By the time we arrived home, my implant was up on my shoulder and I was in such excruciating pain that I couldn’t even get out of the car. Mum called for an ambulance, and at the hospital it was eventually determined that an artery had ruptured and there was internal bleeding. The NJ hospital where I was admitted wouldn’t transfer me to the NY hospital where my plastic surgeon had privileges because I was bleeding at such a rate that they were afraid I would die. Instead, they gave my plastic surgeon privileges to perform the emergency surgery in their hospital. Two days later, he had to repeat the procedure when, after I was released, the bleeding started again.
From then on, I had nothing but trouble. I was in pain, my breast was lopsided, and it was hardening. It not only burned like crazy, but I felt ill all the time, often to the point of passing out. Every time I went back to my plastic surgeon and told him something was wrong—because I knew what was happening to me wasn’t normal—he told me that everything was fine. He became increasingly resistant to my complaints and, eventually, he turned into a real prick and wouldn’t speak to me at all.
Still in pain and disgusted with my doctor, I sought out a female plastic surgeon for a second opinion. She advised me that the best course of action was to remove the implants and the scar tissue and to put in smaller implants because the ones the first doctor put in were too big. I was relieved with her diagnosis. Finally, I was getting a straight answer and some relief. However, a few days before the surgery I developed a rash, and then the skin around the original incision broke open and the implant started to exit my body. When I called the new doctor, she told me to come to the hospital immediately. Twenty minutes later I was in emergency surgery.
When she removed the implants, she discovered that the infection was so bad it had eaten through my muscle. She decided that the three-inch opening under my nipple needed to be left open in order to clean out and treat the infection. This took nearly three months. I had to work throughout that time and, at first, I wore a drain that consisted of a catheter bag. But it was difficult to move my left arm without the tube slipping out of the opening, so the drain was removed and I had to stuff several feet of surgical gauze into my breast cavity to soak up all the goo and pus. I used surgical tweezers to insert the gauze and pull it out. I started off doing that four times a day, then gradually went to three times, and finally two times before the wound finally closed.
It was an incredibly traumatic ordeal. I had lusted after bigger boobs for years and then they almost killed me. To top it off, I didn’t even get to enjoy the bloody things! After I recovered from the ruptured artery and had the implants removed, the side that suffered all the complications was never right. There was scar tissue, which was painful, and the boob itself was lopsided, which presented a whole other set of cosmetic issues. My desire for perfection had actually caused me to be even more imperfect, and although I was glad to be alive, I was pissed off like you wouldn’t believe.
That’s when I sued the original plastic surgeon. Goddamn it if I was going to let that guy do this to anybody else. And frankly, my lopsided tit was also dying for retribution. The painful ordeal had made me realize it had been perfectly fine on its own and then he came along and fucking mangled it. I would seek justice for my left tit.
When I found out that he’d already had a couple of other cases filed against him and nothing had happened to him, I knew I had to take him down. That’s why I spent five days in court with a jury. Of course, his lawyer tried to paint me as some bimbo who wanted big boobs to show off, and as someone who was in perfectly good health until I brought the problems on myself with my shallow desire to be more buxom. To add insult to my injury, the offending doctor’s own testimony revealed that despite me having been very specific about the size breasts that I wanted, he had ignored me and purposely made them bigger.
As if it was something to brag about, he actually described his “overfill policy” regarding implants and explained that he’d made me bigger because women never really know how big they want to be. In other words, most of us don’t know what we’re talking about even when it comes to our own bodies. So his personal philosophy was to always fill the implants by 25 percent more than what the patient specifically asked for.
Several expert witnesses and independent doctors who treated the infection and other complications testified on my behalf to refute his ridiculous position. In their opinion, it had been a totally botched job. My surgeon had inserted implants that were too big for my breast cavity, he had nicked an artery, and when he’d done the emergency surgeries he hadn’t replaced those implants. Instead, he kept reinserting the same ones that were already smothered with an infection.
And guess what—I won the case. The surgeon offered to settle for potentially more money if I agreed to a sealed record. But that would have meant his fuckup wouldn’t be public knowledge and I wanted other women to know what had happened and be forewarned. In fact, I was the first woman who actually took a case against him to the jury, and since then that doctor has lost his license to practice. It’s the right outcome and it just goes to show how we all need to stick together. Part of the reason why I got those bloody implants was because I felt judged by other women. But we’re all in danger of getting mangled by a doctor who is a total sexist pig, and we’re all in danger of getting mangled by a sexist culture that pushes plastic surgery as the “easy” solution to getting a “perfect” body. If we don’t stand up for ourselves and for each other then who will?
Let’s face it, even if you have surgeries and they turn out to be safe and exactly what you want, they’re not natural, and what I came to realize was that there’s nothing wrong with the natural me. Certainly, there was nothing worth risking my life over. The fact of the matter is, the bigger boobs didn’t make me feel better about myself; they made me feel self-conscious because they weren’t really me. It’s like wearing that new shirt your mother gives you for Christmas—it’s not you, and you’re sure you stick out like a sore thumb, but you wear it to please her. Well, I got boobs to please my coworkers and my clients and the people on the street, and they wound up almost killing me.
