First, I have a couple bits of housekeeping: This week’s Unstapled recap will go up on Monday. So try to catch one of the ten billion repeats over the weekend if you want. Also, on Wednesday I updated the Museum of Fat Love for the first time in, embarrassingly, a couple months. My sincere apologies to those who’ve had submissions languishing in email limbo since then; I am getting through them now. If you want to be included, please send your story and picture to submissions@twowholecakes.org and I promise it won’t sit there for weeks this time. Thanks, my loves.
Now, on to the meat, or fluff, of this post.
Whether you love her or hate her—or both—Kirstie Alley gets mad props from me for maintaining such a ferociously loyal fan base, considering for the past several years she’s mostly famous for being fat, or for being not-fat, or for not wanting to be fat. I also enjoy her often-sweet, occasionally-deranged, and always-hilarious Twitter feed. Like all good camp, what makes Kirstie’s offerings so appealing is their absolute sincerity. She means this stuff. She means it hardcore. She may be the last surviving optimist in this bitter burned-out world. And even though I think her fat-hating inclinations—only rarely in evidence on her Twitter feed, to be fair—are a damn shame, I appreciate her candor and her, well, colorfulness. This is sort of what I imagine everyone in California to be like. Hence, I’m bringing y’all a semi-weekly, until-I-get-bored-with-it fluff column reproducing some of her choicest moments, emphatic capslock intact.
I proudly present, without further comment: five examples of Kristie Alley’s Twitter Wisdom, for the week of January 24, 2010.
Have a lovely weekend, fats.
Q & A: On dressing femme, being a “bad fat”, and changing the FA blogosphere.
By Lesley | January 28, 2010
Unimaginably, I am still accepting and answering questions over at my formspring page; we are at 64 as of this posting. If you’ve yet to participate, I invite you to pose a question of your own. Below are three recent questions and answers.
Q. I want to wear dresses and heels, but I always end up feeling like an elephant in drag. Being fat and femme is psychologically difficult when I’m told that my body isn’t what a woman’s body should look like. Any advice for dealing with this?
A. I really love this analogy you’ve created, so I suggest: Embrace the elephant in drag.
There’s no additional context or punchline here. This is what we do. When I first began abandoning pants a few years ago, I struggled with that elephant as well. In truth, I still do, in certain circumstances, in spaces where my stubborn commitment to not-fitting-in makes it difficult for me to feel socially adept, and not like a sideshow. Insofar as cultural reads of the body are concerned, fatness can strip a woman of femininity in the same way it can strip a man of masculinity; it can desexualize and degender a body entirely, if you let it. Luckily for us, being feminine and performing femme are two very different animals. “Feminine” is the default gender presentation of women in the United States; fashion magazines, television, movies, books, pop music, all of it contributes to the lifelong education of women on how to be feminine. The feminine body is the one we often rail against, the one that’s necessarily slender but not too slender, muscular but not too muscular, hairless, graceful, “beautiful”, reluctant to take up space.
Femmeness, however, is interrogated femininity. Femmeness is femininity dragged through some mud, kicked in the stomach, given a good scrubbing, teased into a bouffant, doused in glitter, and pushed onstage in search of a spotlight. At least, this is how I would define it, and you will find as many definitions of femme as there are femmes to supply them. The primary theme is the idea that femmeness by its nature is not a faithful reproduction of the feminine, but is instead a reinvention or reclamation (or ironic performance) of it. I’ve know many a fat femme in my life who’s felt a strong kinship to the concept of drag, and who would argue that all kinds of feminine costume are drag — just some kinds of drag are more culturally-acceptable than others.
But I know how you feel because I’ve felt it too, and I can tell you the only way around is through. The world would have to change for you to not feel the cultural dissonance of putting a fat female body in femme apparel, and the world will not change that fast, so my advice is to accept the discord and learn to make it a part of you. Femmeness is about playing WITH the role and not rotely speaking your lines; it’s about carving out your own definition and exploring what you want to express to the people around you; it’s about you. Even if what you want is as simple as the assurance to put on a dress and heels and stride purposefully out of your house in the morning. Know that you are confronting the forces that police our bodies, and feel proud to be standing up to them, even in the smallest ways. And you start by dressing up and going out and being yourself, one moment at a time.
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After the jump, read two more questions and answers, on whether fat people who eat fast food can also accept themselves, and how I’d change the fat blogosphere.
Q. I see lots of people saying that they work-out and eat healthily and are still overweight. I don’t doubt this at all. However, I personally am fat because I’m sedentary and eat too much junk/fast food. Can I still accept my size/ be accepted for my size?
