Unqualified

by Anna Faris

  #2. BOOBS.

  My breasts were a huge point of insecurity from an early age. By the time I reached my twenties, I finally felt confident enough in my body to accept that little breasts could be sexy, too. I was finally starting to own them—wearing skimpy tops and telling myself I could get away with certain outfits because without cleavage I didn’t feel boobalicious, which I acknowledge is crazy thinking in its own right. But around age thirty, my breasts started sinking into my chest a little more, and instead of being the tiniest perky boobs, they started to be the tiniest saggy boobs.

  The idea of getting a boob job sprung, initially, from my work on The House Bunny. (Not to pin all my plastic surgery on that project but . . .) Before shooting that movie, in which I played a Playboy Bunny turned sorority house mom, I had never had attention drawn to my chest, ever. But with the outfits in The House Bunny, it was hard to look away. At first I was incredibly uncomfortable with the attention. I’d come to the set of two hundred people and think, Holy shit, everyone is looking at my boobs. Plus, my nipples were constantly popping out of the heavily, heavily, heavily padded bra that they sewed me into every day. It was embarrassing, until it wasn’t. After, like, day five, I started thinking the attention wasn’t so bad. In fact, it was kind of cool. Maybe I was becoming more like my character, but I started to embrace her kind of sexuality and it was really liberating.

  At the same time, I was dating Chris. I feel silly saying this, but he brought out something in me that made me want to be feminine in a very traditional way. But I also wanted to be independent. So, one night, I turned to him and said, “I think I’m going to get breast implants.”

  “Honey, I love your body no matter what you do,” he said.

  Perfect answer.

  Other guys had talked to me about getting implants in the past, and I hated that so much. It would piss anyone off, I think, to hear the people who supposedly love you suggest that you should get surgery to change your body. It automatically implies that your current looks aren’t good enough. So if you come up with it on your own, all you want to hear from the person you love is, “You’re beautiful no matter what.”

  For a long time, I really thought that getting a boob job defined a person. The woman who would get implants was a specific type of person and that person was not me. That person was weak and frivolous and fake and all the things that I felt I wasn’t, which is what makes it particularly ironic that I ended up electing for the surgery.

  I did it for myself. I wasn’t doing it for Hollywood—I’d been wearing padded bras for my whole career, so it wasn’t like I thought that implants were going to suddenly help me get ahead. But I wanted to feel sexy in a way that I hadn’t been feeling, and, I’ll be honest, after getting the surgery, I did. It was really fun. I know it sounds dumb to describe plastic surgery as fun, but to be able to fill out a bikini for the first time in my life, that really was exciting. I’d recently ended my first marriage and I was clearly going through a year of revolutionary change—independence and a boob job!

  The doctor I went to was great. He encouraged me to make only the most modest change that would still give me the look I was going for. Before I had the operation he said to me, “Listen, I want to see you a year from now and I want you to say, ‘I wish we had gone bigger.’” That’s when you know your implant doctor is really looking out for your best interests.

  Unlike the lips, I have no regrets about getting breast implants. I’m happy I did it, but I’m happy that I waited until I was thirty. It’s a personal decision, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to everyone. But it does bother me that women are very much criticized by other women for these kinds of choices. They are, admittedly, dramatic ones—luxurious, perhaps even frivolous, decisions that require you to go under the knife so you can have bigger boobs or a bigger butt. But I don’t know why we’re quite so hard on each other about it. My harshest criticism has come from women. On one hand, I do understand that drastic body change is conforming to a male ideal. But on the other hand, I’ve been bleaching my hair since I was fourteen. I had braces. I whitened my teeth. It’s not exactly the same, but there is an element of line drawing—who gets to say what we can or cannot do for vanity?

  #3. MOVING ON TO WEIGHT . . .