Obviously, I was better off accepting my real boobs, feeling comfortable with them, and moving on. It was a lesson painfully learned. I had been right all along when I was working my way up from that salon basement. It’s not about what I look like; it’s about who I am. And I am a woman with a lovely lopsided left tit.
Ask Yourself, “How Do I Look?”
• I am going to give you one piece of advice on boobs: they come in all shapes and sizes. And that goes for noses, bellies, eyes, and every other body part that is now subject to debate in popular media. One of my favorite film scenes is from Lovely and Amazing when the struggling actress who is wildly insecure about her body asks the movie star who she just fucked to critique her naked body. At first, he doesn’t want to do it because he thinks it’s a trap. But then, as she slowly rotates standing in front of him, he tells her the good, the bad, and the “ugly.” And she actually appreciates his honesty. And despite her imperfect body, he calls her for a second date—it’s the movies after all! But seriously, we all could stand an honest critique of ourselves; you need to really look in the mirror and not just see the good, the bad, and the ugly, but actually accept all of it, too. Then plastic surgeons might have to get a second job!
Chapter 9
It’s Not Really About the Hair
WITHOUT A DOUBT, MY profession can be incredibly superficial because it mainly focuses on outward appearances. But that’s often how everyone in our culture is perceived—bankers are supposed to look like bankers, rock stars are supposed to look like rock stars, and I’m supposed to look like a fucking lesbian! I just don’t understand that. Of course, people have to dress professionally for certain jobs, putting their hair in a bun to serve food or sporting a Mohawk to sell their latest rock album. But when we get wrapped up in a certain identity, we often lose sight of who we truly are and we forget that our identi
ty is always evolving.
How we’re perceived or how we perceive ourselves becomes its own reality and we’re constantly judged according to how we look. It’s like the scene in Pretty Woman where the Julia Roberts character is snubbed in an upscale boutique by a snotty cow who mistakenly assumes she doesn’t have a penny to her name. We make assumptions all the time based on how people look, especially when we don’t bother to delve beyond the outward appearance to find out who the person really is. As a hairdresser, I’ve always tried to get to know people and go beyond the superficial perceptions so that I can help them get to know themselves a little bit better. And sometimes clients can have the strangest revelations about themselves while sitting in the salon chair.
I remember once when I was an apprentice at Stephen Pratt in Surfers Paradise assisting a stylist to apply color, I commented on the fact that the client was making a big change to her hair. She said, “Yes, I’m coming back into life.”
“What do you mean, you’re ‘coming back into life’?” I asked. I was young and she was in her midfifties, so her statement sounded bizarre to me.
“I just got out of a psychiatric facility,” she replied without batting an eyelid. “I killed my husband.”
Apparently, the guy had been beating her for years as well as beating their kids. On this one particular occasion, he had grabbed a knife and was about to lunge at her when, in self-defense, she whacked him across the head with a blunt instrument, causing him to fall and head-butt the floor. Not your everyday salon story. But I went through the motions with her, nodding politely and going “uh-huh” while she spilled her guts. What else could I do?
“Fuck!” is what I really thought. “She’s been committed for killing her husband, and when she gets out, the first place she wants to go is a hair salon so she can feel good about herself . . .” Not even a quick stop at the pub where the bartender knows her name first!
That was a defining moment. Suddenly I realized a trip to the salon could be about much more than just a haircut or dye job, and that the psychology is sometimes more important than the actual hairdressing. When people are going through shit, they tell their hairdressers secrets they won’t share with anyone else, and often the revelation of those secrets changes the person and how they feel about themselves. It makes them feel renewed, like confessing to their priest.
These days, there are associations that work with hairdressers so that, if people sit in your chair and tell you about having been abused, you can contact a hotline to get them some help. Like a therapist, or the local barkeep, hairdressers are in a position of trust. We are transforming not just how a person looks but how they feel and, therefore, they want to tell us things.
Over the years, I’ve had clients who are covered in bruises tell me that they’ve been knocked around by husbands or boyfriends. I’ve also had them tell me they’ve had cosmetic surgery to try to save their marriages and that their husbands didn’t even notice. These people come to an appointment more in need of divulging personal information than getting their hair done. I hear a lot of their private thoughts and a lot about their private affairs, and I’ve always taken this very seriously. What my clients tell me stays with me—so any of you out there who are reading this, don’t panic—but it’s amazing how complicated things can sometimes become.
In addition to doing some women’s hair, I’ve also styled their husbands’ mistresses, and at that point it turns into a dance—I know there’s a wife and a mistress, but the wife doesn’t know there’s a mistress, and that’s how I’ll leave it because I don’t want to get dragged into other people’s private lives. I’m well aware that although I know some extremely intimate things about many of the clients who sit in my chair, I’m ultimately qualified as a hairdresser, not as a psychotherapist. There is a limit on advice. It is more about being a good listener and using my craft to try to make my clients feel differently about themselves and their lives.