A. I have a button I got from another fat activist awhile back; I am embarrassed to admit I forget who it was (possibly they will see this and remind me). I keep this button stuck to a bulletin board in my bedroom, where I see it every day. It says: “I am not a triathlete.”
Size acceptance occasionally falls into the trap of breaking people into “good fats” and “bad fats”. The good fats are the ones who have gym memberships, eat like they’re gunning for vegetarian sainthood, and have no weight-related chronic health problems. By this reckoning, I technically fall into the good-fat category. Alleged “bad fats”, on the other hand, are those who hate exercise, occasionally eat from McDonald’s, or have high BP or troubling blood sugar results at their annual physical (assuming they even get an annual physical). This divide is unworthy of any size acceptance movement because in the real world, we all straddle these lines, and trying to create a homogenized group of “acceptable” fat people only further marginalizes the fat people who, for reasons both within and outside their control, can’t fit into that category. Not everyone can afford a gym membership or fresh produce; not everyone has time to cook healthful balanced meals from whole foods, or to spend an hour running to nowhere on a treadmill; and not everyone can stave off health problems, no matter how virtuous their habits may be.
The important lesson from size acceptance — arguably the MOST important lesson — is that you should not feel compelled toward self-loathing over these things. Maybe you just hate exercise. That’s not a reason to hate yourself. Maybe your doctor tells you you’re prediabetic. Again, not a reason to hate yourself. Body acceptance is about ACCEPTANCE, and the idea that anything you do with your body in your life should come from a place of self-care and self-love, not from guilt and judgment and punishment.
There are no good fats or bad fats, and like my button reminds me, we don’t all have to be triathletes. Our decisions about how we take care of ourselves are personal and individual, and are not public property to be commented upon, nor are they up for group debate. It isn’t about arguing that everyone should be fat; it’s about arguing that fat bodies deserve the same basic dignity of non-fat bodies.
To misquote bell hooks: fat acceptance is for everybody. That means you have the right to ask for acceptance too, both from yourself and from others, no matter your circumstances. When we build a culture that respects all bodies, everyone wins.
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Q. If you could change one thing about the fat acceptance blogosphere, what would it be?
A. My answer to this has always been that I’d make it more diverse, and make FA bloggers in general more aware of intersectionality and the way various aspects of individual identity interact, particularly other aspects that marginalize folks. This has actually been happening more and more over the last several months, which is great, though I think it can go further still. I’m also happy to see non-exclusively-FA blogs work to acknowledge and include FA-related perspectives.
To speak more specifically, I only caught up on the most recent drama yesterday, so I want to clarify that I don’t think the fat acceptance blogosphere is an appropriate venue for weight-loss and dieting blogs. This is not because weight loss is inherently wrong, but because that sort of talk is acceptable and widespread absolutely everywhere, and fat-friendly space is intended to be a refuge from that. Not a refuge just for those of us made mildly uncomfortable by it, but also out of consideration for folks in recovery from eating disorders or other body or food-related trauma, who employ fat-friendly space as a vital source of sanity and relative safety in a world full of triggers.
All of this is to say that by “diversity” I don’t mean a broad diversity of opinions on the subject of weight, dieting, and/or health that includes conventional wisdom, but a diversity of experiences of fatness, so that we have a fuller representation of folks from different races, ethnicities, and socio-economic classes; folks with disabilities both related and unrelated to their size; and folks with variant gender and sexual identities. (I am probably forgetting a marginalized group here, and I apologize, but you get my drift.) I think the two most important things size acceptance communities should agree on are: 1) the promotion of a healthy criticism of the cultural messages around weight and body shape and size, and 2) that body-positive spaces should by extension strive to avoid reinforcing these messages. Everything else is negotiable.
I am still answering questions over at Formspring.me, and will probably continue to do so until y’all run out of things to ask. So get thee to questioning! Below are two recent questions and answers.
Q. I’m aware that you enjoy fresh produce immensely. What are your favorite vegetables and what is your favorite way to cook them?
A. EXCELLENT QUESTION. Here’s the first ten that spring immediately to mind:
1. Brussels sprouts: I halve these, toss them with olive oil, fresh-ground pepper and kosher salt, and roast them in the oven.
2. Asparagus: same as above, though I often add some sliced shallots. I also occasionally do a roasted-asparagus flatbread involving eggs and a bit of cheese that’s excellent.
