To make matters worse, the doctor had a white crust like smegma in the corners of his mouth that frantically danced around like wet cobwebs while he talked. I was trying to will him with my mind to wipe his mouth off, but it seemed like he had literally no idea it was there. How could a man responsible for aesthetic perfection be so oblivious to such a visual disaster? This was yet another red flag on yet another man I chose to ignore.
I was wearing one of those paper-thin gowns, which went perfectly with my paper-thin self-esteem. The doctor—let’s call him Dr. Smegma—summoned a nurse to come into the room to supervise our appointment. Once she came in, he asked me to open my gown. I assume this was to avoid any kind of malpractice lawsuits, but I felt way more uncomfortable with the female chaperone there staring at us. The situation just made me think of scenarios I never would have considered had she not come in. Why does my doctor need a babysitter? That can’t be a good sign. I guess this is a common practice, but it just ended up feeling like an awkward, half-assed threesome. When I took the gown off, he took in my chest.
“Oh, you have scoliosis,” he said with an equal mix of nonchalance and arrogance.
“I’m sorry?” I said.
He bugged his veiny eyes out at me. “You didn’t know that?”
His face told me it was very weird that I didn’t know by now that my spine was essentially in the shape of the lightning bolt emoji. I was so embarrassed that I pretended that I misheard him and totally knew that my spine was trying to run away from my neck.
I couldn’t really process the information I was getting, mostly because I was so distracted by the manner in which I was getting it—in a cold room, with two strangers, while being overcharged. Doctors need to come up with a more genteel way of throwing out their diagnoses. I wish they would do their evaluation, then just let me go home. An hour or so later I’d check my e-mail and find a charming Paperless Post, yellow paisley print background with cherubic bluebirds holding a ribbon that reads: “Hey! you have scoliosis! Now you can freak out and cry in the privacy of your own home!”
The doctor didn’t notice my obvious confusion and got more intense from there: “Scoliosis is why your breasts are asymmetrical. Were you anorexic?”
I uttered a bunch of mumbles that eventually added up to a yes. He explained that if I hadn’t eaten enough fat and protein during puberty, breast tissue couldn’t grow, and that the damage can be irreversible. Even if you’re genetically predisposed to have breasts that fit your frame, they won’t come in. Basically they were stunted, and since one had developed first, they just kinda froze where they were. This obviously makes a ton of sense, but when I was twelve and my eating disorder took over, making sense wasn’t really a part of my repertoire.
Dr. Smegma took a couple of X-rays, which confirmed that my spine was in the shape of a menorah. I felt a combination of devastation and relief: devastated that I had this condition, yet relieved that someone validated my paranoia that something was wrong. Basically my shoddy tits were a combo of malnourishment and trash genetics, not the demons in my head.
Dr. Smegma handed me a big binder of photos of women’s before-and-after pictures. It reminded me of those Trapper Keepers I had in middle school that had chubby unicorns on them and shockingly noisy Velcro flaps. It felt weird that in such a serious adult situation I was thinking about such innocent times in middle school. I flipped through the photos jealously. The breasts all looked very fake to me, but at least they were symmetrical.
At least they didn’t look like those fake boobs that look like grapefruits topped with alligator eyes, but I still insisted that whatever had to happen, it had to be natural-looking.
“I don’t want them bigger. Just even. I’m a comedian, so I can’t look ridiculous. Please don’t make me look like a cartoon.”
I noticed that in the “after” photos, the women’s breasts were always more plump and even, but I mostly noticed that the women also seemed to be sucking in their stomachs. Maybe I was projecting, but from that I deduced that now that these women had fixed their breasts, suddenly they were worried about their waistline, as if corrective surgery was like a game of whack-a-mole: Once you knock out one insecurity, another one pops up. The notion certainly didn’t stop me from scheduling surgery for the following week.
