“Inner beauty is important: but not nearly as important as outer beauty.”
Ellen Degeneres, Cosmetic Commercial
I recently had a Facebook discussion with a man who has started dating a positive guy. Brave in some ways, given the way we are generally shunned by those who are not poz, but he had issues. The man he’s getting to know has lipoatrophy, facial wasting from meds. He wasn’t sure about introducing his friend to his family, concerned about their reaction.
I was one of the many poor suckers who were offered D4T back in the wonder drug days and the wasting I experienced was sudden. I didn’t notice a gradual shrinking of the fat in my temples and cheeks – it was simply gone one morning when I looked in the mirror to shave. My self-image was shattered in a million pieces.
I was ugly. I was a monster.
I live with the wasting and I don’t like it. I know people who had their wasting fixed, but for the majority of us, finding the 3,000+ dollars is more than we can manage. The pharmas, of course, would simply scoff at the idea that they cover the cost of fixing what their drugs caused, and as a “cosmetic” procedure, health plans (provincial and otherwise) won’t cover it.
People tell me that I look great. While I smile and say “thank you”, I don’t believe them. I don’t see the face I once knew. I see the face of one of those old “AIDS victims” lying in a hospice bed, waiting for the end. My blood work might be fantastic, but the man I see in the mirror is hideous.
I envy those poz people who are cherry-cheeked and healthy looking – even overweight. Their chances of meeting someone special are pretty good. My chances (and never mind that I’m 51) are not so marvelous. I think that even within the HIV “community” there is stigma about anyone who “looks sick”. We don’t want to be reminded of illness, we want to see ourselves as kayaking, gym bodied youths, toned, tanned and desirable. For those of us living with lypo, the illusion of desirability is just that – an illusion: and a poor one at that.
We like to espouse the bullshit about “inner beauty”, but we live in a world that is more in tune with physical perfection. Those of us who don’t “fit” that model are the untouchables – even within our own subculture, the “caring” culture of HIV.
And vanity is a part of the equation. There are very few pictures of me that I truly like. Again, people use words like “handsome” and “great” and I see “gaunt” and “skeletal”.
Is this my “stuff”? Absolutely! And each of us only has our own stuff to deal with. But when I experience rejection over and over after I send a face pic to an attractive man on a dating (or even a hook up) site, and I don’t hear back, I know that it’s the wasting, not my personality. When a man does find me attractive I’m often suspicious, or I think he’s blind. More stuff piled on top of more stuff…
I’ve joked that having lypoatrophy makes Halloween that much easier. It’s a mask I can wear to hide my true feelings – the pain I experience that I am a monster, a cast off in the general and the HIV worlds.
Until we, in actuality, embrace the inner beauty that we say is so important; until human beings stop placing value on the external, those of us with lypo will never be truly accepted. We will continue to look in the mirror and see what we know to be true: we do not really belong.