Love the One You're With

"After Your Heart Event," MaineHealth, 2015

Since suffering a heart attack almost a month ago I have immersed myself in literature about the conditions that might lead to such an event and how to avoid another. In all my reading, including bestsellers by pop doctors and leading nutritionists as well as more scholarly tomes published by cardiology treatment centers, I have come across one particular statement repeatedly: "You can't change your gender."

The preceding true fact is somehow swept under the rug by all those people who call themselves "transgender" after they've cut off their breasts or installed fake ones, ingested hormones either to grow beards or eliminate them, done various unknowable things to their more private body parts, and voila -- Playboy's November Playmate of the Month is a man-turned-woman, posing fully nude! (That should invigorate the magazine's flagging sales.) But does the new "she" have ovaries? How about menstrual cramps? Because if it's no and no, it's not a female. Conversely, all those transgendered men out there sporting scruffy beards, work boots and vaginas are barely fooling themselves.

Embarrassing but true, America still leads the pack in cosmetic surgery. The most recent statistics from 2016 show that surgeons performed 4.2 million procedures meant to enhance a person's beauty, including facelifts, liposuction and breast enlargements, which suggest we also lead the pack in superficiality. Brazil is next with 2.5 million procedures in that same time period, while Japan had 1.1 million procedures, 10% of those being eyelid surgeries. The popular procedure for women (most notably in South Korea and Taiwan) is called East Asian blepharoplasty. The double-eyelid surgery creates a crease in the upper eyelid, ostensibly to give the eyes "a more energetic look." Most  patients deny they are trying to look "white" and instead want to just look prettier and improve their employment options.

Everyone knows that change is good, but loving who you are is the greatest gift you can give yourself, and the only path to true happiness. After all, if you won't be you, who will?