I feel ugly lately.
I gained about fifteen pounds over the last year and I’m getting old. The skin on my face is blotchy and features wrinkles under my eyes for the first time. This is what I considered taking out a loan to do last week:
1. Tummy tuck. (About $6,000.)
2. Then – no – tummy tuck with major lipsuction on the lower half of my body, and a boob lift/reduction, too. Screw it. $10K.
3. Hair cut and radical new hair coloring – $150.
4. Get rid of these gosh danged no-longer-trendy glasses and get some freaking contacts, which will cost me $300 instead of $100 because I have freaking astigmatism in addition to my mild near-sightedness, which makes people look through my glasses and say, “Aw, you don’t even need glasses,” but yeah, I do, because I see all blurry without them and I’m starting to see even worse. But I hate to stick things in my eye. Okay – laser surgery. $1600.
5. Get rid of these two goddamned moles I have. I mean, I have a million freaky moles on my body that I would love to get rid of, but right now I especially hate these two on my chin. My witch moles, I used to call them, before I had them removed in the mid-late ’90s. I had them sliced off and they bled like crazy, but they were gone. Since then, they’ve grown back as well as they could, which was not too well, actually. They look like big beige bumps, one with a little mole-brown dot in the middle of it. When I have photographs taken – oh, let’s say… photographs for the back cover of the first book I’m ever gonna have published and therefore one of the most important things in my whole life – the bigger, beiger mole lump comes out looking just like a huge pimple, always magically in perfect cross-section right on the line of my profile, no matter which way my face is turned. And, yes, I can remove it with Photoshop, but I still have to look at it in the mirror every single day as I imagine going to readings at Barnes & Noble and having anyone who showed up leave in a huff when they discover that the picture of me on the little sign had a big beige leftover mole lump Photoshopped off of it. “That’s not very fucking genuine of you, Gwen,” they’ll say as they line up to return all the copies of my book that they bought. (Maybe 6 total.) I’m figuring that to remove those two moles – no, let’s say three. The three worst moles on my body. I’m not even going to tell you about the third one unless we get engaged or something. To remove those three flesh barnacles that suck at my soul, I’m gonna estimate about $400. (I’m not seeing my job’s health insurance covering it.)
6. Also, I would like to have my teeth whitened. $1500.
7. Three pairs of new shoes at $65 each, plus a whole new freaking wardrobe so I don’t have to wear the same eight outfits to work for the rest of my life, not counting the fact that the outfits dwindle as I magically grow out of them. Also, I’m sure I’ll need extra shoes to go with the new clothes, especially if I buy the suits I need in order to be taken seriously and given a promotion/raise. So let’s say $1800 total. I’ll be conservative and only buy things on sale.
8. Also, I need to have my nails done again. $25 for hands and feet.
So that comes out to be about $97 billion dollars, right? Yeah.
After two nights of soul-searching, I decided to get my hair cut in a couple of weeks, when my boyfriend comes back home for the weekend. The rest will have to wait until I get rich. In the meantime, I’m going to go back on the Atkins diet and do some freelance.
God, it’s so lame to be a woman sometimes. I don’t care if other people think I’m ugly, but I don’t like looking ugly to myself. I deserve better, damn it – the best that money can buy.
