Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank (13 page)

According to WW , I am entitled to a measly 23 points a day but I’d use up 18 of them in just one order of Taco Bell’s Nachos Bell Grande, or, as I like to call it, heaven on a cardboard plate.

The South Beach Diet is similar to the Atkins Diet in that carbs are a huge no-no in the beginning. Bill Clinton lost lots of weight on the South Beach Diet, but then he had heart bypass surgery, so I’m not so sure about it. Also, South Beach has a
lot
of rules. The book weighs, like, eight tons or so. I think most South Beachers lose the weight not by following all the instructions so carefully but simply by lugging that stupid book around.

The Zone delivers steady weight loss that’s not so quick or so visible as Atkins and South Beach, but it also has a lot of rules, and the supplements and exotic Zone-sanctioned meals (fillet of froufrou with a side of pistachio-encrusted doodahs) ain’t cheap. The Zone believes that you can best lose weight if you balance protein and carbs in a 40–30–30 mix. That’s 40 percent protein, 30 percent carbs, and 30 percent of something else that I can’t remember, so just substitute fried Snickers bars for that one.

With all these diets around, we’ve all become completely carb-phobic. The other day, I was in Subway eating my favorite Jared-sanctioned six-inch veggie on whole wheat when a rather portly
total stranger
walked up and asked, “Do you realize how many CARBS are in that thing?”

He couldn’t have looked more horrified if I’d been sitting there eating a shit sandwich. He then took a seat across the aisle from me and unwrapped what appeared to be turkey, bacon, ham, pepperoni, and a leg of lamb all wrapped up in a strange little scrap of brown crepe so thin you could read your Atkins Diet book through it.

One after another, customers came in and ordered “Atkins sauce” on their “sandwiches.” I can only imagine that this is actual blood from a meat-producing animal.

The thing about Atkinsians is that they are a trifle high and mighty, aren’t they? “Oh, I can’t eat that. I’m doing Atkins!” Don’t get so uppity, fool. It’s not like you’re becoming a missionary or something.

A waiter friend says he’s regularly berated by women who scream “Get that out of here!” I mean it’s hot bread, not a rabid possum, he’s bringing to the table with cute little shell-shaped butter pats on a doily.

The stranger who had criticized my veggie sub finished his whatever-it-was and stopped by my table to tell me that his mother—
his mother
—was about my age, and she was losing a lot of weight with Atkins.

Okay, here’s the thing. Don’t assume that a woman is on a diet. My husband likes me just the way I am. He points out that he doesn’t have to “shake the sheets to find me,” and that’s the way it’s going to stay.

The Atkins lingo is confusing, too.

“We’re in the induction phase now,” a friend confided over two pounds of bacon the other morning.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, missing her meaning. “But y’all can try again or even get a surrogate.”

What the hell are they talking about?

Carbohydrates have become the new embodiment of evil. Did you know that if you rearrange the letters in the word
Carbohydrate,
it spells “Cameron Diaz can’t act”? Yeah, I know I made it up, but that’s what we crazy carbmonsters do. We lie! Don’t blame us: It’s the gluten. Makes a girl do strange things.

Men and women both diet, of course, but men don’t take it as seriously as we do. My friend Lisa came home from work the other day to a horrific sight.

There was her loving husband, still wearing his suit and tie from work, holding a just-opened bottle of Miller Lite and . . . weighing himself.

That’s right. Standing on the scales in front of God and everybody,
casually
checking his weight at the end of the day.

“What are you
doing?”
Lisa shrieked.

Her husband looked at her curiously, as if she were, somehow, the crazy one. Then he cocked his head a bit, which as every woman knows, can actually make you weigh three ounces more.

“I’m checking my weight,” he said. “Something wrong?”

Oh, yes, my friend. Something is very, very wrong. No
woman on the face of the earth would actually stand, fully dressed at the end of the day, on a set of scales. I mean besides Renee Zellweger, who, let’s face it, practically has
HELP ME
! scrawled across her bony little chest these days.

For Lisa’s husband to weigh himself while holding a beer is too much to bear. Might as well spit into my “burns more fat” yogurt.

