It was the beginning of a process of freeing myself from unrealistic, highly manufactured standards of beauty and perfection. Slowly, I started to realize that a perfect body probably can’t be reliably defined, and even if it could, I didn’t need perfection to feel good about the body that carried me through life.
I could not have known it then, but several years later this process would help me when I worked with one of the few women clients in my surrogacy career.
FIVE GENERATIONS. CLOCKWISE: My father, his mom (my Nanna Fournier), her Mom, (my Great Grandmother) and her Mom, (my Great, Great Grandmother) holding me in late 1944.
My Mother at 19 in December 1943.
My Dad at 22 in 1943.
Me at 8 months in 1945.
Me at 3 in 1947.
Me at 12 and my brothers, Peter at 2 and David at 10.
Me at 13, graduating from St. Marys, The Immaculate Conception.
Me at 17, senior yearbook photo from Salem High School.
Michael and I in early 1964.
August 22, 1964. My Mother and me on my wedding day.
Jessica and me, Summer of 1969.
Eric and me, May 1970.
Michael, Eric, Jessica and me in Summer of 1971.
Me in 1973, the year I started Surrogate Partner work.
Bob at the University of California Botanical Garden on our first date in 1979.
My brother David’s graduation from dental school in 1980, with my parents and brother Peter.
Bob and me on our first anniversary in October 1982.
My mother and I in 1983.
Michael and me in 1983.
Jessica, Nanna Fournier and me in Summer of 1984.
Me hiking the high Sierra of Yosemite National Park in September of 1992.
Me in early 1993.
My brother Peter, assisted by Jessica, shaving off my wonderful hair a week after my first Chemo treatment for Lymphoma in August 1993.
Me midway through my six Chemo treatments. Not quite sure how it would all turn out.
Me feeling a bit more optimistic.
Me giving the finger to the Grim Reaper at the 1993 Renaissance Faire in Novato, CA. after my second chemo treatment.
My chemo was over. I celebrated with my favorite crustacean.
Bob and I were married again. This time for real. April 22, 1995.
My Dad, at age 88, and me in June 2009.
My brothers David (LEFT), Peter and me in October 2010.
Ben Lewin, Bob and me at the ‘Wrap Party’ for ‘The Surrogate’ (later named ‘The Sessions’). June 8, 2011.
Helen Hunt and me on June 8, 2011.
John Hawkes and me on June 8, 2011.
My Cousin Susan and me before the party following the premiere of “The Surrogate” on January 23, 2012 at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.
Bob and I at our annual family Oyster Fest at Tomales Bay, October 2011.
Mark O’Brien wrote me this card after our last session.
Mark O’Brien sent me this Christmas card in 1998. He died on July 4, 1999 from post-polio syndrome.
My friend and confidant for nearly half a century, Marshasue Cohen in 2004.
9.
past perfect: mary ann
As far as I could tell, Mary Ann’s body was nearly perfect. She had long legs, a slim waist, and a stomach as flat as a baking sheet. Only her breasts, which were too big for her lithe frame, looked off and that was because they had been surgically enlarged. Jodie, Mary Ann’s therapist, had described her as a stunning woman with body image issues, and when she walked into my office for our first session in 1988 that first part was obvious.
Up to this time I had only seen a few women clients. Most heterosexual women who seek the services of surrogates are referred to males, since so much of the work is about modeling a healthy sexual partnership. Mary Ann’s difficulty in the bedroom sprung solely from a body image issue that her therapist believed I could help her address. As a surrogate, I looked forward to the challenge of working with a woman who struggled with an issue that affects so many of us. It would be a different dynamic and I would have to tailor the protocol to her needs, but I had a definite sense that I could help my new client.
When Jodie described Mary Ann to me, it seemed as though she were talking about a younger version of myself. Here was a woman who was both deeply insecure and profoundly uniformed about her body. I often thought about how much I would have benefited from the solid, nonjudgmental advice I hoped to share with Mary Ann.
At our first appointment, Mary Ann sat across from me on my office sofa. We chatted for a few moments before I brought up the concern that had brought her to see me.
“As you know, Jodie gave me some background on the issue that brings you here today. Can we start by talking a little about it?” I said.
“Okay,” Mary Ann said.
I paused for a few seconds to see if she would continue. When she didn’t I said, “Body image issues are very common, especially in women. I struggled with them for a long time.”
“I’m not sure if it’s a body image issue or if there is something really wrong with me.”
“I understand from Jodie that you’ve been examined by your doctor and he doesn’t see any abnormalities, so I think we can assume that this is a perception issue, rather than a medical one.”
“So, you think it’s normal.”
“Do I think what’s normal?”
“Having a vagina that’s uneven.”
I wasn’t surprised to hear that this was at the root of her struggles. I could only assume she’d never seen another woman’s labia. I did, however, want to understand why she assumed hers were abnormal. “Yes,” I started, “but what you’re talking about is not your vagina. It’s your labia, and many women’s are uneven.”