  I’ve always been a fairly small person, so weight hasn’t been my focal point when it comes to looks. But you can’t be a woman in America, let alone in Hollywood, and not maintain a general undercurrent of awareness that your weight is subject to constant scrutiny. It’s virtually impossible to drown that out entirely. When I moved to LA, I was really thin. I had just graduated from college, so I’d been living on a dining hall food plan. I didn’t eat particularly well, but I didn’t eat much, either, and I walked everywhere. Probably seven or eight miles a day. So when I arrived in LA, I wasn’t panicked about weight. Not about weight, but about basically everything else.

  I did gain a lot of weight with my pregnancy, and I’ve never had more paparazzi follow me. I knew why, of course. I was on the bump watch. At the time, I honestly didn’t give a fuck, probably because my brain was numb with pregnancy hormones and I was in a blissful state and all I wanted to do was eat. Food had never tasted so delicious. I mean, food was always good, but when I was pregnant it took on a whole new power. So, even though Jack was born about two months early, I gained seventy pounds. At around six months pregnant, my doctor was like, “Okaaaaay, you’re gaining a lot of weight pretty quickly.” But it felt so good to not think about it, which makes me wonder if maybe all along I’d been worrying about weight more than I thought. Maybe the seed had been planted so young that it was woven into the fabric of my psyche without my realizing it. Probably.

  I wish I had good advice for how to not absorb the weight pressure. Maybe one of you dear readers can teach me. All I know is that I can’t stand comments about weight. Even complimenting someone on losing weight, it’s always uncomfortable. Even if you’re saying, “You look great,” you can’t help but also send the message that “You didn’t look great before.” Basically, it’s a no-win.

  All I really want is to be comfortable in my own skin (which I know will be a lifelong struggle) and for other people to feel that way, too. I’m hoping that I will write this chapter and you will read it and we’ll all realize how silly it is that women are so hard on themselves and each other. (Though, having been witness to so much of Chris’s press tour for Guardians of the Galaxy and even Zero Dark Thirty, where the big story was about his weight loss, I learned—again—that this narrative isn’t entirely unique to one gender.)

  Despite this list of body gripes, I have developed a willingness to be viewed as unattractive, at least in my work, that I certainly didn’t have growing up. Scary Movie schooled me in letting go of vanity. Not to say I’m not vain, because I’m totally vain, but when I’m doing character work, I feel like it would be a disservice to the women I play to get too wrapped up in the aesthetics.

  • • •

  And should the day come when I’m completely enlightened and have made total peace with my body, I’ll still probably be hung up on . . .

  #4. MY HANDS.

  I hate my hands.

  When Chris Evans and I first worked together on What’s Your Number?, one day out of nowhere he said to me, “I love your hands.”

  “Please don’t look at my hands,” I said, pulling them behind my back.

  “No, they remind me of Maggie Somethingorother from the third grade,” he said.

  Chris Evans is a gem.

  The reality is that I bite my nails and have giant knuckles and they’re basically German-immigrant potato-farming hands. The only benefit of my hands is that they’re small. And they make penises look big.

  List to Live By: Sex on the Beach and Thirteen Other Things That Sound Better Than They Are

  Getting a book deal: It sounds like an amazing and wonderful adventure, but actually, it’s terrifyin
g. I know, poor little actress girl, getting the chance that plenty of more talented writers have strived toward for decades. But to that end, this exercise feels presumptuous. I’m halfway through and I still have about one hundred pages left to fill with . . . what? I hope you’re looking forward to the next seven chapters: a dramatic retelling of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. As an actress, the best perk of my job is the day I land the gig. It’s the thrill of the chase. I’m high on the rush of the win, realizing that somebody believes in me. Then I wake up the next day and realize I actually have to do the job. I have to memorize lines and perform and deal with the pressure I put on myself and make a 6:00 A.M. call time and hold my face for the camera in a way that looks somewhat normal, which has always been a struggle for me. That’s what writing this book feels like. Getting the deal was thrilling, assuming I can actually do it well feels cocky.

  Gazpacho. It’s soup that is cold.

  Hot buttered rum. I love heat. I love butter. I love rum. Why, oh why, can’t it taste as delicious as it sounds?

