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"I met Tessa* at a premiere party in Hollywood several summers ago. It was held in a decked-out airline hangar, and everything, from the stunning cocktail waitresses to the champagne fountain, was over-the-top. But even in the midst of all that glitz, Tessa was the main attraction. She was a slender, vibrant redhead in a bright orange dress&amp;amp;#8212;you couldn&amp;amp;#8217;t miss her. After a few minutes of sneaking nervous glances in her direction, I got up the guts to approach. &amp;amp;#8220;You&amp;amp;#8217;re wearing my favorite color,&amp;amp;#8221; I said. &amp;amp;#8220;I like orange because it rhymes with&amp;amp;#8212;&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;Nothing,&amp;amp;#8221; she finished. The spark was undeniable. Tessa was smart&amp;amp;#8212;an investment banker&amp;amp;#8212;and had a great laugh. Somehow, she was still single. When she casually slipped me her card at the end of the night, I was ecstatic. On our date the following week, things got even better. Tessa wore a clingy black dress, and over dinner she lit up with stories of four-million-a-minute losses in the futures market. Sexy. When she asked me back to her place after the check came, I couldn&amp;amp;#8217;t say yes fast enough. Soon, as we stood in her hallway, groping each other like teenagers, my hand fumbled to her chest, anticipating the plush, nurturing flesh of her&amp;amp;#8230; Wait a minute. Was her breast rippled? As I felt the telltale implant bag under her skin, I thought, Damn it&amp;amp;#8212;fake boobs. My mind overflowed with images of hospitals and scalpels. I froze up, and Tessa noticed. &amp;amp;#8220;You&amp;amp;#8217;re acting weird,&amp;amp;#8221; she said. &amp;amp;#8220;I am not. I mean, maybe I am. It&amp;amp;#8217;s just, um, are these, uh,&amp;amp;#8221; I stammered, still sheepishly groping at her chest. &amp;amp;#8220;Are you frisking me?&amp;amp;#8221; she asked. I stammered on. &amp;amp;#8220;Get out,&amp;amp;#8221; she said. Before I knew what had hit me, I was back in my car, driving away from the first woman who&amp;amp;#8217;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&amp;amp;#8212;again? That&amp;amp;#8217;s right. Tessa wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t the first surgically enhanced woman I&amp;amp;#8217;d dated, and she wouldn&amp;amp;#8217;t be the last. Let me explain: I&amp;amp;#8217;m an actor in my thirties, and I live in Los Angeles, a town that seems overrun with silicone. Before I met Tessa I&amp;amp;#8217;d already dated women with nose jobs, huge breast enhancements and lips plumped to bee-stung proportions. With each of these women, I&amp;amp;#8217;d tell myself that what they did with their bodies was their choice, that it wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t my place to judge. 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. I had, it seemed, a real issue with all the nipping and tucking going on in the dating world. And this wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t just an L.A. phenomenon either&amp;amp;#8212;I have college friends who&amp;amp;#8217;ve noticed the same trend in America&amp;amp;#8217;s heartland. In 2006, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, there were nearly 11 million cosmetic procedures in the U.S.&amp;amp;#8212;that&amp;amp;#8217;s nearly a 50 percent increase from 2000. 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&amp;amp;#8217;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&amp;amp;#8217;t quite know how to react when those unreal bodies actually belong to the woman in our lives. Was surgery something I could handle? Or was it time to start looking for a &amp;amp;#8220;natural&amp;amp;#8221; woman, &amp;amp;#8220;flaws&amp;amp;#8221; and all? It would take me three more relationships and a handful of blunders to figure that out&amp;amp;#8212;starting with Mia&amp;amp;#8230;. No secrets, except surgical ones I met Mia soon after the Tessa &amp;amp;#8220;frisking&amp;amp;#8221; incident, and I was relieved that all of her looked and felt natural. She was pretty and feisty, cracking me up with stories about her two schnauzers with rhyming names. Within weeks of meeting, we were an item, taking weekend trips and storing toothbrushes at each other&amp;amp;#8217;s apartments. So imagine my surprise when, during a rainy day many months later, Mia decided to show me an old photo album&amp;amp;#8212;and I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t recognize anyone in the pictures. &amp;amp;#8220;Where are you?