Dysmorphia

[kimberlysteele]

When I was 15 years old, I was both fascinated and repulsed whenever I looked at myself in the mirror.  At least in my own case, my first love/hate relationship was with myself.  I felt all alone in my predicament, despite evidence all around me that every teenager was going through something passably similar.  I suffered profound dysmorphia that took a very long time to get over.  To put it unkindly, I was extremely vain.

Misspent Youths

I put a great deal of the blame for my dysmorphia on the trends of the current era, which are designed to terrorize teenagers over the prospect of becoming biological parents during the exact age evolution made them to become biological parents.  The fear campaign worked so well on me that I never became a parent, choosing sterilization at age 33 and finally being able to relax after 21 years of being terrified of becoming pregnant.  Parenthood forces any given human being out of his or her vain stage, thrusting him or her into caring for the new being and ostensibly leaving precious little time for long sojourns in front of a mirror.

Instead of responsible, childless young adults, this culture has created a huge class of eternal children who pout and preen in front of digital mirrors dubbed "social media".  These preeners and pouters often have one or more children staring up at them from the background, wondering why mommy is so obsessed with her phone.  

Vanity Pays

Get enough onlookers or desperate, wanking SIMPs online and you can make a killing.  The old kind of celebrity involved prostrating and degrading oneself on the casting couch.  It was par for the course that you would have to ape a form of affection for a creepy, potentially genitally-disfigured mess of a man or a woman in order to gather a new Academy Award or Grammy.  In short, one way or another, they would get you to sink low enough to sell your soul.  Nowadays, it isn't about sexual favors handed out to the rapaciously greedy and deformed, but more about staying young and pretty forever, as if that were possible.  The debasement du jour is the kind where you submit your face to the clinician's needle and your body to the surgeon's cannula in order to keep influencer cash flowing and sponsorships on the hook.

Is it any wonder that people (especially the young) are dysmorphic, fascinated and repulsed by their own appearances and determined to "improve" the way they look at any price?  

A Supermodel I Ain't

Even when I was at Peak Kim beauty (sounds like a Korean hair salon that specializes in toxic chemical hair straightening and weaves) there were bits of me that were all wrong.   My ugly lower jaw, even after being surgically reduced via sagittal osteotomy at age 17, was and always has been overlarge and crooked.  My left eye is larger than my right eye.  My nose is generous, to use a euphemism.  My knees ripple with fat.  I was a hell of a lot thinner at age 21, and I'm not huge now, but no matter how much weight I lost, I was never thin enough to measure up to the 90s gamine standard, plus I was always too short to be willowy.

No matter how pretty I looked or how much random attention I got by walking down the street, there was always someone better, thinner, prettier, and more well-monied, and it drove me a little bit crazy.  I had limited ability to be happy with my body and face as they were and even less ability to be grateful for their reliability and function.

Nobody's Perfect

Even the most gorgeous of human beings have horrendous flaws, and I'm not just talking about questions of character.  The actress who seems to be on top of the world could look really funny upon taking her shirt off, or perhaps she has a ravaging auto-immune disease such as lupus or diabetes.  The singer who just won another accolade may have been born with a cleft palate and a deviated septum.  Or perhaps whoever it is could have a nasty recessive gene that they are spared yet pass to their kid, which in its way is much worse if you love your kids.  We humans are not gods and we aren't meant to look like Aphrodite and Apollo; at least not for very long.  

Beauty is ephemeral: like the blooming rose, it is a lovely, brief moment that needs to be gracefully let go after it fades and turns into a rosehip. When I see kids going through the same dysmorphia I did on a harder, more intense level, it pains me.  Vanity is not a road that leads to a good place.  Every plastic surgery addict ends up looking eerily homogenous.  The puffy cheeks, the wishbone nose, the eerie smoothness under the eyes, and the duck lips look as if they came from an online catalogue of horrors.  At best, the surgeon's help can result in someone who looks pretty damn good for their age until that inevitable day they hit a brick wall.  The brick wall occurs between the ages of 60-80, when they cease to look good for their age and take on the demeanor of a decrepit impersonator of youth wearing a hideous mask.  

To look genuinely old is much more beautiful.  I don't see "wrinkles" so much as I see the folds in the bark of a magnificent tree trunk.  Wear your past proudly: you have earned those stripes.  I may be alone, but I see your grandeur and I rest underneath your great canopy.  Why any big tree would chop itself down in order to sprout clumsily from its own trunk to appear to be a sapling again I will never understand.  

Comments

[methylethyl]

We do live in a culture that's fairly obsessed with personal traits we don't get to choose (looks, intelligence, inborn talent) which results in... well, we have entire industries devoted to cosmetic surgery and dental work for a reason.

