Let’s face it

Everyone has an awkward stage. Many grow out of it, while others continually reinvent themselves with knives and a plaster of cosmetics hoping to find themselves in the fog.

When I was younger, I wanted to be white – white as in "white men can’t jump" white. I constantly harassed my mom about why I wasn’t the love child of an Aryan loser instead. I hated looking so exotic, or at least that’s how my grandfather would call me amid my sea of blue-eyed playmates in kindergarten.

I once did a shoot when I was a kid just for kicks (or rather, my mother’s kicks) wearing jewels by Fe. S. Panlilio. There I was flanked by Bianca Araneta, already annoyingly gorgeous, and Bianca Zobel, who looked like a real live Barbie doll at eight. There I was the token Pinoy runt at nine feeling horribly misplaced and envious of my chiseled counterparts. I felt like an anthropoid next to these mini-goddesses. Early on, working with models as a gopher and later tah-dah for YStyle, I looked like Cinderella with no hope of a glass slipper in sight. I felt the crush of being not perfect more.

Young actress Lindsay Lohan, who ironically broke out of the Disney curse when her boobs became the size of Mickey’s ears, has for now said good-bye to her heaving bosom and a quick hello to bulimia and partying. Well, according to Vanity Fair at least, which will undoubtedly sell out unlike Lohan’s new album.

Let’s face it: we live in a very superficial world. It’s not just now. People have long been torturing their bodies to fit into the necessary look of that era. In the years of yore, women would crush their ribs and lose their breath while wearing corsets or endure rat farms on their heads just so they could wear the towering wigs which my personal fave character in history – the original Material Girl Marie Antoinette – was famous for.

Today, it’s not much different. It’s just veiled under a more politically correct environment, which makes it even more daunting.

The whole holiday season I was hooked on E! channel heaven. There’s nothing like zero-quality television. Anyway there’s this almost macabre show called Dr. 90210, a reality program about a plastic surgeon who has a predilection for flapping the extra skin he removes from gastric bypass patients around in the air and squeezing extra breast tissue like Play-Doh. It’s tasteless, horrific and absolutely absorbing.

It also shows how people always want to be someone else. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a nose or hip or even your entire sexuality that you’re escaping from. There is an option, and so long as it is there we will always know we can be someone else and hopefully better. I’m not slamming plastic surgery – it has saved the lives of many from gross disfigurement. However, like Viagra when taken recreationally, it can either be fun or plain woody.

A long time ago, I aspired to be a model, just like every clueless adolescent kid with dreams bigger than her training bra could fill. The one who appeared in shampoo ads and got the semi-cute boys. Of course, it was always just a longing: I had short hair, was not tisay and had a nose that resembled a cat’s paw. Well-meaning friends urged me to have it fixed. Thank heavens I was too chicken. There were two things that I never wanted to be in life: a lawyer (eight years of school, ek) and a doctor (more years in school and blood). So needless to say, the thought of butchering this paw on my face was not worth the ordeal.

One day I had a photo shoot and an art director – who again I’m sure meant well – elongated my nose. Whether it was a discreet nudge to have the paw chiseled or simply his itch for perfection, I ended up not looking like myself at all. Cuter but a stranger in my eyes. There’s something about the nose-lengthening, too – sort of a metaphor for Pinocchio.

That made me realize that I was really happy with myself. Definitely not perfect Carmen Electra-hot, but okay. Sometimes cowardice can ultimately lead to the road of courageousness. Sure, I was weight-conscious for a good part of my academic and post-academic life. Eating Froot Loops one day and celery sticks the next. I was obsessed with the paw, and now I don’t really mind it so much. I figured, if I can’t look like Bianca Araneta or Bianca Zobel, I’ll blind them all with fight clothes. It worked for the Duchess of Windsor, a conniving commoner like the rest of us. Kidding.

Anyway, it’s human nature never to be content with anything. At one photo shoot, a model who looked as perfect as a Hollywood starlet, complained of being fat, pinching an inch on her belly. I didn’t know what to do, so I pinched mine, too, semi-relieved that I was able to extract more than hers. She was genuinely happy that I was a few millimeters bigger than her. I really don’t mind this kind of Schadenfreude if it means making my job easier. This is how we cope in the shallow world and bond as crazy women. When my girls feel insecure, I point out the paw on my face and instantly it makes them feel better. There is nothing harder than working with neurotic models.

I don’t have the face that will launch a thousand ships, nor the face that will launch a thousand knives. I’m just finally happy, paw and all. I know there is no chance in this world that I’ll be as hot as the chicks I work with, but even these creatures of perfection often find fault in themselves. I say that’s already a clinical matter.

Coming to terms with your own skin is like winning a pageant. The most beautiful women I know already know they are beautiful, yet don’t dwell on it. We’ll always find something to pick; it’s either you do something about it or live life feeling like Grace Kelly. Everyone is beautiful, and I’m not being Richard Simmons here. But it’s all about finding yourself in the bigger sense and not looking for answers in an inch of pinched skin on your belly. The answer can be found early in the morning when your eyes are crusted with eye boogers. It’s like the thought police – know what you are and the whole world will think so, too. Ah, thought manipulation! Now, that’s reconstructive surgery.