Couple things: If a surgeon is available within the next week, do not go to that surgeon. If you have cancer or something that needs to be operated on immediately, obviously don’t take my stupid advice. I was too young to know that it’s alarming when a surgeon’s schedule is wide open. You want your surgeon to be booked solid, but to have a last-minute cancellation or to be nice enough to squeeze you in between the innumerable surgeries he has. The next red flag is that the surgery was by the airport. Going to the airport not stressful enough for you? How about we add an invasive surgery you’re ambivalent about to your trip!
I was terrified to tell my boyfriend at the time that I was planning on getting my breasts “reconstructed.” That word was so dehumanizing, I felt like I was an old apartment building that had asbestos. I practiced what I would say and how I would say it over and over, terrified he would judge me, abandon me, hate me, lose respect for me. Again, I thought he would see me the way I saw myself. I mustered all the courage I had and dissociated just enough to get the words out of my mouth. I remember exactly what I said because I practiced it so many times.
“So, I know this sounds insane, and I totally don’t have to do it and I can totally cancel it or reschedule it or whatever, but my whole life I’ve been so insecure about my chest that I was thinking about getting it fixed. It’s just like one thingy that would balance them out, but I totally don’t have to if you don’t want me to.”
“Cool! I’ll drive you!”
“Oh.” I was taken aback by how supportive of the idea he was. I mean, it’s not a mind-bending shock that a guy would be into the idea of better breasts on his girlfriend, but I was constantly surprised at how comfortable everyone was with my paying a stranger with white funk on his mouth to maim my body in order to conform to the standard of beauty, or even to my pathological perfectionism. Maybe subconsciously I wanted someone to stop me, to talk some sense into me, to make me take my own advice about accepting your body. After all, in my first stand-up special I said verbatim: “Love your body, don’t get breast implants.” Didn’t anyone care that I was being an insecure hypocrite? Or maybe they all just knew way before I did that people always tend to become what they despise.
I spent the next couple of days lying to people about where I was going to be the next few weeks, since I was going to have to stay in bed for a while. This was before my handle on codependence, so I had a completely maxed-out schedule full of things I had absolutely no interest in doing. Otherwise, I looked forward to how all my problems would be solved, and now that I was going to have a new boob that matched my old boob, I was going to be able to eat whatever I wanted given I was under the impression that this surgery would immediately cure my body image issues. I planned out all the delicious things I was going to eat that my deformity previously held me back from having. Things that, presurgery, I had to refuse or pretend I was allergic to. Funnel cakes! Cadbury Creme Eggs! Shake ’n Bake! Do they even make that product anymore? Chicken getting magically crispy in a bag? It doesn’t matter. I’d find it on eBay if I had to!
The day of the surgery I was terrified. They told me the night before not to eat. No problem. Not eating was sort of my thing. That morning, I found myself in yet another paper-thin gown, freezing cold. I thought about how much warmer I was going to be once I could finally put on weight since given body would be evened out. Dr. Smegma came in late with a bunch of papers for me to sign, all thicker than the gown I was wearing. I didn’t read any of it.
I woke up a week later covered in bandages. Chock-full of painkillers, I walked around the house like a drunk mummy, unable to lift my arms above my rib cage. A couple w
eeks after that, when I was able to take the dressing off and unveil my now-symmetrical chest, I was thrilled. I could not wait for all my insecurities and fears to finally dissipate into thin air upon the unveiling of the sternum I deserved. A sternum that didn’t make people look confused or concerned. I of course couldn’t wait two weeks, so I sneaked a peek early. I discovered that my gimpy boob, the little boob that could was indeed on the same equator as my other one, but when I lifted and flexed my arm, there was a small divot running from my nipple to the outside of the breast tissue.
What. The. Fuck.
