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Putting the "Mom" Back in "MILF"
She got breast implants. "I figure this, if you breastfeed two children for three years and you start to look like the white centerfold of the National Geographic, you deserve a little help," Reinhardt said. Reinhardt, a syndicated Gannett newspaper columnist and a full-time writer for the Asheville Citizen-Times in Asheville, NC, said this wasn't a decision she made overnight. First, she consulted a physician. "My doctor told me if I didn't get the implants, it would be like pulling socks up over a boney shin," Reinhardt said. "I was tired of duct taping at the pool. I was the mother with the $1.99 duct tape boob job with the silver tape coming out of my bathing suit top, and I thought, ‘I don't work out to have this be happening up top.’" Everyone in her family took her two big developments in different ways when she went from a floppy size B to a busty size D. "So many children came to my house to play Nintendo," Reinhardt remarked. "I thought it was because I had good snacks in the pantry." Her "Mama" didn't take the big news with much Southern grace. "My mother being a Southern Baptist proper lady said, 'It's just not classy to get breast augmentation,'" Reinhardt said. "'If you just had a lift that would be one thing but you got implants. That's not classy.'" Her father wasn't all that thrilled either. "My dad's a minister and he's thinking that $6,000 that went under my pecs, that should've gone in the offering plate," Reinhardt said. "But [it actually] went in my hope chest, so to speak." But her husband, the man whom she spent a year's worth of car payments on so he could have some new playthings in his bedroom, took one look at them and cried. Then he locked himself in the bedroom and didn't come out for four days. It turns out that having her areolas reduced wasn't the smoothest move. "They were so big, I was tuning in the Al-Jazeera network," Reinhardt said. "So I had them reduced to nickels and when I first got out of surgery, they were like Franken-tits, and he was so horrified. Then when the tape came off and he saw that the nipples went from satellite dishes to nickels or quarters, he said, 'What have you done?' and he started bawling." Pretty soon, he learned to accept them, and the couple’s experience was chronicled in a British documentary that they later learned would be called Plastic Surgery Ruined My Life, which will air on Channel 4 in England. Reinhardt said they did it for all the wrong reasons, namely money. "It was the big schmooze deal, " Reinhardt said. "They said, [in British accent] 'We just really want to talk to ladies in America because we hear you undergo lots of plastic surgery, and we just want to know about the outcome.' Really they just wanted to talk to my husband about why he locked himself in the room for four days and how he wanted the baloney nipples back." Thankfully, that appearance on the telly may not be Reinhardt’s last. The popularity of her book attracted the interest of some HBO executives, and the brass at Showtime currently have the book under consideration. Reinhardt is also on the verge of signing a two-book deal with Kensington, her current publisher. "Here we go again," Reinhardt said via e-mail. "I'm sure my mama wants me to watch my language with this one. And I'm sure my husband is thinking, 'I'll never get laid now.'" Reinhardt said her family has to learn how to deal with a lot because she turns their private moments of childhood curiosity and sexual perversion into hilarious stories and essays. "Stu turns a blind eye toward my writing by grabbing a bottle of Tilex and going to town," Reinhardt said. "He loves to clean. It's like sex for him. He gets all fired up sexually when he sees me with a mop or sponge. My kids don't mind being in the papers or books now, but they might when they get older. My whole family is just a bunch of benevolent kooks. I love them. They love the attention, I think. Knock on wood." Her mother also has learned how to deal with her new sweater kittens when she appears at book signings and public appearances. "My mom says, 'Please wear a jacket to hide them. My Baptist church ladies and my bridge biddies will be there, so you must hide them and wear a jacket over them.' Everybody's embarrassed about them but me." Reinhardt said she was just following her mother's sage, Southern advice when it comes to keeping a happy marriage. "I've got a Southern mother who said, 'Honey whatever you do don't let yourself go to pot or your husband will leave you,' so I tried to work on myself and keep hair highlighted and not be too high maintenance," Reinhardt said. She's also learned a couple of other tricks. "There's so many women who ignore the oral sex aspect of the marriage and relationship, and you just really can't do that," Reinhardt said. "If I were a man, I would not date or marry a woman who refused to do that. I have been married for 16 years for a reason." She's said she's also learned to stay in constant communication with her hubby on all matters sexual, even if her mother always seems to get involved to the point right up until they jump into bed. She's also learned ways to calm him down when things get too hot to handle. "You poison him with Prozac, it lowers his libido and makes him happy," Reinhardt said. "So I put some in his tea at the doctor's recommendations because he was being such a grump." She's also learned that changing your appearance doesn't mean someone will fall in love with you all over again, and accepting yourself doesn't ensure you'll be accepted by others. But it doesn't hurt.
Not Tonight Honey:
Danny Gallagher is a
freelance writer and newspaper reporter living deep in the heart of Texas
-- where things feel clogged and congested thanks to years of no exercise
and chicken fried steak eating contests. |
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