Jane Juska was a high school English teacher for
33 years, taught in college and prison for another five, and then
placed an ad in the New York Review of Books: “Before I turn
68, I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like.” It brought her
success beyond her dreams. Her essays have appeared in Vogue
and she is the author of A Round-Heeled Woman, Unaccompanied Women, and the new She book
The Last Thing to Go. Her memoir about being old will be published by Berkley Books in August 2015.
I
have decided not to have my vagina restored. Or to correct anything
else on my person that calls out for the rejuvenation promised by
cosmetic surgery. One could argue that at my age I would do well to
avail myself of the wonders of modern medicine; surely, just about
everything on me needs it, especially if I want to remain young, well
not remain young, but look young. What, other than money, could keep me from it?
Vaginoplasty. While they’re down there, they offer a
specific procedure: hymen restoration. After a lapse of only 62 years, I
could be a virgin! However, I’m not sure I want to repeat my first
time. Not that I can remember it very well. I do recall that there was
no blood. Right then, I wondered what was wrong with me. Maybe that’s
when I should have inspected my private parts to see if anything was
amiss.
But no one, absolutely no one, was allowed to see
Down There, with the exception of the doctor who would one day deliver
my babies, which, when I thought about it, made me shudder. That is why I
skipped the part of the women’s movement that encouraged group
exploration: You met with friends (one hopes) in someone’s kitchen,
hauled up your peasant skirt and climbed onto the table, denuded from
the waist down. Then your friends brought out a mirror, put it between
your legs and glowed while you Became Acquainted With Yourself. Eeeeeeew.
Fast-forward to the year 2000, during which I turned
67. I am on the 17th floor of a New York City skyscraper, being
introduced to a young man who will do the publicity for my book A Round-Heeled Woman,
in which I tell all about meeting men through a personal ad and
sleeping with most of them at the advanced age of 66. He loves the book.
“Totally courageous,” he calls it. “Do you know,” he says, raising his
hands in surprise, “there are some women who have never, ever seen their
vagina?” “No, really?!” I exclaim. I choose this response over the
truth: “I’m one of them.” “Oh yeah,” he says. “Have you seen Vagina Monologues?” “Yes,” I lie.
I seek to seem worldly in the eyes of this kid who
holds my publishing future in his hands. But I feel a stab of guilt. Why
haven’t I seen myself down there? Why haven’t I looked after it just as
I’ve looked after my blood pressure, my lungs, my eyes, teeth, feet?
What do I think awaits me? Floppy labia in need of
repair? Maybe if I poked around, I’d be able to discern my floppiness,
though if I flopped, then what? Do I really want to return to my
prepregnancy labial state, thereby increasing sexual gratification for
both my partner and me? (Or so the plastic surgeons promise.) If your
answer is maybe, Google “vagina restoration.” There are pictures.
My face, my body, are finally worth reading.
I will admit that if one makes a living based on how
one looks — Hollywood comes to mind — then plastic surgery is the price
for keeping one’s job. For a woman. The furrowed brow of George Clooney
and the creases of Humphrey Bogart only serve to make them more
desirable: Signs of age add character to slickness, depth to
vacuousness. Not so, though, huh, for Renée Zellweger.
“You don’t look like you’re in your 80s,” I have
been told. I answer, “Yes, I do. This is what it looks like.” What they
mean is “You don’t look old.” Looking old is the sin. Being old is OK because then they can ignore you, but looking old?
That stares them right in the face and says, “Not long from now, you’re
going to look like this and then you’ll die.” In a culture that
worships youth and beauty, dying is forbidden. Get yourself made young
and you won’t have to die. Even more important, no one has to watch you
do it.
Yet sometimes I find myself wondering: Would I have
cosmetic surgery if money were no object? Where would I start?
Everything, beginning with my face and ending with my ankles, is heading
south or has been there for some time. If I had just my eyes done, then
what about my tummy? Well, OK, let’s just do a tummy tuck and an
eyelift and — come on — what about my underarms and, while we’re at it,
my inner thighs?
But I haven’t done these things; my face, my body,
are finally worth reading. Without tampering, nearly all of us reach an
age when we look interesting, when we are interesting. The marks of living a full life are right there for everyone to see, if they’d only look.
Just, OK, maybe not down there.
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