I frantically picked up the phone like a T. rex and called the doctor’s office. Dr. Smegma wasn’t there. I called an hour later. He was out. Called that afternoon—he’s busy. All of a sudden, the doctor was totally MIA. I know unavailability is basically my favorite quality in a boyfriend, but not in a doctor. I couldn’t track him down for three days. He finally gave me a time to come see him, and when I told him my concern, he explained that he had to cut through some muscle because of how janky my spine is. He said it in a much more erudite way than that, but he seemed pretty at peace with filleting my chest muscle and leaving a ghastly canyon where breast tissue was supposed to be. My boobs were now even more asymmetrical than before.
I didn’t stand up for myself or challenge Dr. Smegma. I figured on some level that I deserved it. That’s what I get for being so insecure and reckless. I could hardly afford the procedure, much less to sue this guy. I guess I could have written a Yelp review or something, but I was too in denial to acknowledge how big of a disaster this was and I was on too many muscle relaxers to remember how to spell “Yelp.”
I spent the next couple years just as ashamed of my divot as I had been of my uniboob, essentially replacing one insecurity with another insecurity. I still had sex with the lights off, still had to spend most of sex trying to manipulate and hide my chest. Having sex with me must have been akin to having sex with a mime because I always had my hands up, trying to distract the guy, bobbing and weaving to cover up my sternum. I was like Madonna in the “Vogue” video, constantly doing spastic origami with my hands. I’m very certain that one guy I dated was convinced I was epileptic.
Cut to a couple of years later, thanks to my therapy for codependence, I gained the courage and ability to trust other humans. I finally confided to one of my girlfriends about my predicament. She effortlessly quipped, “Oh, that’s an easy fix. I have the best guy.” She wasn’t shocked, grossed out, or even judgmental. After talking to a couple of other people I trusted, I found out that one of my friends had a reduction, another a lift after having a baby, and another a similar reconstruction to mine. Almost everyone I talked to had either done it or considered it, and I realized that in not having looked into getting mine fixed, I might even have been in the minority. Again, I started realizing the only person in my life who was horrified by my body rectification was me.
A friend of mine with a similar chest issue had so little shame about it that she inspired me to go to another doctor to get the fix fixed. She sent me to a real surgeon who actually had a website and whose office validated parking. When I went to meet him, someone led me into a private room that smelled like flowers and showed me where the bathroom was. It didn’t even require a key. I felt like I was the queen of Versailles. His binder of before-and-after photos looked like gorgeous wedding albums, not teenagers’ school supplies from a swap meet.
When this surgeon came in, he was tan, with broad shoulders, and not a lick of crust on his face. He looked me in the eye and wrote notes with a pen that worked the first time it hit the paper.
I came in hot. “Where do you do your surgeries?”
Confounded, he responded. “Downstairs.”
“When is the soonest you could do it?”
He winced. “I’m booked out for a couple months, but I am sure someone will have to reschedule.” Ah, a busy surgeon with an office very far away from the airport. I was in the right place. I removed my paper gown with aplomb and revealed my chest.
“Jesus, he cut right through your muscle.” The expression on his face was that of disgust laced with compassion. “What was the surgeon’s name?”
I couldn’t believe I didn’t know the answer. I guess my brain had blocked out the entire experience, including Dr. Smegma’s name.
“You have scoliosis.”
“I know.”
He explained how to reconstruct the reconstruction. I don’t remember anything he said, but I trusted him.
After he did the procedure, Dr. Actual Doctor told me he was able to minimize the damage, but not fix it entirely. This should probably have been disappointing, but I was too sick of the whole debacle to be anything but okay with it.
Today I accept my chest, but not because it’s symmetrical or better or any of that. The truth is, if I was twenty-five with the boobs I have now, I’m sure I’d hate them for some other reason my brain invents to re-create the cycle of feeling like I’m broken. Before I had self-esteem, I could find a flaw in anything related to myself and used any excuse I could find to beat myself up. I’m sure I would have found issues with even the most gorgeous naturals: “Yuck! They’re too pale and way too round! I mean, a C cup? C is the universal sign for average!”
