugly old lady who hated her face and regretted being headstrong as a teenager.
And you know what? At 23 years old, more feminist than ever, I don’t regret any of it. And while there are very legitimate concerns about our society and plastic surgery, I’m not going to sit by and judge people who made an honest informed decision to change their bodies for whatever reason. But I will judge society both for creating the situation where you feel like you have to be beautiful to be accepted, and then for shaming people who buy into those views. Bristol’s new face is lovely, and I hope it makes her happy, no matter why she chose it. I, for one, love my new face, both for its working jaw and for its socially-acceptable proportions. And I refuse to be ashamed of it.
Well, the latest news has made me uncomfortable enough to speak out. Bristol Palin has a new face. She says it’s orthodontic. Others are saying it’s plastic surgery. And my stance is that it could be both or neither but either way it doesn’t matter.
My face is not the one I was born with. After six years of orthdontics, my doctors realized that no amount of headgear was going to shrink my massive Hapsburg jaw. It needed to be cut to size.
I resisted. Mostly I was afraid of the surgery itself, but part of me was afraid of the permanency, and what this would mean for my identity. What if I didn’t like the result? What would my adult face (I was fourteen at the time) have looked like without it? Didn’t only vain people with low self-esteem change their faces?
My doctors said I’d have to have eight teeth pulled and still end up with dentures in old age if I didn’t get the surgery. They also made a compelling argument about how I was going to end up with a Jay Leno chin and sunken in cheeks if I didn’t get the jaw surgery and cheek implants.
Yes, cheek implants. Not only did I have mismatched jaws, but I had unnaturally sunken cheekbones. They were not affecting my teeth in any way. But they went badly with my very strong jawline and would look even worse as I aged.
I think I would have been okay with the jaw surgery, in the end, but the cheek implants grated on me. Everything made sense--the surgeon was going to be in there anyway, and it was a major cosmetic issue, but... This was plastic surgery. I was a feminist, and I didn’t do this sort of thing.
Except I did, because I was a teenager and I did what my parents told me to do. And, like everyone else, I am a little bit vain. I didn’t want to be an ugly old lady who hated her face and regretted being headstrong as a teenager.
And you know what? At 23 years old, more feminist than ever, I don’t regret any of it. And while there are very legitimate concerns about our society and plastic surgery, I’m not going to sit by and judge people who made an honest informed decision to change their bodies for whatever reason. But I will judge society both for creating the situation where you feel like you have to be beautiful to be accepted, and then for shaming people who buy into those views. Bristol’s new face is lovely, and I hope it makes her happy, no matter why she chose it. I, for one, love my new face, both for its working jaw and for its socially-acceptable proportions. And I refuse to be ashamed of it.