  Backpacking around Europe. I actually backpacked around Australia in my early twenties so I am qualified to say that that sucks, and I imagine Europe would be similar.

  Driving across the country in an RV. Anyone who has made this mistake knows it’s horrible. I did it when I was wrapping What’s Your Number? and was in Boston with my three pugs. I’d flown them to Boston, but that was late April, when they could still fly comfortably in the cargo. During summertime, short-nosed breeds can’t fly underneath the plane because it’s too hot. Now, dear reader, how does a person get her three dogs back to Los Angeles at the end of August when it is unsafe to fly short-nosed breeds? You rent the biggest RV you can find with your new assistant, who also has a dog and a dying cat and wants to relocate to Southern California to start her music career because the whole adventure is going to be SO FUN!! You’re going to stop at all the sites! Even Mount Rushmore! Sure, some days may be long, and sure, you’ve never even driven a pickup truck, much less a thirty-foot recreational vehicle, but you know what? You were just given that leather-bound journal by that producer who was nice to your face once, so let’s put pen to paper and record the tough times, too! We crashed the RV twice on day one. Not to sound too dramatic (fine, I want to), but I truly don’t know how we lived. Maybe we didn’t and I’m in a weird hell where you have to write down your thoughts and pray that people like them. Hmmm. So after days filled with Big Macs (don’t forget to check the height limit at the drive-through!), being terrified of peeing (or anything else) because you don’t know how to empty the waste, and sleeping in Walmart parking lots, it’s an experience I would shy away from doing again. And I recommend you do the same. Also, sad to say, the cat died.

  Sex on the beach. Unless it’s the drink. Though I don’t even know what that drink is, so maybe that sounds better than it is, too.

  . . . Or in a hot tub.

  . . . Or in a car. Not because wanting someone so badly that you need to take each other right there in your Honda isn’t sexy, but if you’re having sex with your high school boyfriend in the parking lot of Yost Park, the cops could come and catch you in the act, bang on your window, and tell you to get home, now. For example.

  Meeting strangers at a gas station. I recently stayed at the Holiday Inn Express in Davis, California, where the deluxe room apparently means two twin beds. I was visiting my brother and his beautifully pregnant wife. I didn’t want to sleep on their couch, and I knew I had to work on this book, so I booked a room at the inn. (Well, Mindy, our life-changing assistant, booked it. You know what should go on the list of things that are as good as they sound? Having an assistant.) I couldn’t sleep, so I walked across the street to the Exxon station for some Doritos and a bottle of water. And sure enough, there were a couple of gals sitting outside the store with a cardboard sign: TRYING TO GET TO BERKELEY. Perfect! I sat down with them and introduced myself.The exchange went something like this: “Hi! I’m Anna! Mind if I sit with you guys for a minute?”

  “Uhhh, okay.”

  “Where you going?”

  “Berkeley. Like the sign says.”

  “That’s awesome! Why?”

  “Our friend died.”

  “Oh man, I’m really sorry.”

  Of course I wanted to know how she died, but we were just getting to know each other. They mentioned they’d been sleeping in their car but, between you and me, I didn’t see any cars but the ones filling up. I asked them to tell me their stories—of why they were there and where they came from. They were vague and hesitant and looked at me with those eyes that said, “Are you a nutcase?” Or maybe they said, “Are you that girl from Scream?” Or “Can you please just give us a few bucks and leave us the fuck alone?” So I did. I gave them $60 and told them I was going back to the Holiday Inn, at which point it was all I could do not to invite them back with me (after all, I did have two large twin beds). I resisted, because I have a family and computers and Ambien. But a few years ago I would have totally invited them to my hotel room. I probably would have tagged along for the funeral, too. I would have given an obnoxious eulogy and created a gulf between these two nice gals and their friends because they brought some nut who paid for gas but clearly needed a lot of attention. But I would have come back with great stories boasting of my own spontaneity and courage and my new friends with dreadlocks.

  Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. I don’t care what Cheryl Strayed says.

  Ménage à trois. Or so I assume.

  Waterbeds.

