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Amanda, via Anne, already fisked this but it’s too rich and I couldn’t resist. A 30-something LA-based actor whom you couldn’t pick out of a lineup wants to let the ladies know you’re free to be you. Kind of. He opens by describing the type of woman who can catch his interest:

She was a slender, vibrant redhead in a bright orange dress—you couldn’t miss her.

Even though he opens with a line she’s obviously heard a million times before:

“You’re wearing my favorite color,” I said. “I like orange because it rhymes with—”

“Nothing,” she finished. The spark was undeniable.

For some reason she slips him a card and agrees to date him, where she continues to be smarter, more successful, and hotter than he is. Back at her place (she’s not only sparkling and sexy, she’s also a fast mover) he discovers she has breast implants and goes a bit soft imagining the surgery. He’s been in LA for years but artificially enhanced women give him the screaming heebie-jeebies. Tessa knows exactly how to deal with this problem:

“Get out,” she said.

Before I knew what had hit me, I was back in my car, driving away from the first woman who’d sparked my interest in months. What just happened? Was I really going to let plastic surgery get in the way of my search for love—again?

You see, Gabe has a problem: in Los Angeles for some reason the women get lots of plastic surgery and aren’t always sincere. Can’t think of why not, but they’ve inadvertently given Gabe a serious existential crises: when he’s with them, are they really seeing his awesome, or like the boobs, are they all fake?

But then questions would fill my head: Is this woman really who she seems to be? Am I dating the person or the persona? Inevitably my attraction to them floundered, and the relationship did too.

Was Tessa really a funny, wealthy, eye-catching investment banker, or was she a filthy she-whore made of lies like all the others? If only she’d not perverted that sexy body with artificial accouterments to make it so sexy, then Gabe could trust her. He might not have asked her out responded to her booty call, but at least he could have trusted her if he had. After all, women without subcutaneous silicone are renowned for their ability to never hurt or deceive a man.

Certainly, men are partially responsible for this trend. We can be superficial creatures: abandoning faithful life partners for younger, prettier versions, TiVo-ing Skinemax movies and wondering why we, mere mortals, aren’t married to the likes of Jenna Jameson. But as much as we lust after images of hyper-real beauty in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue or even in the apartments or cubicles next door, we don’t quite know how to react when those unreal bodies actually belong to the woman in our lives.

So he wants to see sexy like Barbie but feel squishy like a Nerf football, and if you happen to be naturally stunning and meet these requirements and agree to fuck him he is mentally and emotionally unqualified to deal with the situation. Sounds like a winner, I’ll certainly be reading the rest of this article carefully and taking his words to heart.

Was surgery something I could handle? Or was it time to start looking for a “natural” woman, “flaws” and all?

Oh, Jesus God, he’s going to take us on his belated growing-up journey where he has to chose between the LA ideals and mere “flawed” real women, AKA us bitches in flyover country. I’m so glad that Glamour’s website let all us lucky ladies share a little piece of the magic. I can just tell that by the end of page four (4!) I’m going to want to give Gabe a big old hug and praise him for learning his lessons just like a big boy!

Mia decided to show me an old photo album—and I didn’t recognize anyone in the pictures. “Where are you?” I asked.

Silence.

Finally, she laughed nervously and said, “I’m right there, silly.” I looked closer.

Same hair, same smile, but when I finally focused between her eyes, I blurted, “You had a nose job?!”

Don’t blow this out of proportion, Gabe…

She’d trusted me enough to tell me about losing her virginity and her secret dreams of moving to Spain, so why hadn’t she trusted me enough to tell me about her surgery? She made light of it, and insisted there was nothing to talk about, but I couldn’t let it go. It seemed dishonest. A lie by omission, surely—but also a lost opportunity for intimacy. Why had she gotten the nose job? How did it feel before and after? These were things I wanted to know. And once I realized she didn’t feel the need to share them with me, the trust between us was gone. Our relationship ended pretty quickly after that.

Or do. You know, it seems to me like someone has an unhealthy fixation with imagining women going through surgery, kind of like that guy Pam Spaulding covers who keeps going “undercover” at gay parades to “expose the depravity.” Dude, live the dream and get your own elective surgery or get a good therapist. It seems like both options should be readily available in LA.

Now Gabe’s about to ditch an ad exec for having some collagen in her lips (dude, that’s not even surgery and it goes away. Get a fucking grip) and admits that his bizarre pathology is a joke among his friends. Then he finds a girl who had the fake boobs but didn’t like them, unfortunately, she dumped him after she got them removed. The experience allowed him to project a bunch of his own issues on the women he had inflicted with his presence.

I came to a realization about why I was so wary of women with plastic surgery. As far as I could tell, almost all the women I’d met who had changed their bodies through surgery had either done it to bandage some adolescent body issue or to make themselves more attractive to men…To me, surgery somehow implied a lack of confidence. It was as if something purchased to say, “Hey, check me out,” actually said, “I don’t like myself very much.” I knew that in some ways, this was a ridiculous generalization. Women get surgery for all kinds of reasons. Who was I to decide that every person with a chiseled nose also came with psychological baggage? But I couldn’t help it; that’s how I felt.

Doesn’t someone deserve a cookie. Is he even aware of where he lives? Or of how much of a douchebag he is? So far, he’s described some very confident-sounding, affluent women who happen to live in an area where youth is worshipped and cosmetic surgery is perfectly normalized, yet he’s able to discount his experience with the women themselves and project his own insecurities into their breast implants. I can’t imagine why his friends are laughing at him.
Luckily, for every LA there is a New York. The solution to Gabe’s problem came when he expanded his horizons to date women from the other major US city who work in a completely different form of media. But still hot. Because when Gabe says “natural” and “flaws” he doesn’t mean you, you fat cellulite-pocked cow, he means he wants a tight body without any plastic in it.

Kara was a novelist from New York who looked lean and fit and, best of all, completely real, in jeans and a T-shirt.

*Sniff* The lesson is learned, and the boy becomes a man. They grow so fast. But the magic may not be forever. Once, my new boyfriend got drunk with another two friends of mine, and a conversation about my tits ensued. When it became clear that I was annoyed, the boyfriend leapt to my aid, stating proudly “I’ve seen her breasts many times. They’re very nice!” This did not help, and when he was sober he apologized for misreading the situation. If I was annoyed by a little boob-discussion between friends in which my ta-tas were given only the most flattering praises, imagine how pissed Kara’s going to be when she finds out that Gabe basically told the whole goddam interwebs that she’s lopsided.

Well, one was noticeably larger than the other, and they didn’t look like breasts I was used to seeing on lingerie billboards, but I loved that they were…hers. Kara turned out to be one of the great loves of my life. We dated long distance until the lack of regular contact drove us apart. Sometimes I think I’m still not over her.

Whoops, hi, Kara, guess who’s still annoyed you won’t move to LA? Yeah, he’s still a passive-aggressive little snit.

So anyway, blah blah, dear Diary, today I learned the bleeding obvious, projected my bizarre fetish to all men and assured the ladies that, properly blinded by love, men will eventually let the endorphins convince them that the women they’re with are in fact lovable despite their hideous mortal flaws. And women across the country breathe a sigh of relief that maybe they too can latch onto their own issue-riddled egotistical man-child. In fact, judging from the end of the story, this one is still available. *Swoon*