Belonging and Love Needs as the Motivation in Doing Plastic Surgery
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their environment Maslow 71. These needs are not fulfilled in Hope Donahue’s life.
Her needs to give and receive love are not fulfilled. A child’s immediate surroundings are comprised of her family and relatives. If a child cannot love and
be loved by his or her family and relatives, he or she is deprived of these needs. Throughout her childhood and adolescence, Hope is not given love by her family
and relatives and she cannot express her love to her family and relatives. Hope’s father is busy with his work in the office; he has very little time and attention for
his family. As described by Hope, “My father worked late into the evenings because, he said, that was what all the bankers did, though my mother said it was
to avoid us” Donahue 19. Even when he is with Hope, he refuses to play with her. Her father’s physical and emotional absence makes her unable to express her
love, except by going to his room and inhaling his scent. Sometimes, during the day, I’d play detective, going into his room and
inhaling the scent of him, his soap and the stale officey smell of his suits. In the bathroom I’d smell his aftershave and look at the leftover bubbles of
his frothy pee in the toilet. He worked late every night, so my mother and I ate dinner together in front of the television, watching one of the American
shows Donahue 41.
Hope’s mother is physically at home, but she often ignores or abandons Hope because she is often occupied with herself. As described by Hope, “At
home, my mother spent more and more time in her room, listening to Helen Reddy records. I could sometimes hear her thin, reedy voice straining for the high
notes” Donahue 42. Her mother’s emotional absence also makes her unable to express her love. She tries to call and approach her mother, but her mother would
not answer and would even tell her to go away, as shown in the quotations below.
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“Mom” Sometimes I would call her, but she wouldn’t answer. My mother’s face in sleep always wore a curious look of effort, a crease of
concern between her brows, her eyes squeezed tightly shut. “Mom” I’d say again. Then, more sternly, “Mother” And finally, her name—
“Virginia”—seeing how it felt to call her that. I’d get up close and peer behind her sunglasses, at her eyeballs rolling back and forth under the
closed lids like ships tossed about on wind-swept seas Donahue 14-15.
I froze, staring at her. It was a minute before she noticed me. When she did, her face abruptly twisted into a grimace. “Go away” she shouted.
“Beat it” Donahue 46
Hope’s grandparents, her father’s parents, live not so far from her house and she often visits them. However, Hope’s mother hates them, so there is no love
among their extended family, as shown in Hope’s comment “My mother’s resentment of them had become a kind of hobby to her, a small seed she nurtured
over the years” Donahue 57. Also, whenever Hope visits her grandparents, their house is always quiet and they mostly ignore her. They are not interested in
talking to her or giving her affection, as shown in the quotation below. I feel like I am once again in my grandparents’ deadly quiet house, free to
explore while my grandmother took a nap and the maid smoked cigarettes in front of the television playing Spanish soap operas in her tiny room. No
one cared what I looked at or where I went, so long as I was quiet Donahue 152.
Hope’s needs to have affectionate relationships and have a place in her environment are not fulfilled. She does not feel like she belongs anywhere,
whether at home or her grandparents’ house. At home, she cannot meet her father and is ignored or shunned by her mother, while at her grandparents’ house, she is
ignored by her grandparents. With no affectionate relationship with her parents, grandparents, or friends, she spends her childhood and adolescence alone. She
plays by herself and watches television to entertain herself, as described below.
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Solitude never bores me, a fact which I probably ought to find alarming but which I chock up to having been an only child, all those hours of
playing by myself. Sometimes I watch television, drawn to the stories of misery and betrayal unfolding on talk shows and soap operas. I am soothed
by the emotional slaughter of these people Donahue 31.
As an adult, Hope’s needs to give and receive love, to have affectionate relationship, and to have a place in her environment are still not fulfilled by her
family. The deficiency of these needs is indicated by Hope’s inability to find affection in her family, and Hope’s family’s inability to give her affection.
Although Hope feels really miserable, she does not want to ask her parents to cheer her up and pretends to be cheerful in her phone call and visits instead. As
Hope states, “Looking back, I cannot recall ever telling my parents just miserable I really was. I maintained a sunny façade in every phone call and visit, though I
often sobbed in my car along the desolate stretch of Interstate 5 between San Francisco and Los Angeles” Donahue 27. Another time, when Hope really needs
her mother’s help after her first plastic surgery, her mother leaves her. Although Hope begs her mother for love and attention, her mother abandons her, as
described below. I have heard that mother birds sometimes push their young out of the nest
if they are sickly or deformed. As for my mother, she took one look at her disfigured offspring and fled the nest. She checked herself into the Ritz-
Carlton in Marina Del Ray and called my father with explicit instructions that she would not come home until I was gone.
When I called her on the phone, crying, and told her she was abandoning me, she called it “tough love.”
“Please,” I begged her. “Please, please, I need you.” “I’m sorry,” she kept saying, and I knew that she was Donahue 106-107.