  Game night. It gets competitive and people get angry, especially at me. Also, I suck at Pictionary.

  Couples massage. Chris and I did a couples massage once in Hawaii. It was the kind on the beach, where you’re in a cabana getting rubbed down while people are walking by and it was ridiculous. Was that supposed to be romantic? Were we supposed to hold hands? Chris had a female masseuse and I had a young man who I’m pretty sure had a boner and was pressing it into my forearm. This is not a humblebrag. My husband was right there and all I could think was, What’s happening? What’s going on? while Chris was reaching for my hand. Was I really going to hold hands with my husband while this guy’s boner was pressed into me? You’ll be shocked to hear we never did it again.

  Listener List: Things That Sound Better Than They Are, Part 2

  I asked folks on Facebook for more suggestions of “things that sound better than they are,” and the responses were even more spot-on than I could have imagined.

  Here’s part two, the listener edition.

  Picnics

  Kissing in the rain

  Las Vegas

  Turkish delight

  Being home for the holidays

  Shower sex

  A backyard garden

  Whatever product they are promoting on infomercials

  Your twenty-first birthday

  Potlucks

  An adult costume party

  Taking the high road

  Girls’ night out

  Ouija boards

  Oysters

  Karaoke

  High school reunions

  Camping

  Escargot

  Day drinking

  New Year’s Eve

  Groupon

  Caviar

  Riding on the back of a motorcycle

  What’s Your Number? (And Why Do We Reveal It?)

  I’ve slept with five people, and, at this point, dear reader, you’ve met them all. Chad, the one-night stand from my college dorm, Dave, Ben, and Chris. My number is five.

  What’s Your Number? came out in 2011. For those of you who missed it (and I think that was a lot of you) I played Ally Darling, a single thirtysomething who reads a magazine article saying that women who sleep with twenty or more guys are unlikely to find a husband. Conveniently, she’s had sex with exactly that many men.
So she tries to track them down, hoping that “the one” is in that bunch. I was an executive producer on the movie and I loved so much about it, but it didn’t resonate with people in the way that I hoped it would. Part of the reason for that, I think, is that sleeping with twenty people doesn’t feel like a source of shame these days, and it shouldn’t. Looking back, I think the movie’s premise in and of itself felt a little bit like, Who cares how many people we’ve slept with, and why are we still talking about this? And if we are indeed ashamed of our number, why? The movie showed a woman who was embarrassed by her sexual history and worried it meant she couldn’t be in a stable relationship, but it never really addressed the question of why she felt that embarrassment to begin with. That’s the part I wish we had dug into a little more.

  I strongly believe that women shouldn’t feel any obligation to reveal how many people they’ve slept with. But if they choose to, they shouldn’t be shamed if their list is long, and shouldn’t be revered if it’s short. And yet, I’m embarrassed to admit that I’m totally guilty of sharing my number as some sort of proof of my own value. Early on in my relationship with Chris, I felt the need to tell him that I’d slept with only four other men. I have no idea why I thought it necessary to share this. It ran counter to all my instincts as a woman who should have felt like she could sleep with however many people she wanted to. I fell into this trap of, Oh, look, I’m precious! My vagina has barely even been touched! I hate that I felt that way.

  The conversation with Chris took place five or six days after we started dating. He certainly didn’t ask me how many guys I’d been with, but I really wanted to tell him, probably because we’d slept together fairly soon after the split from Ben, and getting into bed with someone that quickly was unusual for me. I felt compelled to explain that I didn’t normally do this. So I pretty much just blurted it out, completely unprompted. “I’ve slept with only four other guys!” Even as the words were coming out of my mouth I was thinking, Why am I saying this? I’m a thirty-year-old adult. What am I trying to prove? Why was I talking about my number like I was a thoroughbred horse that hadn’t run many races? I was so annoyed at myself. But just as Chris Evans in What’s Your Number? called out my character and said he didn’t care about her number, my Chris did the same thing. He was gentle, but he definitely didn’t want to know. “I’m not quite sure why you’re telling me this,” he said.