Women know that there are some essential guidelines to the proper weigh-in. For starters, you weigh only in the morning, before breakfast and after all bodily functions have been attended to. Women weigh after flossing, Q-tipping their ears, and even blowing their noses. Every possible source of added weight must be eliminated.

Also, and this should go without saying, you have to weigh yourself buck nekkid. I have seen grown, professional women (okay, me) sob in protest at stepping on a doctor’s office scale while fully clothed.

ME
: This dress is heavily beaded; you’ll need to deduct at least twelve pounds.

NURSE
: I don’t see any beads.

ME
: What are you? The frickin’
bead police?

So I told my husband about Lisa’s insensitive lout of a husband, but he didn’t get it. “What’s the big deal with women and weight? I mean, why are you so worried? What do you weigh, anyway? One twenty? One twenty-five?”

Suddenly, I felt much better. “Yes,” I said. Well. Maybe in outer space.

My closest friends have warned me that I don’t have the guts to write about this subject, but that’s what they said when I wrote about artificial testicles for neutered dogs, so who’s laughing now? Well, probably not the dogs.

A dedicated humor writer doesn’t shy away from the tough stories, the ones that might even make a few enemies. And that’s why it’s time to take on a subject that is hallowed to many women, even a religion of sorts. I speak, of course, of the holiday sweater cult.

Those of you who are reading this whilst fingering the delicate silver bells attached to the meticulously embroidered reindeer tableau that is dancing across your chest might want to bail now.

I never noticed the cult until my daughter started
kindergarten, although I’m not a big fan of “character wear” in general. There’s just something not quite right about those grown women who wear Tweety Bird sweatshirts over their leggings at the mall. I mean unless you run a daycare center, isn’t it time to move on and get Road Runner off your chest? And nobody over the age of ten should ever wear any article of clothing that announces
I TAWT I TAW A PUDDYTAT
. Talk about a cry for help.

But I digress. It’s the holiday sweater cult that has got me in a swivet. At the kindergarten Fall Festival, I apparently didn’t get the memo that I must wear an elegant themed sweater painstakingly adorned with pumpkins, ghosts, and bats.

Some of these sweaters are insanely expensive. One cult member confided to me that she once spent $250 for a butter-soft wool sweater with dancing candy canes and nut-crackers prancing around her neck. Her eyes danced, her voice became high-pitched—she wanted me to drink the Kool-Aid, no question.

Class wars are evident. You’ve got your $14.98 Frosty the Snowman from Wal-Mart versus your $200 Brighton version from the prissy boutique with the size 0 sales staff, and don’t think the cult members won’t know the difference.

Far be it from me to question another’s sense of fashion (I did, after all, wear a mod paper dress in junior high during an unfortunate Carnaby Street phase) but this whole cutesywootsy, elves-are-eating-my-brain thing where you own an
entire wardrobe of sweaters with buttons that can be pushed to play “The Twelve Days of Christmas” is beyond me.

One friend told me she has enough sweaters to wear a different Christmas sweater from December first to twenty-fifth. My only response was, “Why?”

Fashion is a hobby for me. I’m fascinated by women who spend five hundred dollars on a single pair of high heels. Even if I had that kind of dough, I wouldn’t do it, because somewhere in the back of my noggin sits Sally Struthers pitifully imploring me to “Please help Save the Children.” (And the awful, shameful me always thinking,
Whoa, Sally, if you’d ease up on the Toaster Strudels, you could save a few right there.)

So, no, I can’t spend five hundred dollars for shoes. Guess I’m just too much of a hick. Here’s another confession: I don’t own a single piece of nipple jewelry.

I read recently where Janet Jackson’s personal stylist spent hours perusing nipple jewelry before he found that now-legendary sunburst design that was revealed during the Super Bowl halftime show.

Who the hell has enough money to hire someone to shop for her nipple jewelry? It makes me feel downright dowdy for getting excited about finally buying one of those shirts with my initial on it. Shopping for nipple jewelry? Doesn’t Janet ever need just, you know, socks?

My daughter, a huge Justin Timberlake fan who even has a little silver ‘N Sync cell phone that is programmed to call
her and say good night every night from J. T. himself, was eager to watch the Super Bowl halftime show.