3. Collards: Fresh greens are SO underrated. My favorite method of preparation here is to saute the collards (never boil — if they’re fresh as they should be, they’ll taste fine sauteed, and when you boil them most of the awesome nutrients go down the drain with the water) with onion, garlic, and crushed red pepper; crumble in some crispy bacon; serve over whole wheat fusilli or some other easily-manageable pasta. Kale can be treated the same way; weirdly, I’m not a huge fan of chard but I expect it’d work too.
4. Broccoli rabe: sauteed in olive oil with garlic and tons of crushed red pepper.
5. Butternut squash: I make a really simple butternut risotto that is super easy and crazy delicious.
6. Sweet potatoes: So much more flavorful than plain old white potatoes, these are amazing just baked, with butter and kosher salt. I have this for dinner at least once a week.
7. Spinach: I am not a big fan of cooked spinach (though I eat it raw in salads by the truckload), but the one exception is this spinach and feta frittata I make. Even my vegetable-fearing husband loves it. [Edit: The recipe for this one is here.]
8. Carrots: this time of year I make a carrot-ginger soup that is just the perfect comfort food. Actually, I should totally make some this week.
9. Cauliflower: Aloo gobi!
10. Artichokes: I steam these whole and eat them leaf by leaf with fresh garlic butter.
I am not including salads here, but I eat at least one big salad a day, usually dressed simply with good vinegar (I have a fig-infused one I’m really into right now) and olive oil, and the omnipresent kosher salt. As a cook I am mostly vegetarian (except for bacon, nothing compares as a seasoning for certain dishes) so stuff like the above is how I feed myself during the week.
Fun question! Thanks for asking it.
After the jump, I hold forth on the changing internets and the inevitable demise (or not) of LiveJournal.
Q. Livejournal feels too outdated and facebook and twitter and other microblogging too brief and too exposed. You have your own domain-specific blog and blog audience, is that the best alternative for displaced LJers who still yearn to express and connect?
A. Oh, I could ramble on about this subject for days if you let me.
Truly, I am still fond of Livejournal and continue to use it, for a few reasons. The first is that I have a wonderful circle of trusted friends there, many of whom I likely never would have met without LJ. Secondly, the beginning point of Fatshionista was the Livejournal community, and as long as that exists I will always have a presence on LJ. Though individual journal activity does seem to to be dropping off on LJ, the fats community is still huge and crazy and as active as it’s ever been. So for me, over the past year I’ve been changing how I use LJ, but not necessarily making plans to abandon it altogether.
The obvious issue here is the exposure issue you mention above. If Facebook, with all its privacy settings, still feels too exposed, then odds are a domain and public blog of your own will feel like running into Times Square naked. During New Year’s Eve. Also, building a solid audience is actually pretty challenging; when I first launched fatshionista.com, I’d assumed that between the LJ community and the other FA bloggers I knew, readers would be all over my site. Not so! It takes awhile to establish a voice and a style that people recognize. These days I’m constantly astonished and humbled by the number of really loyal and wonderful regular readers I have… even the ones who never comment.
Which leads me to my next point: I write for fatshionista.com for other people. Everything I post there is specifically intended to speak to my now-established audience; even when I’m posting something that may be controversial or difficult, I’m aware of who I’m writing for. On the other hand, I write in my LJ for me, and me alone. If I’m venting about community drama or sharing pictures of my cats or whatever, I’m doing it for me, and the friends I have there, I assume, read it because they like me and are interested in the banality of my life.
My point being, a standalone blog is not always (though sometimes!) a means of expression and connection in the same way LJ is. LJ is a closed system, specially designed to help folks of like minds and interests to find one another and connect; a blog on the internets is one little toy boat bobbing in a sea of toy boats. You will invariably bump into other blogs, now and then, but it’s much harder to find people you’ve got that simpatico with. There are, of course, various feeds with can serve as a sort of blog friendslist (FA blogs, for example, have the Notes From the Fatosphere feed and a few others — check out Fat Lot of Good for info: http://www.fatlotofgood.org.au/). But it’s not as… intimate as LJ is. LJ does feel outdated, but for me, that’s not reason to jump ship just yet. My suspicion is that as LJ falls to the wayside, it’s either going to have to change dramatically as a system, or something else will evolve to replace it. As it is, Livejournal really does fill a space that nothing else quite satisfies.
This is just my opinion, of course. I like all of the mentioned outlets for different reasons (Facebook, I need to use more, especially for fatshionista.com), but you’re right that none of them are replacements for a site like Livejournal. An option becoming more and more popular is Tumblr, which sort of melds a lot of the nice friend-making options of LJ with the wider reach of a blog. I have a Tumblr account I rarely use, though not because I don’t like it; just because I can only keep up with so much!