I'm struggling with this, for my kids. I want them to care about the other stuff: personal integrity, virtue, wisdom, work. What's more valuable, something you're naturally good at, or something you've worked really hard to be good at? What do we value more-- someone who's pretty, or someone who's reliable? Do we want friends who are charming or friends who are brave? Do we gravitate toward friends with cool toys or friends who are loyal?

And yet, here we are staring down the barrel of a classic American obsession: orthodontics. Do we have to? Is it necessary? How much? Does it matter that I don't care what their teeth look like, when we live in a country where they'll be constantly judged by it because it's a nearly universal class marker? Do I get to use my kids to protest that or is that irresponsible. I feel like a mom deciding whether to bind my daughter's feet at the height of the foot-binding trend in China. What price resistance?

[kimberlysteele]

Orthodontists and oral surgeons can embody a special kind of evil, can't they? Mine were the ones who convinced me that I was deformed. They fed my dysmorphia about my messed up teeth, which took a ton of money and nine years -- yes, nine years -- to look as they today, which is stained, fissured, and not all that great. Yes, teeth are a class marker, but I'm not so sure that looking like you're in the salary class is going to be desirable in 20 years. My brother does OK (he's about the same age) and his teeth are not great. My advice is to calcium-pack your teeth at night no matter what their state is, meaning, to take a gel-cap type of calcium supplement, squeeze the white calcium goo out, and stuff it in the pockets of your mouth by your molars and behind the front teeth and any other super-cavity prone place. I do this every night and I am convinced it has saved me thousands and thousands of dollars. I don't even see a dentist for cleanings and I don't have health insurance, let alone dental, so there's no drilling going on in this mouth. My aunt, gods rest her soul, was rather well-off because of a good pension (she died within the last few years) and she had all of one tooth due to a phobia of dentists. I'm sure some people were put off by her toothless (almost) grin but she didn't give a crap. My aunt is an extreme case, of course. I personally am at the point where no dentist touches my mouth unless I need a root canal or a cap, and the calcium-packing seems to prevent those as far as I can tell.

[methylethyl]

Yeah. I have a couple crooked teeth and a noticeable overbite. My own mother actually gave me a choice about orthodontics: my older sister had done the braces thing, because of really serious crowding. I said no, and my parents accepted that. I have never regretted that. I haven't been to a dentist in more than ten years, and my teeth are fine. No cavities.

I've also heard from more than one person in your situation-- who had all the ortho work done when young, but whose teeth are not so great when they're 40, 50, 60... and it turns out the physical act of moving teeth around in the jaw probably reduces the lifespan of the tooth. The faster and farther you move it, the worse the problem. People who've had aggressive braces can find in their fifties that their teeth no longer have any roots-- just gone. I don't want to do that to my kids. Their teeth are great so far, just crooked. No cavities. Do we really want to screw with that?

And yet. Here is my mother, and my husband's mother, and our dentist, all clucking over my kids' crowded teeth, offering to subsidize the braces, all with the 100% assumption that yes, this is a thing we'll definitely do. My husband had braces. Of course our kids will. So what if it means we'll never be able to buy a house? Who cares as long as your kids have straight teeth?

And still resistance is hard. How much effect does the tooth crowding have on function? Does it have a negative effect on breathing or posture? Will getting braces actually fix that or just make it look better? Will an orthodontist answer that question honestly? Will I be judged a bad parent if I don't do it? Will I put my kids at an unnecessary disadvantage in adulthood? Is there an option for "just enough" work to make sure their bites align correctly? How do I even talk about this with my husband, who has never questioned the necessity? Why should he consider my opinion over the dentist's?

Sigh. I don't expect answers to any of that. It's just where I'm at right now. The current thing making me crazy.

[(Anonymous)]

I had to deal with a plumbing issue today so my brain is kinda fried, so I apologize if this isn't the best written. I just wanted to recommend a book called Breath by James Nestor. There are a couple chapters on how jaw development is affected by both mouth breathing and insufficient chewing which is caused by the soft foods of the modern diet. In the book he says that the maxilla continues to grow throughout adulthood if stimulated by chewing. The idea being that it's possible to make the jaw bone grow and make more room for the teeth. There are also jaw exercise devices you can buy, rather than gnawing on old animal bones for hours a day. There's also a book called Jaws, I forget the author but it's on Amazon I think. That said, my two older teenagers just got Invisalign. My teeth are perfectly straight, their dad's, not so much. The kids got their dad's teeth....I'll see if I can get my two younger kids to try the jaw exercises but they might think I'm insane.

