The below is an advice column that Washington Post columnist Carolyn Hax wrote some months ago; but when she wrote it, it garnered some attention and became a hit. We with Moebius can certainly identify with what Ms. Hax is saying; because the pseudo-prejudicial comment that got her fired up is just the kind of thing we sometimes face. Read on:
*****************************
Dear Carolyn: My 13-year-old niece is tiny and has a big
nose. We live in a community where a lot of teenage girls have cosmetic
surgery at 16. I suggested to my brother in private that his daughter
may be a candidate for this procedure. (My 19-year-old stepdaughter and
my wife have had nose jobs.) My brother was deeply offended and angry
over my remark. We are not talking. Was I over the line in making this
suggestion in a private setting?
Answer: Of course you were, and you know you were. You just called your niece
so ugly she needs to be fixed, to her own father — and you presumed he
needed you to say so. Insulting and self-important.
You
sent a letter to me, too, so clearly you’re not some naif shaped solely
by the values of your little button-nosed pond; you swim to some extent
in the ocean of our culture. And while cosmetic surgery might be so
common in our ocean by now that its bolder recipients laugh about it
openly, it’s hardly the simple snip-and-go you make it out to be. There
are legitimate matters of safety, body- and self-image, cultural
identity and aesthetic value, just for starters, that are far from pat
or settled — and that’s just in the collective view of society. Apply
these matters to the life, confidence and physique of a barely pubescent
girl, and you were into outrageous-overstepping territory pretty much
when you opened your mouth.
All
of the above makes your excuse — that many of the fish in your pond are
surgically altered in youth — sound completely disingenuous, so you can
add insulted intelligence to your brother’s list of valid grievances
against you.
I’m saying all of this as someone who has no emotional ties to anyone involved and who fully supports the right of any adult to take control of his or her appearance, your wife and stepdaughter and the rest of Stepford included.
When
I mentally put people and faces I love into this equation, though, I
want to roar. People tend not to grow fully into their bodies until well
after age 16. A nose that looks disproportionately large on a teenager
can be Modigliani-stunning on a 26-year-old whose face has caught up.
And even when it doesn’t, the thought of some uncle privately advising a
dad about his beloved child of any age, “Uh . . . that whole face thing
isn’t goin’ so well, is it,” I need to bite down on a stick.
“In private,” by the way, just tells me you were fully aware this was touchy stuff.
So
take the above as a rough estimate of the repairs you’re facing with
your brother. I won’t defend his not speaking to you — all this should
be coming from him, not me — but I also wouldn’t expect him to bounce
right back if you merely toss off an “I’m sorry.”
This apology
has to show your brother that you get it now, that you should have
before, that your values need an overhaul and that you don’t expect him
to trust you until you prove you’re worthy of that. In other words,
apologize, make it good and try some scrutiny — of yourself and of the
moral dry rot in your community — while you wait.
*************************************
No comments:
Post a Comment