Body image from Hell

One of the realities of writing a regular blog is that you wind up writing about yourself.

I mean, you really write about yourself.

Take me, for example. My "hobby" is diet and exercise. But the meaning of that topic has evolved for me over the years.
When I was in my teens, twenties, and thirties...hell, even into my forties--my only concern was weight control. All I saw was the number on the scale. If I weighed below 150, that was good (I'm almost 5 foot six); above 160, that was disaster.

Fast forward to the golden milestone of 50, and everything changed.
For once, the scale was not my enemy. Thanks to some alchemy of habit, discipline and possibly pharmaceutical intervention, my weight is under control.

My body is not.

Loose flesh, cellulite run wild, a waistline that curves in only when constrained by a breath-stealing waist-cincher--this is my current reality.

What the hell happened? This is not the way it was supposed to be.

This is the way it was for years: You lose weight, you're happy. You gain, you're unhappy--that's the mantra of the teen-to-forty-somethings.

Come fifty, and all of a sudden, everything changes.

Take your underarms, for example. When did they start waving independently of your hands and lower arms? Oh, the shame of it all.

Then there's cottage-cheese upper thighs. Let's not even talk about that.

In the midst of all this middle-aged decay, there are glimpses of hope.

My breasts, for example, Currently, my boobs are like the eighth wonder of the world. I used to be a size 38DDD. Thanks to the intervention of a talented Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. who removed two pounds of fat and rearranged the support structure. for once in my life I can actually go braless. I haven't gone braless since I hit puberty. That's my one body-joy in life. I also got an eye-lift and some fat grafts--which means they extract some fat from your stomach and inject it into those marionette lines around your nose and lips. That one procedure was responsible for erasing at least five years from the mirror's reflection.

But there are so many areas left to address. Underarms, stomach, upper thighs--I have enough body zones in distress to keep a plastic sugeon busy until retirement. By the time all those are done, I'm sure I'll be ready for a facelift.

Is this a byproduct of the fact that I live in LA? America, please give me your feedback. Are you okay living with body areas that are far less than subpar?

My denouement came recently, when a down-on-her-luck homeless woman started haunting a particular corner in my Southern California seaside village. Okay, overall, she looked terrible. But her arms were way tighter than mine. (Of course, she might have been twenty years younger than me, but only looked sixty).

But the arm thing pissed me off. Where was the justice in that? What did I do to deserve a body from hell?
Is it just me? Does anyone else suffer from middle-age body blues? Aargh!

Any input would be most appreciated.

The many faces—and other reworked body parts—of La La Land

Today I’d like to talk about plastic surgery.

This topic’s on my mind these days because I’m in full-tilt writing mode on the third book in the Fat City Mysteries. It has a brand new working title, MAKEOVERS CAN BE MURDER, and a plot that involves plastic surgery, murder, and mayhem.

Full disclosure: I know something about the subject area, because I’ve had a bit of “work” done along the plastic surgery lines; it’s a topic that simply fascinates me. Living in LaLa land, aka Los Angeles, I can’t turn a newspaper page or walk down a local street without bumping into reminders that my city is the capital of the Land of Plastic. Yesterday, I discovered that there’s a Botox room in my gym. In my gym! (Which is fine, actually. At least I won’t have to drive to Beverly Hills from now on to get rid of my crow’s feet.)

Many, many of my friends (and I) are familiar with some of the following procedures:

Wrinkle fillers, both artificial and natural (The natural one is fat injections. They extract your own fat from your stomach, or from wherever you can spare any, I guess. Then they inject it into your “marionette lines”. You know, that pair of annoying lines that run from your nose to your lips. And from your lips to your chin.).

Wrinkle removers (Botox. Man, that stuff works. But don’t get started on it unless you’re prepared to develop a mondo expensive habit).

Arm “lifts” to remedy underarms that keep waving when you stop (I haven’t had that one. Yet).

Breast implants (That procedure is done in droves here. Or should I say, in pairs).

Breast reductions (The grass is always greener on the other side).

Eye lifts (It’s probably the quickest way to take off five to ten years, especially when combined with Botox and wrinkle fillers).

The Tinseltown pressure to be "perfect" leads women around here to get a tad carried away. Especially when it comes to boob-and-lip plumping. Lipwise, I guess they're trying to look like Angelina Jolie, but they let their dermatologist go way overboard with the collagen needle, and they wind up with the lips of Clara the Clown. There's a special "lip look" that you get used to around LA, especially Malibu and Beverly Hills--these womens' lips seem to have been pumped up with a tire hose. And the lips always seem to come with a matching pair of hyperinflated breasts. Some docs must run a four-for-one special, like tire specials.

I also know a little about the ultimate plastic surgery procedure that’s available for those of us who have lost an extreme amount of weight. Called a “full body lift,” it involves cutting a circle around your body, roughly in the hip area. The surgeon pulls the loose skin from the upper part of your body down, and he pulls the loose skin from the bottom of your body up; then he removes everything between the two ends, and sews you back together. There are only a few surgeons who specialize in full body lifts, for understandable reasons. It’s beyond extreme. (Not that I haven’t considered it. But I’m way too chicken).

I’ll never become a full-blown plastic surgery junkie, because it takes way too long to save up for a procedure. But I kind of understand people who do. You get some work done on one part, which only serves to draw your attention to the other parts that are starting to sag and bag. Then you think, Well, just one more, then I’m done…

Of course, a major disincentive to cosmetic surgery is all the horror stories about surgery-gone-bad. And of course, any surgery has risks, which is why most people (the ones who don’t live around here, anyway) carefully consider the consequences before leaping under the knife.

There will be more than a few horror stories in MAKEOVERS CAN BE MURDER. But I’ll save those for the book…

What about you? How to you feel about plastic surgery? Anyone care to share? Can we let our hair down here?

Mirror, mirror...

It’s official. I’ve finished the second draft of A KILLER WORKOUT, which frees me up to start working on the next book in the Fat City Mysteries. The working title is FINAL CUT.

The mystery of FINAL CUT will involve plastic surgery (and murder, natch).

So I’ve already started researching the world of cosmetic procedures. I should also mention that, as a card-carrying resident of LA LA Land, I have already had “a bit of” cosmetic work done. Several bits of work, in fact.

All of which should prepare me to better understand some things I’m learning about life under the beauty knife:

According to the Consumer Guide to Plastic Surgery ™, the top ten plastic surgery operations in 2006 (for women) were:
Breast Enhancement
Nose job
Liposuction
Eyelid surgery
Tummy tuck

For men, nose reshaping was number one, hair transplants were in the top three, and breast reductions in the top five.

Women had 9.9 million cosmetic procedures in 2006, a number that jumped 55 per cent from the year 2000 to 2006. We spent more than two billion dollars on Botox treatments. Two billion!

Those numbers don’t really surprise me. In Los Angeles, we practically have a botox spa on every corner.

It’s a fascinating world to explore for the new book—our obsession with youth, plus our willingness to pay big bucks and risk multiple operations to hang onto it.

How about you? Are you okay with the idea of having cosmetic surgery? Against it? Myself, I was always against it.

Until the day I saw the first crow’s feet in the mirror.


Breaking news!

Join us for a fun panel, "Sassy Sleuths," on Saturday, January 19, 3 - 5 PM

Vroman’s Bookstore 695 E. Colorado Blvd.Pasadena, CA 91101

Featuring: Sisters in Crime/Los Angeles Author Members with Patricia Smiley, Harley Jane Kozak, Sue Ann Jaffarian, Kathryn Lilley; Moderator G.B. Pool.