What ultimately made me accept and like my body was the tremendous amount of work I did on my brain. Trust me, I wish the shortcuts had worked, but they just didn’t. Being thin didn’t work. Eating thirty cookies at a time didn’t work. Being on TV didn’t work. Symmetrical boobs didn’t work. Boyfriends didn’t work. Work didn’t work. Money didn’t work. I mean, it can really help sometimes, but it doesn’t fix low self-worth. If actual worth and self-worth were synonymous, #lambolife would not be a hashtag on social media.
Before I did work on my insides, self-acceptance felt like a mythical utopian ideal. All over Instagram and pop culture we see memes that say “love yourself” and “accept who you are” in flowery font. Great. But how? If reading a quote on Instagram or listening to a Justin Bieber song could change your neurology about how you actually see yourself, every rehab would instantly go out of business. The same way a quote about getting in shape can’t actually get you in shape, self-esteem is a muscle you actually have to build. But how?
The first thing I did was get older. It really helps.
Another thing that’s helped in building my self-esteem has been surrounding myself with people who aren’t assholes. This may sound obvious, but until pretty recently I had a lot of people in my life who didn’t treat me with respect. That’s of course because I didn’t treat myself with respect, so it became a vicious circle, given a very complex phenomenon I’d like to reduce to “monkey see, monkey do.” We take cues from others on how we should feel about ourselves, so when the people around me are mean, I tend to imitate them. Negative people are very sneaky. They’re like a Taylor Swift song: the first couple times you hear it, you want to leave the room, but after four or five times, I’m dancing like a white girl with sciatica.
People’s opinion of you rubs off on you. It sounds so simple: Be friends with people who accept you for who you are and don’t make you feel scared or insecure or as though you have to constantly work for their approval. I’ve probably said this a couple times in this book, but in case you’re anything like me and read books like a spaz by skimming through chapters, love is not earned. I’ll repeat that: Love is not earned. To quote Sia, “I know I’ve heard that to let your feelings show / Is the only way to make friendships grow.” If you can’t be vulnerable with your pals, they gotta go. If I had just been able to admit my dilemma to someone ten years earlier because I had safe, nonjudgmental friendships, I probably would have saved a lot of time, money, pain, and perverted hallucinations from coming out of anesthesia that involve Tom Hardy.
Anyway, so why would I write this chapter? Why would I tell you guys my deepest, darkest, most embarrassing secret? Why would I admit
to being a hypocrite? Why would I give out information that’s going to invite so many nasty tweets and countless emotionally abusive Instagram comments? Something that’s going to get me so many awkward backhanded compliments from strangers in airports? Because I have shame about it. And I learned that the engine of codependent, self-abusive, maladaptive, and addictive behaviors is exactly that. Shame. But shame can be mitigated or released in a shockingly simple way: by talking about it. The badass psychiatrist Phil Stutz said something on Marc Maron’s podcast that I’ll never forget, which is that when we admit something shameful, it loses its power and it allows grace to enter the room.
So here I am, telling you the most shameful thing I hold on to so I can drop my sword, put the boxing gloves down, and accept my relentless humanity so I can get on with living my life. The only panacea I’ve found for negative thoughts is to admit my negative thoughts. I’m sure painkillers and wine work too, but probably not for long, and they’re way more expensive. It’s pretty much my main goal in life not to have to go to get my emotional needs met at BevMo!.
To quote a real authority on shame who knows way more than I do, Brené Brown said: “Where perfectionism exists, shame is always lurking.” In order to heal my crippling perfectionism, I had to release the shame by talking about it. You know when you’ve drunk too much or get food poisoning, and you actually feel relieved after you puke? Puking feels terrible, but you’re grateful to not have that garbage in your body anymore? Maybe that is a terrible image for the chapter following one about eating disorders, but it’s the most accurate metaphor I can think of besides popping a zit, which is too gross for me to even think about. Sorry, now you’re thinking about it.
I'm Fine...And Other Lies Page 16