Plastic Parts

In response to a writing prompt I was given in the sixth grade, I wrote an impassioned letter to Pantene. I was irate the company had yet to create a product line for curly haired girls! After we turned in our assignments my teacher made the decision to read random essays aloud. Although it was meant to be anonymous, the minute my letter began to be read all eyes turned on me and the class erupted into fits of laughter. I was mortified. To this day I wonder what prompted me to write something so seemingly vacuous. Even at 12, I pondered everything from Miranda rights to chauvinism. I could have written about a myriad of substantive topics. Why hadn't I chosen one of them? Why hand't I decided on my soapbox about having to kneel each week at school next to a ruler to gauge the appropriateness of my skirt length? I was a progressive girl! After all, I wore three bands on my left ring finger representing my marriages to Tom Cruise (yikes), Brad Pitt (yum), and Freddie Prinze Junior (yawn). Even amongst the depth of my passion, thoughts, and fictitious marriages to celebrity men, I knew on some level that progressive girls didn't write letters to Pantene…

Did they?

Either way, from an early age I was furious with the beauty industry's inability to meet my demands, yet somehow still hoped they would someday deliver…

A few years later, I overhead a commercial playing in the background with the catchphrase that "straight was boring." I knew immediately it was a beauty commercial as the narrator spoke in a fake and somewhat salacious british accident. I rushed into the room hoping to discover Pantene had finally heard my demands and had pronounced curly hair as the new standard of a beauty! I deflated instantly when I realized it was an add for mascara, campaigning for the curl of lashes. I took mental note and added it to my cognitive catalogue of what was meant to be straight, what was meant to curve, what was meant to be large, and what was meant to be small. I was constantly confused. Bigger was meant to be better right? However it seemed to me every surface area of your body was meant to live in perfect contradiction. You were meant to have a small forehead, but big eyes. A small nose, but big lips. Supple cheeks, but an angular jaw. A delicate collar bone, but giant breasts. A tiny waist, but substantial hips. A buxom buttocks, but gapped thighs. Long legs, but delicate ankles and feet. A natural face, but two coats of mascara. Sunkissed hair, but peroxide laden strands. I didn't know which impossible dichotomy I was meant to tackle first… I didn't know what parts of me were meant to be real and what should be fashioned fake…The architecture of artificial comes with a virtually illegible blueprint…What was I to do… I wished Pantene would tell me…

This summer when I discovered I would have to have a partially artificial eye, I was ill. Somewhere in the archives of my 12 year old beauty catalogue, I determined fake eyes were wrong. Eyelashes could be fake, eyelids could be lifted, contacts could be colored, liner could be tattooed, eyebrows could be shaped and dyed, but eyes must be real. Prosthetic, is one of those words you automatically bristle at. There is a reason the beauty industry never markets any of its illusive nothingness with the use of this dirty word. Breast implants are not sold as prosthetic boobs, rhinoplasty (which I personally think is a heinous word) is not pedaled as a prosthetic schnoz…"Prosthetic" denotes something you should try not to look at, something that is the result of a tragedy, something that belongs in the costume bin of a community theatre. The beauty industry demands you never avert your eyes.

After two months of having a blank, white, eyeball, I went to meet with the ocularist in order for him to craft and fit my prosthesis (or as some like to call it "cosmetic shell".) I had feared this day for almost a decade. When I arrived, I was somewhat soothed by the scent of his office as it smelled spookily similar to a nail salon…(I later found out that this was because my eye would be made out of the same acrylic that had graced my nails for years.) Stereotypically, ocularists are somewhat peculiar people. In fact they are virtually the last existing profession practicing true craftsmanship. To this day the only way to become an ocularist is through apprenticeship. All other trades requiring true apprenticeship, such as being a blacksmith or cobbler have been eradicated through the advent of new technology. There are no photoshop applications, instagram filters, or 3D printers that can match the human eye as well as the meticulous craft of painting it through delicate human touch. To start the process the ocularist photographed my eye and carefully followed my gaze. He informed me he hadn't ever in his 25 year career seen color or detail quite like mine. When he showed me the photograph of my iris I was stunned. It was indeed specific, ornate and magnificent. Pantene never would be able to reproduce it!

When I returned for my second appointment, the ocularist told me it had required almost 75 layers of color and triple the paint time to master my eye. He then went on to describe personalty characteristics he noticed in me. I marveled at how spot on he was at describing me merely from spending a few short minutes with me and studying the intricacies of my iris. Forget snowflakes, if you really want to know who you are and where you come from, study your eyes… Strangely at the conclusion of the process I felt profoundly beautiful in ways that felt foreign and surprising. I no longer needed a mass produced blue print or catalogue of dichotomies.

 In my face now sits an exquisite piece of artwork designed to match a one of a kind masterpiece. I never would have imagined the thing I feared would be most alienating would provide me with a quiet but powerful self assurance. As I reflect on the heated letter I wrote to Pantene all those years ago, I realize I was in fact progressive. I see that both my acknowledgement of the beauty industry's pervasive presence at the time and foresight concerning its now rampant reign were actually wise. I didn't direct my questions to an audience that was able to give me adequate answers, but I was asking the right questions. As I have now found perfect answers in my imperfect face, I am ready to write new letters and ask far more important questions. Women have the option to perpetually participate in a dialogue of false dichotomies or they have the power to create and contribute to a conversation of change.