I mostly spent the past two months wearing a lot of black and therefore being unmotivated to take outfit pictures. I’m currently trying to get back into the habit.
Bigger versions and specifics after the jump.
Brown dress is from eShakti;
yellow & taupe snake-print cardi is from Marshalls;
purple tights from We Love Colors;
Red dress from eShakti;
black/white/purple leopard-ish print cardigan from Marshalls;
green/blue/purple houndstooth scarf, also from Marshalls;
purple tights from Avenue;
clogs by Dansko.
Celery silk dress from Macys awhile back;
aged brown cardi from Target;
belt from Steel Toe Studios;
buckle from Fosterweld;
pink tights from Avenue;
green-spatter-painted camel suede desert boots by Sam Edelman.
Previously: Carnie set herself up as the cocaine supplier to a local dealer. Oh, apologies, what I meant to say was Carnie successfully convinced a baked-goods shop to sell her baked goods. See, last week Dallas told us that food is the same thing as cocaine so I got confused. Also, Carnie was harrassed by her manager; she hated the clothes Art the Stylist brought her; she confessed to Dallas about her financial problems.
In a new interactive effort, on Tuesday I put up a poll on the sidebar asking: “Would you frame and display a giant print of yourself on a 1991 cover of Rolling Stone?” It seems most people feel as I do, as the most popular answer was “Maybe, but I’d hang it somewhere ironic, like the bathroom.”
This week, we open with Ren & Stimpy music, which is bizarre and yet appropriate. Carnie is returning from a shopping trip with DanielBrian (whom she repeatedly, both in last week’s episode and this one, refers to as her “bubies”, which… man, I want to find it cute and endearing, but I just can’t). Again, Carnie clarifies that DanielBrian are her “gay BFFs”, which, AGAIN, I want to think it’s cute and endearing, but it’s not. Speaking as a woman who has had a few gay best friends in my life, this raises my hackles a bit. I’ll explain. Anytime I hear a straight woman refer to her gay male best friend as her “gay BFF” it makes him sound like a kicky accessory to me, and not an actual person. If these gentlemen are your best friends, what does their sexual orientation have to do with it? Would they cease to be your best friends if they were straight? Does referencing their gayness make them seem cooler? It’s not as if these men are stealth gays. Their gayness would be apparent from fifty yards away with vaseline smeared on your eyeballs. Also, “Gay BFF”, intentionally or not, sounds to me like a qualifier — oh, these aren’t my REAL best friends, they’re my gay ones! It just doesn’t hit me as cute, though I know it’s meant to be cute; instead it sounds tokenizing. I fully believe that DanielBrian, though I cannot distinguish between them on the TV, really are two individuals with interests and personalities, and are not the one-dimensional caricatures the show seems to want them to be.
Okay, sorry. Pet peeve. Moving on.
Carnie loves shopping, she tells us, and especially when shopping involves DanielBrian. She and DanielBrian pull a ridiculous number of shopping bags from the back of the car. I mean ridiculous with a capital RIDIC. Carnie stops suddenly, holding a huge black shopping bag, and says: “Wait a minute, I just thought of something!” In a confidential whisper (BECAUSE YO IT’S NOT LIKE YOU’RE BEING FILMED HERE, HELLO), she says of the big bag, “This bag… I think I should hide this bag.” She hands it to one half of DanielBrian and tells him to take it and pretend like it’s his. Oh, my mom used to do this! It’s called a shopping addiction, and she taught me well in how to self-soothe via consumerism. (Love you, Mom, but you know it’s totally true.)
DanielBrian isn’t happy about lying, and when they get inside and Rob and his hair are nowhere in sight, Carnie has DanielBrian stash the contraband, whatever it is, under a table. Oh, so it looks like you spent too much money on something weeks ago and then forgot about it! That’s much better. Rob and his hair enter shortly thereafter and asks if they won the lottery. HAHA, oh Rob! But they’re gifts! Carnie presents Rob and his hair with a plaid lumberjack shirt that looks almost exactly like the one he’s currently wearing. At least she knows what he likes. There is also a turquoise leopard-print hairdryer; I presume the leopard-print makes it more effective in some way. Rob says, “So now we have three hairdryers.” They’ve also bought toys for the kids.
This whole scene feels very staged, y’all, but damn the torpedoes, I am sticking with it.
