October 14, 1999
Keith and me were watching TV last night, and a commercial came on for this new pill that you can take. It shows these happy thin people running around and laughing, and the voiceover says, "This pill blocks your fat intake by 30%, so that 30% of the fat you eat doesn't get digested!
Keith looked at me. I looked at Keith. "Huh-huh... like... huh-huh... that's like, Colon Blow. Huh-huh."
Then on TV they showed this guy eating a huge greasy pizza, and the voiceover says, "You can eat anything you want! All the fat and greasy food in the world, because a third of it doesn't get absorbed by your body!"
Oh man. Keith was making nonstop Beavis jokes by this point, which I will not reproduce here in their entirety.
THEN, a new voiceover comes over, like the "disclaimer" voiceover, that's sort of soft and goes really fast, and it says, "this pill may cause digestive problems, including soft stool, frequent need to move the bowels, and an inability to control bowel movements."
WELL! I'm not fat anymore, but I constantly crap my pants! This is an improvement? Who the hell buys this product? "Hon, I just took the fat blocking pill, I'll be on the toilet for the rest of the day. Take my calls." Either that, or maybe you could buy some rubber pants for adults, I'm not sure. It just doesn't sound particularly enticing to me.
I think our society (and this is not a particularly original thought) is just obsessed by fat. Fat is evil. We avoid fat. We cut fat out of our diets. Cellulite frightens us. Fat women are considered to be automatically ugly. If something is low-fat that means it's healthy. Fat is Satan.
I was watching West Wing last night, and they had an overweight woman playing the role of somebody's legal advisor. She looked good, her hair was nice, her face was pretty, she was just overweight. I was really surprised. You usually don't see overweight women on TV programs unless the point is that they're fat ("LOOK AT ME, I'M FAT AND I'M MAKING A POINT ABOUT BEING FAT HERE, HEY YOU!"). You see underweight women a lot -- Ally McBeal, the entire cast of Friends, etc. But overweight women are a real rarity. I was happy that West Wing had a fat woman play a character that wasn't a walking public service announcement.
I think that a lot of the people who are fighting for societal acceptance of a healthy female body image go too far in the opposite direction. I mean, it's good to feel good about your body, but that doesn't mean it's okay to automatically hate skinny people. It seems to me that a lot of the "fat is beautiful" people are really bitter about thin women. Their attitude is like, "you're giving in to the male image of a thin, beautiful woman, so you suck! I hate you!" Which, granted, is a really easy attitude to fall into, but who is it really helping? Making yourself feel better by directing hatred at another group of people isn't particularly healthy for your self-esteem, no matter how good it makes you feel while you're doing it.
I'll tell you how to avoid low self-esteem, women. Don't read women's magazines. Throw Cosmo in the trash. Burn Mademoiselle. And I'm not just talking about fashion magazines, I mean the health/fitness ones too. Get rid of Self. You don't need it.
Read through those magazines sometime, and be critical. Men, do this too. See how many images of extremely thin women you find. Count how many articles are devoted to losing weight. Read those articles. Note that they all say that if you lose weight you will: be happy! be popular! be pretty! get men! have better sex! go to heaven when you die! Losing weight is a magical cure for all ills, according to the women's magazines.
OK, now skip through the losing weight articles (wow, that's a lot of articles to skip through, isn't it?) Look at the beauty articles. They tell you that if you can just manage to get the right haircut, and find the right cosmetics, you can: be happy! be popular! get men! Etc.
Men, this is why women cry at the hairdresser when they think they got a bad haircut. This is why they become depressed after they go shopping for clothes and the right size doesn't fit them. You thought they were just neurotic. Didn't you? Admit it! But it wasn't neurosis, it was the women's magazines!
OK, skip the fat articles and the beauty articles, and skip to the sex articles. The women's magazines can tell you how to have better sex. They can! They always have new positions to try out. These wacky new positions include: on the couch! or on the floor! or for a really wild time, why don't YOU initiate??
