The only glow I know is spray on....

I was at the beach this weekend. With the kind of confidence and indifference to social standards that comes with age and the forced pragmatism of marriage and motherhood, I proudly displayed my 5-months pregnant and never-quite-recovered- from- the- last- 2- pregnancies body in the type of cute, trendy bikini that has only been designed in the last five years or so as pregnancy became fashionable.

Then I saw the pictures. There were one or 2 perfectly lovely shots that screamed beaming, fertility goddess but the sun, the camera, and my spine had to line up just perfectly to achieve it. Otherwise, the pictures revealed way too intimately what motherhood and aging has wrought on my body.

A more doughy face, lined neckline, increasingly pillowy triceps and by far the worst- completely shapeless, fat-pocked thighs. My first thought, despite years of feminist inculcation and a healthy dose of mostly useless gender theory classes in college-my husband deserves better than this.

Pity set in and I did what I always do when I'm in a bad mood, I tried to pick a fight with my husband. It went something like this.

"Well you noticed me because you thought I was hot, I'm not hot anymore"
"You're beautiful."
"Fine, but I'm not hot anymore and you fell in love with a hot woman."
"I think you're hot."
"I appreciate you saying that but its not possible as I'm quantifiably not hot anymore"
and on it continued with me badgering him, not going to be satisfied until he admitted that yes I cheat on you all the time because you've gotten fat, allowing me to transfer my self-loathing on to him by blaming him for my current, decrepit state.

I said something about the "shallow underpinnings of our relationship" that was based on hot sex with a hot woman and how those underpinnings have been kicked out from under us and so now there's nothing left and what does he have to say about that?

He mumbled something and was soon snoring.

Ok so I'm over it and not hating and blaming anyone but impatient for the weight gaining to end and for the first time in my life very seriously considering plastic surgery.

I'm in the plastic-surgery capital of the world. The women are puffed and buffed to cartoonish proportions, they inspire laughter rather than envy because they're so out of this world BUT it's got me thinking.... Hey just nip here, a tuck there, a lift here. I don't want bigger I just want buoyancy again. And those thighs, can't you just vacuum that shit out??

Here you can get it done at any mall and there's plenty of personal references to make sure you're seeing a real doctor. In a nod to social justice, the services extend all the way to the poor, who can pay on generous installment-plan terms, while middle-class women can win office raffles.

I told another post-baby friend of mine that I was seriously considering partaking in Caracas's services. She immediately knew of what I spoke and said "yeah me too."

Our husbands as handsome as they ever were with maybe just a few more grays, our children, the ones that really glow, with their apple cheeks, their shining eyes and bouncy hair and us, literally deflated.