DanielBrian confessionizes, “Boy, talk about a party crasher! Rob came in and the shopping was over.” Back in the living room, Carnie shows Rob and his hair a box of blocks for Lola, and Rob states that they already have that exact same set. But I bet it was on sale! Rob confessions that Carnie’s coming home with lots of bags makes him nervous “because I never know how much she’s spent.” Shit, y’all. Carnie wants Rob and his hair to lighten up; Rob can’t lighten up if he’s worrying about money. Rob wants to know how much it all cost, and Carnie looks at DanielBrian when she says, “Five, six hundred dollars?” At which point DanielBrian totally blow her secret and tell Rob about the additional item they smuggled in and hid under the table. From the murky depths of the shopping bag in question, they pull some black shoulder bag we don’t really get a good look at. I KNEW it’d be a purse or something. Those things are expensive. Rob says, incredulous: “THIS COST A THOUSAND DOLLARS?” at which point DanielBrian scurry from the house like two boys caught watching their dad’s porn.
Rob and his hair are actually very sympathetic and likeable here, in which he confessions that as a working musician he doesn’t bring in as much money as Carnie, and that he often feels like “a jackass” telling her she’s spending too much. But, he says, “it has to be done.” Rob feels like her overspending is embarrassing. Carnie confessions that people think because she’s the daughter of a Beach Boy (which, seriously y’all, it wasn’t just a Beach Boy, her dad is Brian bleeding Wilson), and she was so successful with Wilson Phillips, that she must be rich. Apparently not so, and that money’s been spent. Back in the living room, Rob and his hair are still griping. It turns out the bag is a baby bag. Ah, so its usefulness is even more limited than I thought. Apparently Carnie already has several baby bags; she objects that she needed a black one. I can sort of understand this, but I wouldn’t spend a grand on a black baby bag when baby bags can be had at Target for thirty bucks.
Rob and his hair call for a financial meeting. Dun dun dunnnn.
Now we’re visiting Sweet Harts, the bakery where Carnie’s selling her goods, and thanks to helpful reader stormy.friday, I now know this shop is ACTUALLY owned by Melissa Joan Hart of Sabrina the Teenage Witch fame. Melissa’s not here, though in her stead Dean tells Carnie they love her stuff and want more. Yay.
Later, Carnie’s talking on the phone and chilling by the pool back at the house when Art the Stylist appears with two Starbucks cups. Frappucinos, I think. They hug, and Carnie reminds us that Art is her Newlywed Game stylist. We know. Then she tells us, “He’s also a genius behind the plus-size fashion boom.” O RLY. Let us google Mr. Art Conn. There is a disused Twitter account. His IMDB profile lists him as having been a stylist on American Idol, but nothing else. In fairness, I don’t think IMDB is that invested in chronicling the careers of people who sling clothing. LinkedIn, Facebook. Yawn. There’s a few interviews and mentions on fashion blogs. He worked with Jordin Sparks! Oh, and he’s friends with Nick Verreos from Project Runway! Nick was totally robbed. All in all, it seems as though Art is a respected member of his profession, but I’m finding nothing that speaks to his fame as a plus-size-specific stylist. Oh well. It was worth a look.
Art reminds Carnie that he’s been working with “the clothing company Torrid.” I LOLed. It’s hilarious to me that huge swathes of the population have no idea what Torrid is, but to me it’s one of like four stores total I can shop in that reliably carries my size. Apparently Torrid wants to give Art a fashion award. Aw, that’s nice! Though getting a fashion award from Torrid is kind of like getting an art award from Bob Ross, isn’t it? No offense to Bob Ross, who was awesome, but his awesomeness was mostly derived from his complete embrace of mediocrity, and the idea that even people who’ll never be great artists can paint for the pure joy of it. Torrid, too, embraces fashion mediocrity a good portion of the time; if wearing an Invader Zim tee or a dress plucked from the pages of Twilight makes you happy, you should absolutely do so and tell me to shut the fuck up. But it’s hard to argue that they’re on the cutting edge of fashion. My opinion, anyway.
Torrid has asked Art who he’d like to have present the award. He’s asking Carnie to do it. Alas, the ceremony conflicts with Lola’s tennis lesson, which apparently Lola has wanted Carnie to come see, but which Carnie has yet to attend. Carnie decides to explain to Lola about Art’s special award, and go to the Torrid event instead of to her tennis lesson. Notice how carefully I am not passing judgement on this choice. No judgement at all. This paragraph right here is a judgement-free zone.
