Essay » My Orange County

By Victoria Patterson / Illustration by Megan Berkheiser and Mike Caldwell

 

At 15, I visited a plastic surgeon for the first and last time. My right breast was slightly larger than my left, and I’d become convinced that this was a deformity. It was 1985. My anxiety started in junior high school, my first year of living in Newport Beach, when my friend Tiffany evaluated our breasts. There were five of us in her bedroom, topless and braless, when she got out the tape measure. Too small; too big; nipples too dark; nipples too light; right breast two centimeters larger than left (mine).

I remember riding the bus to school that same year, sitting next to my friend“Heather,” whose jaw had been broken and reset. I can still see her beside me, a little hunched over, resigned, maybe even defeated. Her jaw is sewn shut with silver wire, and she is sipping some kind of breakfast shake through a straw.

Heather’s surgery was performed at the behest of her mother to “correct her smile.” I’d liked Heather’s original smile: She had large teeth, and there was a goofy quality about it. (Heather’s mother and mine had been sorority sisters at USC. Her father committed suicide our sophomore year of high school by jumping off a cliff into the rocky ocean; there had been financial problems.) 

The next year, in eighth grade, in a futile attempt to improve my appearance, I got a bad perm. As if that wasn’t horrific enough, it was documented in the school yearbook: In a classroom of students, mine was the only face turned to the camera, startled, a mass of kinky hair, a glimmer of metal from the hardware of my braces. The caption: “What planet did you say you were from?”

There was a fair amount of plastic surgery at my high school. Breast and nose jobs were favored. Many of my friends had eating disorders, although there were varying degrees of secrecy. Some were outright bold in their anorexia. Others merely obsessed with calories and exercise. My friend “Jennifer” allowed herself the pleasure of chewing food, but spat it out without swallowing. “Gina” ate one large Granny Smith apple a day. She sat under a tree at lunchtime eating slowly, making it last. A nibble here, a nibble there, like a rabbit.

Newport Beach was not the place for cultivating self-awareness. Everything had to look good. Gardeners and city workers seemed always to be pruning trees, raking leaves, trimming lawns. Within a short time, I had become angst-ridden and self-obsessed—worrying about how the cellulite magically appeared on my thighs when I wore shorts or a miniskirt and sat in a chair. I wanted to be worthy of love, and physical perfection also meant the possibility of belonging. Perhaps then everything would make sense.

My mother took me out of school early on a cloudless afternoon for my appointment with the plastic surgeon. Since my stepfather was a doctor, there was a professional courtesy rule, which meant our initial visit was on the house. My mother often was unable to alleviate my irrational fears, so she took the professional courtesy rule for all it was worth. (About six months earlier, I’d seen a gastroenterologist because I’d been convinced, after obsessively scrutinizing my urine and bowel movements, that I was dying.)

My mother was told to stay in the waiting room. As I sat on the examination table in a paper gown, waiting for the plastic surgeon, I cried a little. 

The doctor was solemn and respectful, and I had the sense that he was sad as I stood before him, unclothed from the waist up. A brief, possibly minute-long examination ensued, whereby he gently touched my breasts, and I realized that much of the problem was that I did not know what to make of them, as if they were someone else’s. He waited until I was dressed before he gave me his professional assessment. 

He’d seen much, much worse, he told me. And then he took me to his office.

Why are you really here? he asked. My answer was long and convoluted, full of despair, and he listened patiently until I was done. Then he showed me photographs of actual deformities and the violent reality of a major surgical procedure. He made sure that I understood that there was a difference between vanity and necessity. He also told me he met far too many young women like me, and that it was unethical to perform surgery on teenagers who were still developing—although many of his colleagues did not agree. 

The experience taught me that an obsession with appearance can be unhealthy and limiting, though it was years before I could accept and appreciate my body. For those like me, who don’t think they measure up, there’s a fear of being disposable, and an endless void of improvements and dissatisfactions. Self-awareness, humility, and reflection are more important. And besides, the larger mysteries and possibilities exist beneath and beyond surface beauty, just as what exists beneath and beyond Newport Beach’s shimmering exterior is—for me—what makes it a fascinating and complicated city.

By the time the doctor and I said our goodbyes, we were both smiling sadly, and we hugged like friends who had been through something together. We had  reached an unstated agreement: The help I needed was probably as large, complicated, and indefinable as my fears. We had no idea what that resolution might look like, but we were convinced it did not require his services.

Victoria Patterson is the author of the short-story collection “Drift” (Mariner Books, 2009).