God Loves Your Fat Ass

Saw my first-ever episode of Dr. 90210 last night. And I quite literally haven’t been able to eat anything since. A sad-eyed young lady was having her second round of liposuction in as many years. (Also, the astonishingly douchey Dr. Rey and his half-wit wife extensively mourned their dead yappy-dog, complete with embalming, tiny pink coffin, and endless graveside eulogies-in-verse.) I taste bile just typing this. Jewish bio-medical ethics has had some interesting stuff to say about cosmetic surgery (which is ethically separate from reconstructive surgery, btw), but not always the most satisfactory stuff. For instance, traditional interpretation has often held men and women to a double standard on the practice of elective self-mutilation-for-imaginary-social-acceptance, saying that it’s a no-no for men (too “girly” a pursuit!) but that if a woman is really sad and ugly and single, we shouldn’t stop her from doing what she has to do to be “happy” (aka find some loser to marry her). Ever watched lipo? It’s the most violent, horrific, sickening spectacle ever. Pure barbarism. It’s hard to imagine the logic of rabbinic thought that considers tattooing and piercing disrespectful to the human body but wants to justify cosmetic surgery as “harmless”. This is a serious issue for American Jews, who, as the originators of the sweet-sixteen-major-surgical-facial-reconstruction rite-of-passage, have done a lot to normalize this sick shit in the last century. I’m off to try and keep down a bit of broth and some dry toast.