[k_a_nitz]

The thing with braces is that they can still choose to have them when they are adults - and I would recommend leaving it until then when they can own the decision. My orthodontist made a mess of my teeth by removing the lower semi-molars to 'make room' so the braces could pull the teeth back to try to meet up with my upper teeth - which they were never going to do. But what I really needed was jaw surgery - which I ended up getting at 18 (shortened my lower jaw by a whole centimetre - if the orthodontist hadn't so screwed things up it would have been a bit more and my teeth would be better aligned). Now I have two gaps where my semi-molars are which creates problems for the teeth on either side - X-rays show clearly how the lack of those teeth affect their alignment now - plus the lower teeth are inclined backward making it hard to clean behind them. Despite that I didn't get my first filling until my 40s - and I have no tips on why.

[(Anonymous)]

Any correlation with breathing or posture would rather be due to the underlying skeletal structure - I don't see how moving the teeth around could improve it. Given that they don't have trouble eating or something, I doubt it's worth it. Part of the reason why humans so easily get crooked teeth is that it's not that big a deal for us (as opposed to rodents, for instance, where it's a death sentence).

Me, I had braces for an overbite, and still have an overbite. Not very effective.

[kimberlysteele]

I have a deviated septum and unfortunately it means I am a frequent mouth breather. I think I was born with a deviated septum as breathing through my nose was never easy. This was worsened by a car accident at age 10 and being forced to play floor hockey in gym where I'm quite sure I had my nose partially fractured but since it wasn't something that was easily seen, we passed it off as no big deal -- back then, almost nobody lived in the Land of Perfect Precious.

How interesting that crooked teeth in rodents is a death sentence. Why is that?

[athaia]

*putting on my vet nurse hat* Rodents' teeth continue to grow throughout their life, and are "filed off" by their movement against each other. If the teeth are misaligned, they aren't getting filed off at the right angle (or at all), so they continue to grow until the animal can't nibble down its hay etc., which means it starves. We have one rabbit in our practice that comes in every four weeks to have its teeth filed back so it can eat its food.

[kimberlysteele]

Thank you! I must have gotten lucky with my two hamsters, their teeth always seemed fine and they nibbled until the bitter end.

[nightwatchwaits]

It is a healthy, but strange thing for a 'Mr Ancestral/W A Price' to read the blog of a vegan. The poles can learn from each other!
My experience... may be good to consider???
- Ancestral:W A Price style foods - raw milk, fermented cod liver oil, butter oil, organ meats and avoid sugar & white carbs.
- A mechanical mouth hygiene habit - brush (no paste), inter-dentals, floss, Bass brush with Bass brushes.
Books:
- Ramiel Nagel - although died in middle age shortly after writing them - life is tough and can cause one to doubt... I think his books are good and grieve his passing.
- W A Price related books - just websearch.

[kimberlysteele]

Controversial opinion from a vegan, but I actually think that it may be a matter of individual physiology. I think there are some body types that may thrive on the foods you mention, and others that would be violently allergic and everything in-between. Humans are strange that way. Some people can be fine smoking cigars or cigarettes their whole lives where some smoke one joint by accident and end up with brain cancer from it. And there are plenty of people who will label themselves as frugivores, carnivores, or Cheetoitarians out of wishful thinking because it allows them to pretend they can eat exactly what they like and be healthy doing it. That said, I do miss Cheetos.

Beauty

[(Anonymous)]

Hi,

I am considered very good looking (from what people say) although I have a baby face so I'm not in that uber macho "manly" handsome, more boy band handsome type.

It has its pros and cons but I certainly attract a fair amount of jealously along the way, along with admiration and at times lust.

The biggest issue has been the long standing issue with dealing with the rumours people spread I'm gay. The best thing is I can attract some really nice attractive girls, one of which is now my wife.

[methylethyl]

I've read a lot of the WAPF stuff, and I think they're mostly on the right track. I do my best, and around our house, food is as low-processing as I can manage. But I can't afford to do the all-organic, all-grassfed thing. If we tried for an "ideal" diet, we'd come up short on the rent. That stuff is fine and good and commendable... if you're rich or you can raise your own food. Not many of us in that position, though. I could wish that as a culture, we'd re-arrange our priorities, but wishing won't make it so.

That said, I recall a few years back, there being a bit of controversy over the fermented CLO business-- I think that stuff may be quite detrimental. Like a lot of things... probably better to eat the whole fish, as fresh as possible. Like all other health advice one finds on the internet, it should probably be approached with caution, research, and a healthy dose of skepticism.