Much of my work with Mary Ann would center on education, starting with anatomy. I explained to her that the vagina is internal and can only be seen with a speculum. The vulva, which includes the clitoral hood, clitoris, vestibule, labia minora, and labia majora, is the external part of the female genitalia.
Mary Ann was worried because the left side of her inner labia was longer than the right—or at least that is what she believed. She had never actually looked closely at her vulva, but when she felt it she could discern an asymmetry.
I planned to walk Mary Ann through a couple of exercises and show her some educational materials, but first I wanted to understand why she was so troubled by what she perceived as an imperfection. What did it really mean to her that her vulva was not “perfect?”
When I asked her about this she said it made her feel like she was secretly ugly to her husband and that it ate into her self-esteem to be anything short of physically flawless. Mary Ann prided herself on maintaining a beautiful body. At thirty-eight she had never had children. Regular tennis matches and Jazzercise had toned her muscles and sculpted the delicate curves in her five-foot, eight-inch frame. She obviously pegged a lot of her self-worth on what she looked like and I hoped that our work together would help to change that.
Surrogacy work takes many forms. It always includes a mix of education, exploration, and sexual play, but the balance between them shifts according to the client and his or her needs. For Mary Ann, my task would be to help her better understand that bodies—including vulvas—come in all different shapes and sizes, and that she was not at all abnormal or freakish. I wanted her to see that she comfortably fit into the spectrum of body types and to change her belief about being far outside of what was normal. I also hoped that I could help her dispense with Madison Avenue–generated standards of perfection, but that was, strictly speaking, beyond the scope of our work together.
Joania Blank’s Femalia is a book that I often turn to in my work. It is a remarkable collection of color photographs that show the vulvas of thirty-two women. The differences between each one can be startling at first sight. Some of the models’ vulvas are pink; others are brownish. Some labia are long, some are short; some are even and
some are uneven.
I slid the volume off of my bookshelf and sat next to Mary Ann on the couch.
“Ready?” I asked.
I cracked it open and slowly we went through the thirty-two pictures.
“Wow,” Mary Ann said as we thumbed through the pages. She asked me to hold on before passing over one photo of a woman whose inner labia hung down beyond the outer lips in two lush crescents.
“I never thought they could be that long,” Mary Ann said.
We flipped through a few more photographs until we came to one that showed a woman with inner labia that hung about an inch longer on the right side than on the left.
“Is that normal—really?” Mary Ann asked.
“Absolutely. Lots of women have asymmetrical labia. It’s just one of the many natural variants of female genitalia,” I assured her.
“Really?”
“Really, and remember this is just a very small group of women. It doesn’t represent all of the variety that’s out there. It’s no more unusual than having one foot that’s slightly larger than the other. You probably wouldn’t feel bad if that were the case, right?”
Mary Ann paused and looked down.
“No, but I thought that maybe I had damaged my vagi—vulva by masturbating.”
“You haven’t. I can assure you of that. It’s just your unique shape and our goal is to help you become a little more comfortable with it.”
She touched the photo with her fingertip as if to reassure herself of what she was really seeing.
We paged through the rest of Femalia. Even though I had gone through it countless times I was moved, as I often am, by the beauty and diversity of women’s vulvas. For Mary Ann it was the first time she’d seen a nonclinical, real-life representation of female genitalia and it was as eye-opening for her as it is for most of us. I hoped she was beginning to question the standard of perfection that she had fixed in her mind and that the range of normal was widening for her.
As we looked at the last of the women profiled in Femalia, I asked Mary Ann if she wanted to take a second look at any of the photos. She asked to go back to the woman whose labia hung unevenly.
“I just can’t believe it. I wonder if mine is this uneven,” she said.
“We can find out,” I said.
I explained the mirror exercise. In this case, I suggested we both participate, and that each of us closely examine each body part, from head to toe, and share our thoughts and feelings. I would go first and then it would be Mary Ann’s turn.
This exercise is valuable for a number of reasons. It offers clients an opportunity to really examine and think about their bodies. For some, it marks the first time they have ever carefully looked at their whole body. So many of our ideas about our bodies come from unreliable sources. If we’ve been told that certain areas are bad or ugly or too big or too small, we can believe that without ever really looking to see if the physical reality aligns with our opinion. This exercise offers clients a chance to start formulating their own understanding of their bodies and to compare their beliefs to what they see in front of them. Each client gets something different from this exercise. I thought it would be particularly important for Mary Ann to try to take a dispassionate look at her body, especially after viewing the eye-opening photographs in Femalia.
I also hoped that seeing me and carefully looking at herself would help her to shake loose her rigid beliefs about physical perfection. Still, I made it clear that there was no pressure to feel a certain way about any areas of her body. Our goal here was to take an honest inventory, and there were no right or wrong observations.
