{"id":2407,"date":"2010-12-29T09:52:09","date_gmt":"2010-12-29T14:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/?p=2407"},"modified":"2010-12-29T09:52:09","modified_gmt":"2010-12-29T14:52:09","slug":"vanity-thy-name-is-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/vanity-thy-name-is-hope\/","title":{"rendered":"Vanity, Thy Name is Hope"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\">This year, I gave myself a <em>very<\/em> nice Christmas present. Plastic Surgery.<\/p>\n<p>No, I didn&#8217;t get my boobs pumped up, my tummy tucked or my nose sliced off Michael Jackson-style. (Too soon?) I paid a plastic surgeon to slice three moles off of my face. I&#8217;ve hated them for years, wanted to do something about it, but could never quite bring myself to do it. After going through a year&#8217;s worth of photos while making our Christmas card, I decided it was about damn time. I didn&#8217;t want to look at them anymore.<\/p>\n<p>I had a few worries going into this. Namely:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Scalpel. Face. Ow.<\/li>\n<li>Scars. Face. Ew.<\/li>\n<li>Moles sometimes grow back.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I decided that the rewards outweighed the risks, so I went ahead and booked a consultation with a surgeon. Because I am a child of impulse, after meeting with him I booked the surgery for a week later. He did a fantastic job, I healed up nicely and now you almost can&#8217;t tell that I had moles in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>Behold!<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 375px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a title=\"IMG_0005 by hopers, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/hopers\/5303471682\/\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm6.static.flickr.com\/5165\/5303471682_0307355f1e.jpg?resize=375%2C500\" alt=\"IMG_0005\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Holy moley.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure style=\"width: 375px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a title=\"IMG_0009 by hopers, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/hopers\/5302880263\/\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm6.static.flickr.com\/5208\/5302880263_59f0b52fb1.jpg?resize=375%2C500\" alt=\"IMG_0009\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">All bandaged up.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure style=\"width: 375px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a title=\"IMG_0026 by hopers, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/hopers\/5302900673\/\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm6.static.flickr.com\/5284\/5302900673_1548113c17.jpg?resize=375%2C500\" alt=\"IMG_0026\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">All healed up.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I&#8217;m not going to lie, getting parts of your face cut out with a scalpel hurts like a bitch. They used a numbing gel and then they shot me up with something like Novocaine. It still wasn&#8217;t exactly <em>pleasant<\/em>. And the whole week after, while I was healing, it alternated between itching and hurting. I also was supposed to keep my face as relaxed as possible, to avoid pulling on the stitches. This is not an easy feat when a) You watch a tense\/exciting Patriots game that night and 2) You&#8217;re never <em>ever<\/em> relaxed.<\/p>\n<p>The surgeon told me to pull my cheeks up with my hands if I found myself laughing to hard. &#8220;People will think you&#8217;re a little weird,&#8221; he said, &#8220;but it will really help.&#8221; Not to worry!<\/p>\n<p>People already think I&#8217;m weird.<\/p>\n<p>I guess I did something right, though, because I healed up almost perfectly. The scars are barely visible and they&#8217;re only going to fade with time. At some point, I&#8217;ll post some Christmas pictures where I&#8217;m wearing makeup and you&#8217;ll see that they&#8217;re downright invisible.<\/p>\n<p>At first I felt funny about paying for plastic surgery, but after seeing the results I&#8217;m really glad I did it. I figured I could spend the rest of my life attempting to convince myself that my moles weren&#8217;t so bad, or I could do something about them. I feel better about myself. Most people haven&#8217;t even noticed that I changed anything (or they&#8217;re all just too polite to say something), but <em>I<\/em> know. No more using the healing clone tool when touching up photos in Photoshop. No more turning my head <em>just so<\/em> to minimize how much they show up in photos. No more looking through pictures of myself and feeling bad.<\/p>\n<p>I knew I was slightly irrational about my moles, but this was the easy way out. And I <em>do<\/em> look better now. My face looks cleaner, smoother. And I feel good.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s what&#8217;s important, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This year, I gave myself a very nice Christmas present. Plastic Surgery. No, I didn&#8217;t get my boobs pumped up, my tummy tucked or my nose sliced off Michael Jackson-style.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photos","category-random"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5yggS-CP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2407"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2417,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2407\/revisions\/2417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}