So while hubby showered, as he does during all Super Bowl halftime shows, even if we’re at other people’s houses (what can I say—the man hates pageantry), the princess and I settled in to see her beloved Justin perform.

I like to consider myself a modern mom, capable of handling discussions of sex and stuff without blushing and flapping. Still, I was unprepared for the big rip-off. I stopped my Dorito in midcrunch. What was that?

I didn’t even notice the, uh, boob. I was wondering what that thing was attached to it, and I don’t mean Justin’s paw.

“Mommy,” pondered Precious, “why did Justin rip that lady’s top off?”

Channeling the wisdom of my foremothers (who am I kidding—all they had to worry about was not dying in child-birth, making homemade soap out of cow ear wax, and doing the nasty in the same bed where your eleven children are trying to sleep), I decided to answer her question honestly.

“Ratings, sugar. It’s all about shock and awe, corporate greed, and a culture that is increasingly morally challenged.”

“You talk funny, Mommy.”

All was forgiven that night when her ‘N Sync phone rang right at bedtime with a cheery “Sleep tight, and don’t let the bedbugs bite!” from Justin. Amazing how he can do all that
and
find time to expose Janet Jackson’s dinners on national television.

Thank heavens the NFL issued an official statement condemning the halftime show antics as “embarrassing, offensive, and inappropriate” and all but called for its smelling salts and shawl. I can only assume that this means that from now on, all NFL cheerleaders will be wearing burkas and shimmying only slightly suggestively.

Right. That’ll happen.

All I want is for someone to please tell Janet Jackson where Talbots is.

She might want to focus on another part of her admittedly buff body. According to fashion insiders, “The boob, it’s been done. It’s old, but the butt is new!” Only fashionistas can say something like that without cracking themselves up.

What are they talking about? Buttocks cleavage, you fashion Neanderthal. BC is taking over the nation. Open your eyes and see for yourself. The look once popularized by jovial plumbers everywhere is now hotter ‘n fish grease.

Not blessed with an audacious onion? Fear not, Jane Hathaway! Buttocks implants are the new must-have accessory for the true fashionista. Just ask Paris Hilton. But remember to speak very slowly.

In case you still don’t get the picture, let plastic surgeon Bruce Nadler of New York City explain it to you: “You want two mounds that are very discrete so you have a valley in between them. It’s like having the perfect push-up bra,” except for the fact that it’s on your ass.

This is all, of course, another example of plastic surgery following fashion. All those low-rise jeans out there, the ones with the quarter-inch-long zippers, means a lot of butt gets exposed in the process. With surgery, you can actually have your butt puffed up to make rear-end cleavage to keep your pants more interesting. I know! I know! I’m dizzy with the possibilities myself!

It should be only a matter of time before the “front butt” look popularized by overweight women who prefer very tight pants while cruising the aisles of Wal-Mart becomes the new must-have accessory. (“You wanna see some front butt, honey? When I wear my orange stretch capris, you can’t tell whether I’m a-comin’ or a-goin’!”)

To go along with all this low-rise, puffed-up-butt trend, you’ll want to add a very large tattoo. Turns out that a tattoo that shows just, like, the top third of an eagle, sunset, or some such before disappearing into the jeans completes the look. As explained by one excited New York tattoo artist, “The lower back is what the ankle was!”

Okay, let’s see if I got this straight. The butt is the new breast, and the lower back is the new ankle. Now if only we could figure out where the brain has moved.

I hate to admit it, but
The Swan
has gotten inside my head, and I can’t get it out. Every time I look in my mirror, I hear the velvety voice of the hit reality TV show’s fancy-pants Beverly Hills plastic surgeon saying, “She will, of course, need a brow lift, upper and lower face lift, liposuction on the cheeks, buttocks, chin, inner and outer thighs, calves, ankles, and eyelids, breast augmentation, nose job, tummy tuck, gum tissue recontouring, Zoom bleaching, dental veneers, a lip lift, hair extensions, and—oh what the hell—a brand new head.”

I know that
The Swan
has made a lot of thoughtful people ponder the disturbing shallowness of a culture that pursues, at all costs, some random notion of “beauty.” But not being
a thoughtful person, it just made me wonder if I shouldn’t apply for the next installment.