As an adult, there are some other examples which show that Hope’s belonging and love needs are not fulfilled outside the scope of her family. She
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seeks affectionate relationships with people and things that she encounters around her. She hopes to get love from the nurse in the hospital where she undergoes
plastic surgery by following the nurse, as shown in her comment, “I follow her down the hallway, wishing, childishly and impractically, that she would be kind,
perhaps hold my hand. I need some maternal kindness to calm the whoosh of fear in me” Donahue 5. As another example, Hope tries to give and get love from her
large stuffed animal by sleeping with it every night, and she also hopes to get more affection from people by carrying it around, as shown in her comment, “I
brought it with me that morning not really for security, but because I hoped that the doctor and nurses would see me clutching this childish toy and offer me a
child’s greater portion of comfort” Donahue 98. Furthermore, Hope tries to give and get love by getting involved in a
romantic relationship that she does not really want with a man called Hank. She actually does not like Hank and his sex-obsessed behaviors, but she obeys him
passively, as shown in the quotation below. I don’t like Hank, but I don’t dislike him enough to refuse. In the months
to come, I will continue to question the dull, heifer-like passivity that overcomes me when I am around him. It’s a state almost like anesthesia; I
experience neither pleasure nor pain. Much later, I will come to realize that it is not simply my indifference to
Hank which makes me as malleable as clay, but something darker, more desperate and dangerous: Fearing that I am unlovable, I must settle, and be
grateful for, simply being desired Donahue 141.
Besides that, Hope applies to be a nude photo model in a cheap agency just to enjoy how it feels to be loved. She says that she does not do it to tempt men,
but rather to gain love, as shown in her comment “I do not want to dangle myself tantalizingly over the hungry mouths of men. What I crave is something more
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immediate, more intimate, more like love Donahue 177. She enjoys the attention she gets when she poses nude, as shown in the quotation below.
I reach around and undo my bra, then slide my panties down my legs. I toss them both on top of the dress.
North looks up. “Sweet Je-sus,” he says. “Will you marry me?” I know, suddenly and fully, why I am here. This reaction, this attention,
this desire. However fleeting, however insincere. I smile, feeling my cheeks flush Donahue 216.
It can be seen that Hope tries to seek the fulfillment that she cannot get in her family through various other means, but she fails to get it there as well.
Therefore, belonging and love needs form a major part of Hope Donahue’s motivation in doing plastic surgery. Hope Donahue is motivated to do plastic
surgery in order to find belonging and love, especially since she regards her plastic surgery doctor as the one figure who can fulfill all her belonging and love
needs. She believes that if she does plastic surgery, she will be able to love and to be loved, especially to love and be loved by her doctor, and she will belong
somewhere, especially in her doctor’s office. Although in fact the doctor is only manipulating his patient for his own financial gain, she does not realize it.
Firstly, Hope compares the doctor’s action of altering her body through plastic surgery to a loving action based on his affection to her. She feels intense
longing when her doctor treats his other patient gently and affectionately. As described by Hope, “She smiles up at him, and the look of trust and intimacy they
exchange makes my throat ache with longing” Donahue 6. That longing is strong enough to motivate Hope to undergo plastic surgery repeatedly in order to
get love and attention from her doctor. Plastic surgery becomes Hope’s means to secure her doctor’s love and attention. She states that “no price is too high” and
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she would give her money, her flesh and blood, and her dignity for “this guarantee of attention” Donahue 10. She further compares the blood from her surgery to
the pain of love in her following comment, “The sight of my blood on his gloves seems appropriate; I already know that love and pain are intertwined” Donahue
10. This idea is supported by her yearning to be accompanied by her doctor after the surgery in the following quotation.
“Doctor” That word. It still thrills me, a thrill that cuts through the pain. I am breathless, but it could be the dressings, the constricting after-surgery
bra. Please stay here and talk to me some more, I want to beg. Please don’t leave me to go back to my apartment and be all alone again, so soon
Donahue 207.
Still related with the first idea, Hope associates the figure of her doctor as a lover figure. Besides feeling longing when looking at the doctor interact with
other patients and regarding his actions in surgery as loving actions, Hope also imagines and wishes that the doctor would become her lover instead of just a
doctor. She is disappointed when she discovers that the doctor is already engaged, but illogically, she is happy that the doctor’s fiancée is an ordinary marketing
director, because it means there is still hope that the doctor would fall in love with her, an ordinary woman, too: “This surprises me, but it gives me hope, too. If Dr.
S—can fall in love with someone not famous, not glamorous, someone who works for a chain of discount stores, then why not with me?” Donahue 114. Hope is
under the illusion that he cares about her and they have a special bond together, bonded by the plastic surgery procedures, as described in the quotation below.
He has bent over my supine body like the prince over Snow White. He has used all his skill and attention to make me into something more desirable
than what I am. He has both inflicted and taken away pain. Doesn’t such intimate contact merit a special, even sacred, sort of bond? What more
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vivid demonstration of love is there, after all, than suffering willingly at the hands of another?
Sitting in Dr. S—‘s office, I realize the extent of my infatuation. I hope, with every cell of my body, that he and I can one day be more than doctor
and patient. That there will be an us. Doesn’t all my time and effort merit something other than the sterile doctor-patient relationship? Donahue 116-
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Lastly, Hope regards her doctor’s office as the place or the environment where she belongs. Besides love and attention from her doctor that she is
guaranteed to find there, she also feels familiar with the atmosphere and feels welcome there. She already knows the receptionist and the nurses and often chats
with them in the waiting room; she is not ignored like when she was at home or at her grandparents’ house. Hope says that “Being in Dr.S—‘s office is better than
being alone in my apartment. It is better than being anywhere. His waiting room has become my haven” Donahue 116. If she stops undergoing plastic surgery
procedures, she would lose the place where she belongs. Naturally, she is motivated to maintain it by visiting the doctor’s office frequently and planning
more plastic surgery. It wasn’t long before my visits to his office were what I lived for. I needed
them to provide me with human contact, excitement, the fulfillment I wasn’t getting anywhere else in my life. It was a tall order, and I was
frequently disappointed Donahue 38.