Later, Carnie’s manager, whose name I will remember at some point, comes in to sit on the couch with her and ask her about her financial situation. Manager says he’s not there to “throw cold water over everything”, and then he throws cold water over everything by dissing Carnie’s baking business idea again. They move on to broader topics and he asks Carnie what she thinks they should focus on. Carnie says, emphatically and believably, “I relate to women, no matter if I’m three hundred, two hundred, or a hundred and fifty pounds, and I want to build the Carnie brand, like having a plus size clothing line—”
This was the point in this episode, less than ten minutes in, where my brain popped out of my head, declared its disgust with me for forcing it to endure this drivel, and walked out of the house, slamming the door behind it like a final exclamation point. I am fairly certain that any clothing line Carnie Wilson stamped with her signature would look like every other bland, matronly, synthetic-fiber fat-lady line, as, in my opinion, it’s impossible to produce a truly amazing plus-size collection when you hate your plus size body. It comes through.
Manager wants to pitch the plus size clothing idea to QVC; Carnie agrees. Yeah! Oh wait, I mean why god, why. Commercial.
Carnie has cajoled her hairstylist/makeup artist to make a house call by promising her cheesecake. Carnie needs her services in advance of the Torrid award gala. (As an aside: Torrid, Evans goes with Beth Ditto, and you join up with Carnie Wilson? What is wrong with this picture?) Lola comes in wearing her tennis outfit and she and Carnie interact for like, the second time ever in two episodes so far. Wow, Lola looks a lot like her dad. Rob and his hair are taking her to her lesson, and Rob guilt-trips Carnie a little over breaking her plans with her daughter.
At the tennis lesson, Rob sits on the bench with the other moms, shouting encouragement, while Lola has a group lesson. It is, indeed, very cute.
There is no explanation here why Carnie couldn’t do both, as when Rob is at the tennis lesson, it’s broad daylight, but when we cut to Carnie next, it’s dark out. Maybe her hair took a really long time. Carnie’s in the limo heading to the Torrid party to honor Art “for his work with plus size women”. That’s seriously how she says it, like dressing fat girls is charity work on a level with nursing lepers in India. She confessions, “No skinny bitches gonna be hogging that red carpet tonight,” and I literally clap my hands to my face and shake my head miserably. Yeah, hating on skinny women is an appropriate response to one’s own insecurity. Oh snap, Carnie. You sure told them. Oh snap, indeed.
On arrival, Carnie greets Art and they both pose for pictures with some Torrid models. Carnie asks Art if he’s nervous, and he says, “a little.” Dude, you already know you’ve won! What’s to be nervous about?
This next part I rewound on DVR three times because I was convinced I hallucinated it. Carnie suddenly announces she “has the biggest fart ever to make” and scampers off away from the crowd to theatrically let it rip in an open space near a building, doing a little farting-dance and shaking one leg out in the process. WHAT.
WHAT.
WHAT JUST HAPPENED.
And then the show continues like this event was fully ordinary. You know, I am generally okay with folks being open about bodily functions with their friends and loved ones. I am not personally fond of being exposed to either pre-fart announcements, or to farts themselves, but I can understand there are folks who consider it no big deal, or who even find it amusing (for heaven’s sake, I married just such a person). However, doing this on television? I feel like this crosses a line. The whole “try not to fart in public” line I learned about when I was around eight years old, a line I have attempted to respect for the majority of my life since then. If that makes me uptight, then I can accept that.
Inside, there is a Torrid fashion show. I dig maybe three things that go down the runway. Among the ones I dislike is a long pink mermaid dress with a giant polka-dotted flounce. Remember when I described one of the dresses Heather got to choose from on More to Love as “something a clown would wear if she wanted to upstage all the other clowns at the big annual Clown Ball”? That description totally fits this dress. (Also, remember the Room of Requirement? Such happy recapping memories!) Carnie says, “When I see these big girls in their form-fitting clothes, I get really inspired for my own clothing line.” Uh huh. I’d rather it inspire her to shed the self-loathing and quit the cyclical weight-loss/weight-gain merry-go-round, but I guess that’ll have to do.
Carnie gets onstage to present the “first-ever Torrid Dream Maker” award to Art, and talks about how awesome he is. Cut to many shots of cute fat girls in the audience. Eventually Art gets up and my hopes are high until he says, “As a pretty girl myself, I know there are two things we always need, which is companies like Torrid who design amazing clothes… and Spanx.” HAHA. Fuck you. Sorry kids, but if you know me at all you’ll know how vehemently I revile Spanx as just a hipper reinvention of the girdle using faux-empowerment rhetoric and a cute cartoon lady. No offense meant to those who love them, but they’re offensive to my lower half.
