Intellectually, scars are great; in some ways, there's something romantic about the possibility of a more sordid past. "Scars are souvenirs you never lose," a popular song lyric goes. But vanity can be insidious, and where lies a ruddy, angry line there often lurks insecurity and sometimes even shame. In the garish light of day, my body looks a bit like a battlefield. My knees and shins and ankle are scattered with mementos of stumbles and tumbles. On the beach, stripping down to almost nothing, I'm self-conscious of these small imperfections, of so much tangible evidence of my klutziness, of my lack of grace. I feel clumsy, as pulpy and sensitive as the scars themselves.

When you get right down to the nitty-gritty, though, I know that I should be thankful for them. As any dermatologist or plastic surgeon will tell you, scars are a perfectly natural part of the healing process. Without them, we'd be like the streets of New York after winter: full of potholes. Whether through accident, disease or injury, insulted skin tissue eventually picks itself up and gets back with the program, amassing fibrous collagen deposits where the wound once was. The more skin tissue is damaged, and the longer it takes to heal, the greater the chance for a spottable scar. (Hence, the don't-pick-at-it lectures from my mother.)

Scars tend to be quite prominent at first, and then gradually fade. Places where the skin is rather taut will wear scars more glaringly -- chins and kneecaps and jawbones, for example, show them particularly well. Acne scars are sunken little beasts, little sticky-notes left over from adolescence.

And while youth generally trumps age, in the scar wars it's due to the overzealous healing of younger skin that can cause thicker, more upraised scars. I've toyed with the idea of doing something about all this. There's certainly no lack of treatments out there. For something like the scraggle on my chin, a shot of laser resurfacing would probably do the trick. For the doozy on my back, perhaps I'd like to undergo the knife again: surgical scar revision (The old scar is simply cut away and restitched in a cleaner, less noticeable fashion.)

The dermatologic menu continues: dermabrasion, collagen injections or chemical peels, (all good for fine or acne scars), the lower-budget silicone gel patches touted in the back of so many magazines (may not do very much, some dermatologists argue), cortisone injections (best for firm, keloid scars) and even something as oddly "Austin Powers"-sounding as cryosurgery. (Freezing of the scarred skin, which causes blistering and, eventually, rejuvenation. Ugh.)

In short, it seems that, in many cases, a doctor can now zap these scars away in one blindingly miraculous moment and have me back to work the next day -- a more freshly scrubbed me, all dewy and new. In one swift blow, science can erase the gnarls and snarls that life has so carelessly wrought.

In the end, I guess I'm not quite ready to part with my scars. Those marks on my legs, I'm starting to think, are proud testimonials of my high school athletic achievements. My flawed chin, of my doting parents. I feel like I've earned them, often through the proverbial blood, sweat and tears. When I see a woman with the odd little smirk of a C-section, or the slash of a hysterectomy, I see hard-fought war wounds and badges of courage.

And for me, my scars are also my silent witnesses of long-forgotten childhood mishaps, of what happens when you race up wooden stairs with socked feet, of a painful surgery late one hot summer on a back that just won't play right. These stories define me. They are my past. They are my memories.

They don't come cheap, but unlike so many things in life -- unsteady and often cruelly ephemeral -- if I let them, they will last forever, and they are truly, deeply, all my own.
salon.com | June 3, 1999

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

  Get a printer-friendly version

  E-mail a friend about this article

  Backflip this article to find it again

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Search Salon