If I started modeling my sex life after Cosmo's advice, I think Keith would have me committed to an institution. The women's magazines all assume that we unimaginative women wait for our men, whom we have managed to catch with our alluring cosmetics and haircuts and thin bodies, to throw us into bed, climb on top of us, and pump away while we coo and moan. That must be what the women's magazines think, because otherwise why would they give advice such as: "Ladies, men will love it if ... YOU'RE ON TOP! Just try it once, you'll like it!" Oh my, thank you women's magazines! That would not have occurred to me without your help!
OK, now skip past the fat and the beauty and the sex articles, and... uh oh. We're out of articles! That's all the women's magazines have for us. That must be all women care about, right? Because if we cared about anything else, the women's magazines would surely cover it, wouldn't they?
That's why you should shred, burn, and mutilate your women's magazines. They're bad for you. Don't read them, never ever never. Keep them away from your children. They're more corruptive than pornography, or even a Steven Seagal action movie. Fat is not Satan. Wrinkles are not Satan. NOT EVEN BAD HAIRCUTS ARE SATAN.
No. Women's magazines are the purest evil that exists in the world. And now you know.
Another way to avoid low self-esteem is to buy the right size when you go shopping for clothes. If you're a 14, admit it! Be a proud 14! "I'm a 14!" you should shout to the world. Because here's what will happen if you try to pretend you're a 12:
You will go to the clothes stores and you will pick 12s off the rack to try on. You will go to the fitting room and try to stuff yourself into these 12s. You will become depressed when they do not fit. You might manage to find a 12 in something that you can squeeze yourself into. You will be sort of happy about this, because it proves your hypothesis that you are in fact a 12, but you won't be REALLY happy, because let's face it, in the mirror you can see that you have stuffed yourself into this 12 as though you were a sausage and the 12 was the casing. You will probably buy the 12 anyway, because you won't be able to find many 12s that fit, so you take what you can get. And now you're saddled with this 12 that doesn't really fit you, that accentuates the fact that you are not really a 12, and that is too tight and makes you breathe funny.
Just accept the 14! You will pick 14s off the rack and they will all fit! They will look good on you. You will be able to breathe while wearing them. There is no reason to torture yourself and make yourself depressed simply because you have outgrown an arbitrary size that was decided upon by clothes manufacturers, who have never met you and probably never will.
That's my advice for better self-esteem, right there in a nutshell (albeit a very large nutshell).
In other news.Keith says that the job fair went very well. He handed out his resume to a bunch of companies, and talked to some people, and he expects at least two or three callbacks, and probably more. He seemed optimistic about the whole experience, and we agreed that even if he doesn't get a job from it, it was still a good thing to do.
I went to the library last night to return my two-day overdue books. I had a semi-embarrassing experience while there. See, the Seattle Public Library has this rule where you can only check out five books at a time, until you've had your card for a month. Then it's unlimited. Anyway, I thought I'd had my card for a month, so I brought up six books to check out.
The very nice and adorable Asian girl who was checking out books looked confused when she scanned the sixth book and it didn't go through. She asked me if I'd had the card for more than a month. I should note here that she didn't speak very good English.
Noting that she didn't speak very good English, and mildly irritated because I thought that she just didn't understand what to do to take the five-book hold off my account, I explained slowly that yes, I had had my account there for over a month, and all she had to do was take the hold off.
She looked confused. I became slightly more irritated. Why couldn't she understand? Finally her supervisor came over and said, "Oh, I'm sorry, you've only had your card for 22 days, so you'll have to pick out five that you want. But don't worry, you can come back in 8 days and check out a hundred if you want." She said this in a slightly condescending way.
I picked out my five and slunk out of the library quietly, very embarrassed at the way I'd treated the very nice and pleasant check-out girl who obviously was NOT confused at how to remove the hold from my card, but WAS confused at why I was being such a jerk.
Oops. I promise, to whoever keeps track of my karma, that I'll be super nice to her next time. I'll bring her cookies! I swear!