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I Changed My Mind About Post-Weight-Loss Plastic Surgery — And I’m So Glad I Did
The surgery would have actively harmed me, all for the pleasure of those who would look at me.
T he doctor had my empty skin in fistfuls, pulling my flesh together at the center of my body. The corset of his hands exaggerated my natural curves unnaturally, making me look wasp-waisted and wrong.
“Just look how pleasing she would be,” he remarked, surprising me with the third person. He was not addressing me, but looking past me in the mirror to meet the eyes of my then-boyfriend.
Pleasing. I remember that word specifically, can still hear it: a word shared between men. Although it was my body he was manhandling, his work was clearly not about me, personally. It was about what I broadcast — the experience of my body from an external perspective. It was about the object I could become.
After a lifetime of obesity — I was fat since I was 4 years old — I lost a significant amount of weight in my early twenties, which took two years and a total reinvention of my relationships with food and exercise. I worked…