At any rate, when Art says “Spanx”, Carnie, who is supposed to be standing placidly in the background and giving Art his moment and explicitly not making this all about her, suddenly shrieks, “Oh please, are you kidding me?” and proceeds to turn around, bend over, and lift up her dress, effectively mooning the audience with her enSpanxed bottom (complete with hole, quality garments that Spanx are). “I’m wearing them right now!” she crows. (I am reminded, again, of More to Love’s Spanx-bonding amongst the laydeez in the first episode. Hell’s bells, is it possible that this show is making me nostalgic for More to Love?) After this, we don’t get to hear the rest of Art’s acceptance speech but cut straight to “…thanks, have a wonderful night.” At least that’s over. Art confessions something about Carnie being a “crazy bitch” for mooning the crowd but that’s why he loves her.
As an aside, I did some googling for further information on this so-called award gala, because it just seemed off to me. I found that the gala was not really an awards ceremony as the show makes it sound, but a benefit for the The National Breast Cancer Foundation, and there were several “Dream Maker” awards given that night. The Torrid model search winners were in the runway show, and there were some live musical performances. There’s a highlight video here, though Carnie is only pictured for like a second. I gotta say, this whole thing would have been FAR more interesting if they’d not edited this to make it look like some half-assed award thing but showed it for the multipurpose benefit event it was.
Carnie arrives home to find she’s locked out of her gated house, with no keys, and neither Rob nor his hair are answering the phone. Carnie is reduced to shouting over the wall around her home to get Rob’s attention, but it’s not working. She walks around to the sides of the house and shouts some more. See, this is why having a wall around your house is a stupid idea. Normal people get locked out and just climb though the kitchen window. Finally the gate opens. Carnie finds Rob, who was working downstairs with headphones on and didn’t hear the phone. He gets in a jab about the $1,000 diaper bag almost immediately. He then reminds her they’re meeting with their financial planner tomorrow.
[I must pause here to acknowledge something only tangentially related to this recap. Earlier this week I was buzzing around YouTube looking for further early-80s lite-FM examples of Rob’s hair. I ran across the video for REO Speedwagon’s “Can’t Fight This Feeling”, linked below, which I submit as one of the most unintentionally hilarious videos ever made. Though I remember the song vividly (and have, in fact, had occasion to listen to it many times since the 80s ended) I have absolutely no memory of this video, which means I never saw it, for if I had I am certain it would have been burned into my memory like an REO-shaped branding iron for the rest of my life. The literal “candle in the window” scene! The magical teddy-bear world under the bed! The almost catatonic blandness with which Kevin Cronin delivers vocals one would expect to involve lots of grimacing and fist-clenching, the better to punctuate the mixture of pain and elation at falling hopelessly in love with a friend, and the risk of brutal rejection upon the expression of those feelings! The liberal overuse of chromakey technology which was the hallmark of so many 80s videos! The red piano! Damn, I want a red piano! All of this is to lead up to the following:]
As they walk from the street into the financial-planner office the next day, Rob’s hair is OUT of CONTROL. Rob, take care, another month without a haircut and you will be approaching the Kevin Cronin level of hair dangerousness, in which the hair is but a few days’ growth from completely consuming the head.
I am sad when it turns out the financial planner is a human woman, and not a financial panther as I’d hoped. She wants to know why Carnie and Rob wanted to see her; Carnie cops to the fact that it was all Rob’s idea. And so therapy begins. The financial planner observes that Rob is concerned because Carnie is spending as much as she’s making. Nicely put! Carnie immediately launches into defensive mode, probably understandably, saying, “I don’t want this to be a Carnie-bashing moment… I feel like I do everything,”—except take your daughter to her tennis lesson—-”I’m busting my balls to make this money so we can live this lifestyle.” Okay, I don’t pretend to be an expert on the heterosexual male mind by any means, but this strikes me as being awfully dismissive of a partner’s concerns, not to mention being just the teensiest bit emasculating. I am honestly coming to dig Rob (if not his hair) a lot because he seems mostly unbothered by Carnie’s being the breadwinner, except insofar as it takes her away from her family, but I do wonder if he misses his own balls once in awhile. I feel entitled to say this as a wife who attempts to run roughshod over her own husband on a near-daily basis, with occasional success. So I recognize the behavior and the need for a more equitable conversation. Finally, the financial planner tells Carnie it’s clear Rob’s fearful for their fiscal well-being, to which Carnie immediately states that she’s not fearful at all. “You should be,” says the financial planner. ZING.
