Why Do People Feel the Need to Change?

I know there are other bigger issues to think about in the world, but once a day I take the time to check out Dr. Tony Youn's blog. http://celebritycosmeticsurgery.blogspot.com/and wonder why people are compelled to change themselves.

Of course, I am sure people look at me and wonder why I don't change the way I look. The older I get the less I want to do to make myself super "presentable."

As the years have gone on I've have decreased the amount of makeup I were to a very bare minimum. I have changed my hair to a style that can be finger styled. I have two of the same shirt that is my favorite. I wish I had 14. I could wear one of them every day for two weeks before I would have to do my least favorite chore, laundry.

I used to have a really nice wardrobe. I worked in college and would drive to the big city of Lexington, KY, and shop at boutiques and have clothes that my friends envied. When I worked in Dallas, I always had very nice clothes that I bought at a little boutique in Plano. However, in the last five years or so I have decided that comfort should rule my life over fashion. If I find a shirt that feels good, looks good, and is reasonably priced, then I buy every color they have in that shirt. Same with jeans. I find a pair I like and I buy 3 blue pair for everyday and 2 black pair for dress. Now I do have dress clothes like skirts and tops, one dress, and several pair of dress slacks, so I can dress up if the situation calls for nicer clothes than what I wear daily, but I prefer my daily clothes.

I used to have at least 15 pairs of shoes at all times. My mother sold shoes through a catalog and was always ordering me really cute shoes to match outfits I had. I also had a favorite shoe store in my home town where I used to buy really nice dress boots and casual shoes from a family I had made friends with from when my parents would shop there for the family. Now, I have 7 pairs of shoes, three of those are sandals that I wear during the summer. Once I moved to Texas I discovered that I hate shoe shopping. I never had a chance to find that out growing up because my mom either ordered the shoes for me, or the family at the shoe store would call and say they had something they thought I might like. I was very spoiled when it came to shoes. Now I do the same thing with shoes that I do with shirts. I find a pair that are comfortable and fit, and I buy a brown pair and a black pair.

As I look at the people on Dr. Youn's blog and wonder about their body "revisions," I have to wonder about mine. Am I just being lazy, or have I just decided that life is too short to not be comfortable?

As I ponder the answer to that question, I think back to my "management" jeans. When I was in college I took a management class where I was paired up with an all male study group. We were required to meet outside of class once a week to work on certain projects. The guys in my study group were really cute, so I would spend a lot of time getting ready for study group "dates." I had one particular pair of jeans that always brought a lot of compliments my way, so they became my "management" jeans. They really were not comfortable. Even though I was much thinner in college, these jeans were still tight. I would go to these meetings and suffer for an hour and then go back to the dorm and put on my "fat" pants and enjoy myself so much more with my other guy friends. One of the guys in the management group finally did show some interest in me, and we got together on campus a few times without the others around. Turned out I should have just been comfortable at those meetings. He was definitely the cutest of the group, and the one I was most interested in, but when I found out he was barely a "C" student I lost all interest in him. Snobby of me, yes, but I knew I needed to have intellectual stimulation to stay interested in a guy. Plus he never once said he liked my jeans.

I know that I would never have cosmetic surgery to please another person. There are certainly parts of me that I wished looked different, but they are what I was given and quite frankly, if someone doesn't like how I look, then they can look some where else. Yes, I wish I was thinner, but that may never happen. I really wish I was taller, always have, and always will, but I know I will never be taller.

I guess what it comes down to is that I feel sorry for the people on Dr. Youn's site that have been compelled to change themselves, sometimes with frightening results. I don't know why they felt the need to change themselves, but I hope it made them happier in some way. I know that I am glad that I no longer feel the need to wear "management" jeans.

Some nights as I am looking at Dr. Youn's site I wonder if I just use the comfort issue as an excuse to not have to make an effort. I start wondering if someday I will be that old "toothless" woman that sits around in her rocking chair on the front porch braless in an old flowered cotton mu mu with her hair standing on end yelling obscenities at the kids walking home from school, but then I remember that I really don't look good in a flowered print.