&amp;amp;#8221; I asked. Silence. Finally, she laughed nervously and said, &amp;amp;#8220;I&amp;amp;#8217;m right there, silly.&amp;amp;#8221; I looked closer. Same hair, same smile, but when I finally focused between her eyes, I blurted, &amp;amp;#8220;You had a nose job?!&amp;amp;#8221; I was baffled, and more than a little hurt. We&amp;amp;#8217;d been dating for almost a year. She&amp;amp;#8217;d trusted me enough to tell me about losing her virginity and her secret dreams of moving to Spain, so why hadn&amp;amp;#8217;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&amp;amp;#8217;t let it go. It seemed dishonest. A lie by omission, surely&amp;amp;#8212;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&amp;amp;#8217;t feel the need to share them with me, the trust between us was gone. Our relationship ended pretty quickly after that. Trying to see past the nips and tucks Not long after things went south with Mia, I met an ad executive who was elegant and quirky (one of my favorite combinations) and whose proportions seemed perfectly normal. I asked her to dinner, and we met a few weeks later at a Japanese restaurant. But something was different about her that night. As she nibbled at a bowl of edamame, I figured it out: Her lower lip seemed much fuller than it was the first time we&amp;amp;#8217;d met&amp;amp;#8212;it looked like the mouths of actresses I&amp;amp;#8217;d worked with who&amp;amp;#8217;d gotten collagen and talked about it openly. And since those actresses were so comfortable discussing it, I felt comfortable asking the ad exec, &amp;amp;#8220;When&amp;amp;#8217;d you get your work done?&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;Work done?&amp;amp;#8221; she shot back. &amp;amp;#8220;Who do you think I am, a stripper?&amp;amp;#8221; I was beginning to get the picture: Women might chat about their surgery&amp;amp;#8212;or adventures at the dermatologist&amp;amp;#8217;s office&amp;amp;#8212;with near strangers, but the new guy they&amp;amp;#8217;re dating is probably the last person they feel like sharing with. If I wanted to know whether my date still had all her God-given parts, I needed to figure it out from visual cues alone. When it came to implants, if the boobs were pert with no bra: fake. If they were too rounded on top: fake. Needless to say, my obsession with all of this became a topic of great amusement for my coupled friends. &amp;amp;#8220;What was it this time, Gabe?&amp;amp;#8221; they&amp;amp;#8217;d ask when we gathered for dinner. Then I met Callie, who didn&amp;amp;#8217;t make me guess. She singled me out at a friend&amp;amp;#8217;s birthday party, regaling me with childhood stories, most of which involved some sort of brawl. &amp;amp;#8220;By the way,&amp;amp;#8221; Callie suddenly said, &amp;amp;#8220;these fake boobs are so not me.&amp;amp;#8221; This was a change: I&amp;amp;#8217;d hardly had time to notice her breasts&amp;amp;#8212;all my attempts to check her out discreetly had been foiled by her gaze, and she was already revealing that they weren&amp;amp;#8217;t real. Her forthrightness was a breath of fresh air, and I felt comfortable asking why she&amp;amp;#8217;d gotten fake boobs in the first place&amp;amp;#8212; if they weren&amp;amp;#8217;t &amp;amp;#8220;her&amp;amp;#8221;? It turned out a former boyfriend had woken her up one morning with a very romantic question: &amp;amp;#8220;Hey, you ever think about getting better tits?