Together we headed to the bedroom.
We got undressed and I guided Mary Ann through some relaxation exercises.
Then it was time for us to take a tour of our bodies.
I stood in front of the full-length mirror mounted on my closet door and asked Mary Ann if she was ready to start. I noticed that my legs were a little hairy and my breasts were swollen because I was in the third week of my cycle.
Mary Ann sat up in bed with her legs crossed.
“I haven’t seen a naked woman since I was in my high school locker room,” she said.
“We don’t see a lot of real-life nudity in this culture. It’s one reason we have such skewed ideas about what we’re supposed to look like,” I said.
Mary Ann smiled at my reflection in the mirror and I smiled back at her. I noticed the comma-shaped lines that formed around my mouth as I did.
“So, I’m going to start the exercise. As we discussed, I’ll begin at the top and work my way down,” I said.
I ran my fingers through my hair, which hung to just below my shoulders.
“I like my hair now. I didn’t when I was younger because my mother always told me it was too fine. It feels soft and I like the way it frames my face.”
I talked about my face. “I felt self-conscious about my forehead for a long time, again because of my mother. She always told me that it was too big and when I was young she cut my hair in bangs. As I got older I grew more comfortable with it and today I like my face, including my forehead. My skin shows a few more freckles as it’s aged, but all in all I like my complexion.”
Mary Ann squinted her eyes as if she were trying to get a better look.
“My neck is starting to sag a little, and I’m concerned about getting a waddle under my chin. I like that it is long and it looks pretty when I wear a V-neck shirt with a necklace.”
I stretched out my arms.
“I like my shoulders and arms more now that I have built up some muscle in them. I used to think my upper arms were too chubby.”
Mary Ann crossed her arms over her chest and squeezed her shoulders.
“My chest is okay. I don’t think about it much. I love my breasts.” For a moment I paused and thought about how Mary Ann’s breasts seemed so out of proportion with her body. The point here, however, was not to try to make the client feel anything—positive or negative. It’s simply an inventory, and so I forged on. “I think they are just the right size. The pink of the nipples reminds me of an inner part of a seashell. They were never perky and that used to bother me, but it doesn’t anymore.”
Next I moved on to my torso. “I don’t like that I am high-waisted. Ideally, I would like my stomach to be a little flatter, but it doesn’t really bother me that much.
“I think my vulva is beautiful, but I didn’t always—especially before I really looked at it. I love the plumpness of my labia. My lovers have told me that I have a pretty vulva and I believe them. It feels good to hear that. When I was growing up I thought my genitals were gross, partly because of how they smelled. I didn’t know how to clean under my clitoral hood and I didn’t know that women can get smegma, which is just a mixture of sweat and dead skin cells. It can be easily cleaned away. I had no idea about any of that back then. I just thought my genitals were disgusting.”
Mary Ann looked down between her legs, then at the reflection of my mons in the mirror.
“I like that my shoulders and hips are an equal width. I think it gives me a solid look. For a long time I thought my hips and butt were too wide. I wished I had fewer curves, but now I love the shape they give me.”
I suspected that Mary Ann thought I would be more critical of my body, and I hoped I was providing a contagious model of self-love, even though that wasn’t the main purpose of the exercise. With Mary Ann, as with all clients, my goal here is to model an honest appraisal of a body and to examine the many factors that contribute to our body image. Still, I had come to a point where I was at ease with my body, and I thought it would be nice if some of that rubbed off on the hypercritical Mary Ann. I was trying to integrate permission, that is, to let Mary Ann know that it was permissible to like and respect a body that is flawed.
“My legs are long and muscular and they have a nice shape. I like that my thighs are strong, but I don’t like how chubby my inner thighs are. I wish my calves were larger. They seem out of propo
rtion with my thighs. My ankles are narrow and I think that’s nice. I like the way they look when I’m wearing a skirt and high heels. I like the shape of my feet and how my toes are slightly bowed. Overall, I think I have an attractive, strong body and I am proud of it. If I were to change anything, I would lose a few pounds, but that may not happen because I hate to diet and I love to eat.”
Mary Ann and I smiled at each other. I sat on the bed next to her.
“Ready to try it?” I asked.
She nodded, got up from the bed, and stood in front of the mirror.
“Okay. When you’re ready, start with your hair and move your way down,” I said.
She took her long, black hair in her hands and said, “I am glad that I have naturally black, shiny hair. My husband likes it and so do I.”
She traced around her face with her fingertips.
“I think I have a great face now. I had my nose done, so it is smaller and I like that. I’ve been told in the past that I have nice, high cheekbones.”
Her nose looked like a perfectly inverted seven, a shape so artificial that it made me once again wonder about how the notion of perfect has become so divorced from reality.
An Intimate Life Page 12