There are also plenty of clients who would say that they aren’t coming in for the armchair psychological purging and that they just want to get their hair done. But those clients can still have a lot of psychological issues that they are taking out on their hair. Hair is a very personal thing and people can get a little intense about it. I’ve had clients walk in with twenty-page dossiers about their hair—how they’ve worn it and how they would like it, all properly printed and illustrated with scanned photos of themselves, diagrams that they’ve drawn, and even diagrams that their husbands have drawn. When this happens, I know it’s so not about the hair. Typically, the pictures are old ones that enable me to look at younger versions of these people and—as I’ll ascertain by delicately asking the right questions—happier times in their lives. So instead of it being “My hair looked great when I was in college,” it’s really “I felt great when I was in college,” and they actually want to re-create that feeling of freedom or youth or whatever it may be. It’s not really about wanting the vintage haircut.
In such cases, I’ll deal with the issue delicately, diplomatically, and honestly, even if this sometimes requires me to explain what I think is really motivating someone’s choice of hairstyle. I want people to walk out happy with the haircut and color that I’ve given them, and if they’re expecting me to reproduce some feeling or moment from twenty years ago, that’s impossible. I didn’t style them twenty years ago, their hair isn’t the same as it was twenty years ago, and they don’t look the same as they did twenty years ago. So I need to ask them what it is about the haircut that they still like, and if I think their expectations are incredibly unrealistic, I’ll tell them; first, because I don’t want them to walk around looking awful, and second, because I want them to love how they do look. And how they feel.
It’s the same when a new client comes into my salon with a photo of a hot model or actress. This isn’t really about wanting the hair or the look; it’s about wanting what she perceives as the whole celebrity lifestyle. So, I try to strip away the haircut to get to what the client is emotionally responding to in the picture. She doesn’t want to look like Kim Kardashian or any other fashionista flavor of the month; she wants to feel beautiful or rich or whatever the picture evokes for her—just like my “aunties” in the strip clubs dressed to evoke a feeling for themselves.
The way someone looks can be a powerful tool in helping them redefine how they feel about themselves. When a mum moves to the suburbs with five kids, she isn’t required to have a haircut that makes her look like a mum who’s moved to the suburbs with five kids. But I’ve had mums come in and say, “Well, I’m a mum now,” as though that means she has to look a certain way or that she has to limit her choices. But I’ll try to make sure she doesn’t feel the need to change who she is in order to conform to others’ ideals. Honestly, I don’t even know what a “mum haircut” is. Maybe she wants a cut that’s low maintenance; I can do that, but I also want her to have a hip and stylish look that will make her feel beautiful every day, bring out all of her best qualities, and work for her instead of for other people. You’re not dead just because you’re a mother; you’re still a woman, and it’s okay to look sexy and want to have people look at you.
When people do come in for a physical transformation, it’s often because they want to feel better about themselves, they want to be touched, they want to be pampered. Again, it’s not really about the hair; it’s about something much more emotional, and that’s why I dig deeper. Certain stylists might just comply with a customer’s request to go blond because they think it’ll be fun. But by asking why she suddenly wants that look and how she thinks it’ll make her feel different, I sometimes learn that the customer’s husband has been having an affair with a blonde, and since he obviously likes blondes, she also wants him to like her.
It’s interesting—when I ask my clients who they are, most of them sit in my chair and hit me with a litany of negative attributes: “I’ve put on twenty pounds,” “I’ve got crap hair,” “My hair’s frizzy,” “My hair’s fine,” “My
hair’s flat,” “I’ve got a big nose,” “I don’t like my ears,” “I don’t like my double chin . . .” When they look in the mirror, they see themselves according to other people’s not-so-charming judgments. And someone’s look can redefine not only how they feel about themselves, but how others feel about them, too. So when I ask, “What do you like about yourself?” it puts them on the spot. Suddenly they have nothing to say. The fact is, despite the double chin, someone might have beautiful eyes, lovely lips, and incredible cheekbones, not to mention a wicked sense of humor. So I’ll style their hair to accentuate those features, to make them feel better about themselves, and also to make them laugh about whatever they don’t like.
Then there is the client who says, “I have a date tonight and I want to look sexy.” To me, true sexiness comes from within—from what you emit and how you feel—rather than from just how you look. So, once more, the outer appearance has to match the inner self. People with great bodies who are too done up look too done up, whereas those who wear T-shirts, jeans, and flip-flops can be really, really attractive if they exude an aura that they’re totally authentic and comfortable with themselves. That’s sexy!
Forget the old business credo that the customer’s always right. They may be right in the sense that I do want to make my clients happy, but that’s also why they’re not always right. I mean, if a woman absolutely insists on something that I know is going to wreck her hair, will I still do it? Fuck, no. I won’t ruin my reputation and I won’t ruin her hair—“Go to someone else who will ruin your hair and who doesn’t care, but I won’t do it.” Integrity is all-important—I’m really not interested in taking your money so that I’ll end up with a few hundred dollars and you’ll end up with hair that’s a fried mess. That won’t do either of us any good.
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