&amp;amp;#8221; Callie loved this guy, and after a series of failed relationships, she wanted to please him, so she went out and bought big, D-cup implants a few months later. Unsurprisingly, they broke up soon after that, and Callie was left with a very strange relationship souvenir. Some girls have tattoos of old lovers&amp;amp;#8217; names; Callie had an $8,000 pair of breasts. I&amp;amp;#8217;d started to really like Callie. And as we talked about the problems her implants caused for her&amp;amp;#8212;the way people took her less seriously at work, the unsettling way she no longer recognized herself in the mirror&amp;amp;#8212;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&amp;amp;#8217;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. I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t like that&amp;amp;#8212;it didn&amp;amp;#8217;t seem like a celebration of beauty, but a scrambling attempt to fix something. What I wanted was to be with a woman who worshiped herself as much as I worshiped her. I mean, come on, this is the female form here, the most beautiful thing on earth. To me, surgery somehow implied a lack of confidence. It was as if something purchased to say, &amp;amp;#8220;Hey, check me out,&amp;amp;#8221; actually said, &amp;amp;#8220;I don&amp;amp;#8217;t like myself very much.&amp;amp;#8221; 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&amp;amp;#8217;t help it; that&amp;amp;#8217;s how I felt. When I explained this theory to Callie, she said she understood. In fact, she told me, she&amp;amp;#8217;d decided to get her implants removed. Great, I thought. Callie would get back her real body, and I would get a girlfriend with natural breasts. But part of her transformation, apparently, included cutting me out of her life. I&amp;amp;#8217;ll never know exactly why she disappeared without a word after her surgery, but I have a feeling she wanted to rethink her relationships with men&amp;amp;#8212;what they wanted from her, and what she was willing to do for them. I have to admit, I understand. And looking back now, I can appreciate what she taught me: that choosing to have surgery doesn&amp;amp;#8217;t make you a dishonest person. Understanding what I really needed After that, determined to change my dating luck, I tried looking for women outside of my Hollywood circle&amp;amp;#8212;at the gym, at the grocery story, even at the library. That&amp;amp;#8217;s where I met Kara. Kara was a novelist from New York who looked lean and fit and, best of all, completely real, in jeans and a T-shirt. When I thought about getting my hands on her au naturel parts, my mind reeled. During our second make-out session, she stopped me as my hands slipped under her shirt. &amp;amp;#8220;Don&amp;amp;#8217;t get too excited,&amp;amp;#8221; she joked. &amp;amp;#8220;They&amp;amp;#8217;re awful.&amp;amp;#8221; Were they? Well, one was noticeably larger than the other, and they didn&amp;amp;#8217;t look like breasts I was used to seeing on lingerie billboards, but I loved that they were&amp;amp;#8230;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&amp;amp;#8217;m still not over her. In fact Kara (and her gorgeously imperfect body) helped me figure out that dating women who&amp;amp;#8217;d been under the knife would probably never feel right to me. There are a thousand enhanced goddesses out there who will one day make other men very happy. I know those women are worth dating, and I&amp;amp;#8217;ve fallen in love with a handful of them myself. But I&amp;amp;#8217;m pretty sure that the woman for me will deal with her physical peccadilloes with humor and self-acceptance, not surgery. This is the part I think women don&amp;amp;#8217;t understand. When a guy falls in love, his lover&amp;amp;#8217;s body parts become bewitching. I&amp;amp;#8217;m not going to tell you that our heads don&amp;amp;#8217;t turn when we see a stacked blond walking down the street. But when we fall for you&amp;amp;#8212;really, really fall for you&amp;amp;#8212;you hijack our sense of beautiful. What&amp;amp;#8217;s sexy to us? You&amp;amp;#8212;in the &amp;amp;#8220;before&amp;amp;#8221; picture. *Names and identifying details have been changed. Gabriel Olds has appeared on CSI, Law &amp;amp; Order: SVU and Six Feet Under. He&amp;amp;#8217;s usually the bad guy (on TV). His most recent film is Life of the Party."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/2008/02/men-crave-real-bodies/3>