jk said:
"Martha Gallagher" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:
I know our mantra is "diet & exercise" and I believe that has to be the
foundation. I wouldn't even have considered doing this surgery until I'd
gotten as much off as I thought I could and, more importantly, maintained
that weight loss for over a year and a half. But I also know that for me,
I was always going to look unbalanced in clothes if I had limited my
options to just diet and exercise. I'm finding that while I haven't lost
additional weight from dieting as a result of the operation, I find it
So, there you have it. I'm out.
This is not a flame Martha, just a social commentary. I think it's so
Not taken as such. I've *done* it and I'm still not entirely comfortable
with how readily we turn to cosmetic surgery. In fact, part of the reason
I get such a kick out of having done this is that if you polled my
friends and family, overwhelmingly they would say that "Martha" and
"cosmetic surgery" are not words that go together naturally.
Quoted message said:sad that we feel that we need to go to almost any extreme to look like what
we think we should look like. Life threatening surgeries are done everyday
The funny thing, speaking about my own situation only, was that I was
already at a point at which I was comfortable with my body. I'd spent the
summer walking around the pool in a bikini and I'd never felt like I had
to wrap my towel around me for fear someone would be repulsed by my
thighs. As far as i was concerned, I looked pretty good. Likewise, I no
longer worried that if I started a new relationship, he was going to be
turned off by seeing my stomach. I figure anyone in the age bracket I'm
likely to be dating isn't going to think that I'm going to take off my
dress and suddenly I'm going to have the body of an Olson twin (which is
fine with me). My reasons for having my body reshaped really didn't have
much to do with making it more attractive or acceptable to others. As far
as I was concerned, it was as good as it needed to be for that.
What really got me thinking of doing this was that I simply got tired of,
everytime I bought an article of clothing, having to think of whether it
would fit over my hips. I mean, everything. Ok, not bras so much. But I
have a fine collection of dirndls, not to honor my mother's German
heritage, but because they're cut the same way my body is shaped. Which is
fine, but that doesn't work so well for business suits. I realize this
isn't so much of a problem for men, but having a 36" bust and 44" hips is
a real drag.
That was what got me thinking of it. But once the idea was in my mind, I
realized it would also give me a degree of closure. Even though
intellectually I *know* that I've never dieted below this weight and
maintained the loss, part of me was always looking in the mirror and
thinking "if I just made a final push, I could get the rest off." But,
everytime I've managed to diet myself much lower than this, I've always
rebounded - hard. By having some of the fat surgically removed, I've put
myself in a position where I'm not thin, but I feel like this is good. I
don't have to keep pushing myself to try to lose more. I simply have to be
committed to maintaining what I have.
One of the things I did as a reality check before I let myself do this was
I made myself go over what changes I could realistically expect from this.
Mostly, my goal was that I'd have a better proportioned shape. I didn't
expect that this would make me more confident or successful, that people
would take me more seriously or that men would suddenly be falling all
over themselves to ask me out. I'm 42; I've seen enough of the world to
know that my successes and failures in those areas have rarely had much to
do with my weight and a great deal to do with who I am and how I project
myself.
Quoted message said:because a 120 lb, 16 year old girl thinks she's fat, or an overindulgent
weatherman has his stomach stapled and winds up on the cover of Time
magazine. Why can't we accept ourselves for what we are, find a mate that's
thrilled by who we are, and not spend so much time trying to be what we're
not? Of course there are extreme examples that support various dangerous
'Cause it's human nature to try to conform to our society's ideals of
beauty? It's way older than 21st century America.
Quoted message said:treatments, but for the most part it's simply our minds guided by the media
and entertainment industry. By the way I'm not immune either.
I love blaming the media - it's practically a hobby for me - but societies
set some dam' fool extreme as the standard of perfection, whether it's
being thin, fat, having little feet, having white skin, having tan skin,
you name it and some society has venerated it, and people have gone to
dangerous extremes to get it.
That said, I'm not sure that lipo is really all that dangerous or harmful.
Yeah, I'm sure bad things can and probably do happen, but if it comes to
that bad things can and do happen in the weight room and no one says it's
too dangerous to exercise.
Martha
--
"ALPO is 99 cents a can. That's over SEVEN dog dollars!!"
Revek - ASDLC
