LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Gay 'n Gray: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall... |
by John Siegfried |
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall... This was the croak of the wicked queen in Snow White as she looked in the magic mirror anticipating affirmation of her beauty. But li'l ole Snow White messed that one up for her. Narcissus, of course, didn't have a mirror and used his reflection in a pond to convince himself that he was the fairest queen of all long before Snow White went to press. He liked what he saw so much that he promptly fell in love with himself. Doesn't sound like anyone I know! Looking in the mirror and infatuation with appearance isn't exactly a new sport. Sometimes, while shaving, I notice the sag of skin under my chin and the wrinkles along my neck. With a little pull here, and a tuck there, I might possibly shave five or ten years off my appearanceat least for a few years until the tissues stretch and the sagging recurs. All it would take is a few thousand dollars and a trip to my friendly neighborhood plastic surgeon. My future, following a mini-face lift, is fuel for fantasy. There is, however, another issue, my body. As a kid I regularly checked out the ads for the Charles Atlas course on the back of comic books. For ninety-nine dollars I could get the course of instructions and was guaranteed to have an Atlas body in no time. I really wanted the bulked muscle-bound look in the ads, rather than remain a 98 pound weakling, but I didn't have the dollars. And while Charlie A. is a thing of the past and the price has gone up, the pitch is the same be it ab-roller, solo-flex, instant-pecs, or what have you. And speaking of pecs, I heard one friend greet another at the Moon recently with, "Oh, I love your implants." So now that I'm gray, retired and could find the cash for plastic surgery and body re-imaging, why don't I create a new me? Because, in my antiquated judgment, the benefits are transientand the risks are permanent. A lead article in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel last week reported, "A woman died this week during cosmetic surgery in a Broward medical office, the third such death in Florida in three months....The Sun-Sentinel has documented 44 deaths following cosmetic surgery in Florida since the mid-1980s, including 21 fatalities since January 1997." And that's just one county in South Florida. It's safe to bet that the number of fatalities nationally would be devastating and that the escalating fatality numbers reflect the increasing popularity of this approach to eternal youth. I may be old fashioned (and increasingly I take that charge as a compliment) but if I'm going to crump and crash under the knife because the surgery is essential, so be it. But if I'm going to crash during a nose job, forget it. Narcissus gets only part of the blame. Hollywood feeds the frenzy with its incessant popularization of a youth culture where every male is a hunk, every female a 10, and even the dogs and cats have white teeth and a perfect smile. Researchers studying the self-perception of aging reported several years ago that in their study, men looking in the mirror tend to see an image that is ten to fifteen years younger than their chronologic age. Women, however, see an image that is approximately five years younger than their chronologic age. Obviously, this finding has great cosmic significance, which escapes me at the moment, other than noting that women are more realistic than menat least with body image. I've always been amazed that some mornings the image reflected in my mirror is youthful, handsome and svelte, and yet twenty-four hours later in the same mirror there's a fat, flabby, old fart. The dramatic change says less about the magical qualities of my mirror and a lot about my perception of myself. Perhaps what's needed is a new type of laser eye surgery that guarantees a permanently youthful mirror reflection, or, a la Harry Potter, a magic mirror that reflects what I want to see rather than what is. Somehow, however, despite the lure of the fountain of youth, and despite the millions of men and women both gay and straight nibbling on that lure, I think we're putting our sperm in the wrong condom (I get bored putting eggs in a basket). The aging process is inevitable and the mapped genome won't change that. But, if even a small percentage of the money and effort currently going into temporary reshaping of outward appearance went into development of a strong self-image from infancy on, the battle with the mirror might be won. We'd all be further ahead, more fulfilled, and alive to tell the tale. John Siegfried is a retired association executive who resides in Rehoboth Beach. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 10, No. 9, July 14, 2000. |