Without getting into too much detail, the breast reconstruction in question was in the muddy territory of being both medical and cosmetic, and was the second procedure this poor girl had to endure. I'll admit this was juicy and I ignored the Lady J.A.R.V.I.S. voice politely reminding me that my dad was sloshed and waiting silently on the other side of the patio umbrella like JAWS.
"Let me ask you something, As A Man."
"Ma'am," Lady J.A.R.V.I.S. respectfully pleads.
He adds that last bit a lot. He likes to pause for effect and close his eyes, nodding gently, trance-like, as the thought forms. Usually the more he's had to drink, the longer the pause. I am my father's dramatic-ass daughter but when he does this I feel like screaming. Yeah, yeah, people who live in glass houses, etc.
"How do you, as women, relate the size of your breasts to how you're seen by other people?"
My mom answered quickly. Whatever it was, I thought it was a good answer and I agreed but I can't remember what it was because it's muffled by Lady J.A.R.V.I.S.' alarms blaring over her voice. I was getting started on my third cocktail (Stoli, Fresca, and a splash of cranberry juice) and, like our flair for the dramatic, my father and I share our low tolerance for booze. And like Tony Stark, who was drunk a lot in his original comic book form and known to regularly ignore the warnings of his own J.A.R.V.I.S. at great personal risk, I rocketed towards the chaos, knowing I might not be able to steer us all back to a civilized chat. I leave my parents' house in tears like one out of every 10 times. I joke about having a standing quarterly appointment to fight with my dad. He's in on the joke, it's cool.
"Hold up," I said, or something like that, with my arms out to Mom at my 10:00, and Dad, ready to lunge at 2:00. I'm a little jealous of how passionately they argue. In their 60s, they're mentally energetic as ever and still very much in love with one another but he's a hothead and she's not scared of a damn thing. She dismantles his arguments and he just responds by getting loud and mean. She gets loud and mean right back and the next morning they're smooching by the coffee maker. #GOALS.
"Dad, every woman you ask is gonna give you a different answer."
"Okay," he said, nodding and working his jaw, as though literally chewing on a gristly bit of opinion. We both also grind our teeth until our heads throb.
"Mom and I are from two completely different generations so the way our body images were shaped from, let's say pre-adolescence through college were under totally different circumstances."
"Exactly, Eli," my mom said quietly over her low ball glass of probably also scotch. That's her go-to, but she and I are both pretty eclectic with our sauce as long as it's not too sweet. She loves my cosmos. I think they're just okay but I know how psyched she gets when I crank out batches of them at parties for her and The Girls.
I imagined my mom as a willowy teenager in the warm, rosy, soft-focus of the 70s, flipping through a pamphlet about her Changing Body, brows furrowed, eyes ping-ponging between a shittily-drawn diagram and her chest.
"Mom, did you see a lot of nudity when you were a teenager?"
"No, hardly any. Just my mom," she replied.
"She wasn't shy about it at all. She would come home from work and undress while talking to us about her day like it was nothing so it just wasn't a big deal."
"Hold on!" I said, hand still up at Dad.
"I had cable and the internet and there was porn all over the place. So, Dad, unlike Mom, I've been bombarded with images of the ideal female form since before I hit puberty and when you see the same perfectly round, perky tits with the same pink, quarter-sized areola (Lady J.A.R.V.I.S. is clutching her pearls and I'm like, girl, I know, just bear with me a sec), it kinda fucks you up! You think that's what you're supposed to look like and anything else is gross and wrong and you need to save money for a plastic surgeon to carve you up like a Mrs. Potato Head (note: vodka)!"
I lowered my hand and gave Dad the floor.
"Okay, okay, okay," he said at least 70 more times. He does that with "wait," too. We joke about it so much that he laughs now when he does it. It's cool.
I hear buckles clicking and bolts sliding into place in my head as Lady J.A.R.V.I.S. straps me in as she does so often when it's Dad's turn to talk. I think she also turned up some relaxing music because I can't remember too much of what my dad said. I know it started with, "When I see a woman," and the rest had to do with how he felt about boobs and it's a lot of what you expect from a Normal Guy. I didn't really matter. What mattered (read: pissed me off) is that he made it about his boner. What amazed me was how long my parents let me rant, without interruption, about how everything women do in our patriarchal society is seen through the lens of the male gaze and judged accordingly, how exhausting and frustrating it all is.
And they just listened. He listened. And he agreed.
It didn't turn into a fight. Lady J.A.R.V.I.S. was silent, probably debating on whether or not to fetch the confetti cannon and calculating if there was enough in my checking account for a celebratory bottle of prosecco.
He made some ignorant comments, but mostly we agreed about the biology of breasts in the context of sexual attraction, and he didn't protest when I made a point about American women being sexualized at a younger and younger age, and how that's why the Kardashians have taken over the world.
"Ma'am, I think you've bummed him out!" Lady J.A.R.V.I.S. observed as he looked at the patio floor and nodded. Okay so no confetti cannon. Cancel the prosecco. What's the protocol for pyrrhic victories? Give Dad a long bear hug, say "I love you", go home, and try to think of something fun to talk about next Sunday. Is Mom good? Mom's chilling. Bye, mom. Love you. Let's get outta here, Lady J.
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