Scarred

            Aside from the philosophies of starting anew, what everyone alike looks forward to about graduating is the graduation gift: a new car, a cruise through the Western Caribbean, a laptop for college, your late grandmother’s inheritance. Through the generations it has become tradition for parents to reward their kids with an extravagant gift for their hard work. But extravagant gift giving has exposed a new phenomena: plastic surgery.   

            Every summer students, especially female, go into hibernation — boob job, nose job, tummy tuck, butt lift, knee lift, eye lift, lip injections, Botox — hiding their bandaged and bruised features hoping to reveal their new, sexy look by the time their college classes begin.

            As embarrassing as it is to admit, I am one of these women. In my younger years, it was not unusual for classmates to throw bread at me. In my older years, it was not unusual to be mistaken for Jewish or Italian. After graduation and months of persuading my parents, I finally decided to do the only thing I felt reasonable at 18: I got a nose job.

            Pre-nose job was unproblematic. I went to my surgeon for only two or three visits before it was time to cut me open. And with only a few embellishments from my surgeon, insurance paid for half. What’s a little white lie when eternal physical beauty is on the line?

            I was comfortably unconscious while they broke my nose, re-aligned it and chiseled away bone and cartilage that was once my “Jew hump,” slowly revealing the sweet, non-offensive slope-nose that would soon be mine. When I woke up, I felt like I had been hit in the face with a baseball bat. I also looked like a person who had just been hit in the face with a baseball bat. I spent the next two weeks in a Soma coma soaking up bad television through osmosis and buying every single useless contraption on daytime infomercials. Forget your daily housekeeping with these state-of-the-art feline duster slippers! Only $9.95! But the day I had been waiting for would soon arrive: the day where they would remove my cast and reveal my new look.

            Days of sticking gauze up my nose to stop the bleeding or toothpicks to stop the uncontrollable itching were over. Sitting there in the doctor’s office, the anticipation was building. What if they butchered me? My mind races of having to keep my nose in a small shoebox on my bedside table and creating little nose wardrobes for special occasions — the more prominent, hook nose for business meetings and the lifted, pinched nose for high tea. “Billy Jean” is my soundtrack.

            Then, the moment of truth. With just a few adjustments the cast came off painlessly and I was able to see my new face for the first time.

            According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, 178,041 patients 18 years old and younger underwent rhinoplasty in 2007, with nearly 92 percent being young girls. But does that mean it’s OK? It’s been almost four years since my experience and there’s something very important that I learned from it. We need to support girls in learning and earning the real goods in life: self-respect, sisterhood, being self-sufficient, living a passion-filled life, having healthy relationships, having their voices heard and true self-acceptance.

            But my nose is awfully cute.

Tags: graduation, nose job, rhinoplasty, scar