The financial planner tells them to make a budget, and to first mutually discuss and come to agreement on any additional expenditures. DUH. Anyone living in a partnership in which financial resources are shared: you should be doing this. Period. Any other way just leads to resentment and frustration that will bleed over into every other aspect of your relationship. Carnie agrees that this is a good idea, for the sake of her family. Commercial.
Carnie’s mom and stepdad, along with Dee Dee, have come over for dinner, and Carnie has big news. Evidently QVC passed on her clothing line! Whew! No wait, that’s not the big news. They ARE interested in a line of Carnie Wilson products. Now she just has to come up with ideas to take to New York to pitch to them. Last I knew QVC was based in Pennsylvania, but okay. Carnie says, by way of example, “macaroni and cheese, meatloaf, sugar free desserts, regular desserts…” Do they sell food on QVC now? Mom thinks house slippers are a good idea. Someone else says “personal massagers” and I lose my mind laughing. Even Carnie is a little disbelieving. Mom says, “That’s for your housewares side!” I guess a vibrator sort of counts as a household appliance. Does anyone else find the idea of women eating Carnie Wilson food while wearing Carnie Wilson slippers and pleasuring themselves with Carnie Wilson “personal massagers” absolutely hilarious? Carnie’s convinced that if this goes well they’ll be super rich instead of just moderately rich. Awesome.
Later that night, Carnie and Rob are putting Lola to bed. Lola inexplicably has a bag of quarters, and Carnie, always self-referential, decides to teach Lola about saving money. Apparently one saves money by putting said money into a coin bank shaped like a giant butt, and which makes farting noises when the coins are dropped through the coin slot, which is placed approximately where the anus would be. This episode is all about ass, it seems. As if this weren’t surreal enough, apparently the farting ass-bank was a gift from Lola’s grandmother. This is another scene that feels incredibly staged but dudes, I don’t even care.
Next week: Dallas the personal trainer reappears, lest you thought he was smothered in an avalanche of sleeveless t-shirts, and he’s equipped with a measuring tape and a merciless passion for going through Carnie’s pantry and identifying the evil spirits “bad” foods residing therein. I’m sure this won’t be miserable and body-hating at all. Until then.
My Formspring.me project forges onward, tall and proud! If you have a question, anonymous or otherwise, there’s still time to ask. Two of the more common ones I’ve been getting are variations on “why are you awesome?” (I’m not! I don’t know! Lesley is flustered by compliments!) and “when will you write a book?” (soon, I hope, if I can find an agent willing to put up with me). You can read my accumulated answers (44 answers to 44 questions so far, according to the site) and/or submit your own inquiry over on my Formspring page. Immense thanks for giving me so many excellent questions thus far, my darlings.
Q. You stated in another answer that your workout routine is “engaging, challenging, and great fun.” I’m a happy fat-lady who hates working out (with capital H) – what is your routine and/or can you give a girl some suggestions for enjoying it more?
A. I enthusiastically love the gym. I am aware that this is kind of unusual. I am also aware that the gym is this preposterous first-world invention, and even as I am exercising I frequently look around and am astonished at how we’re all basically hamsters on different kinds of wheels, chugging away to nowhere. But I LOVE IT.
Without a gym, I am less in love with working out as a concept. For me, my enjoyment is tied up in the ritual of going to a Special Working-Out Place; in truth, I think part of my love affair with the gym is rooted in the fact that exercise is the best self-care I can administer. It’s a huge privilege to be able to afford and attend a gym, and to me, every time I go, I feel a little of what I imagine some women feel when they go to a spa (though I wouldn’t know, having never been to a spa): it’s a big self-indulgent, a bit luxurious, a bit narcissistic.
I document my own daily workout routines on a chart—I am a nerd, okay—but I’m not going to attempt to reproduce it exactly here, because it’s more the philosophy behind it that makes my workouts fun than it is a particular sequence of activities.
First: Only do things you like, or which are at least tolerable. The second I start trying to force myself to use a machine that I hate, exercise becomes a punishment, which is the surest route to me avoiding it. Be unembarrassed about trying every machine; and be willing to try said machines a few times before writing them off as misery-inducing. Years ago I began a great love affair with the elliptical trainer, which persists to this day. However, at the time I was also enamored of the recumbent bike, which I have since come to despise. If you start to hate any part of your routine, do something else.
Second: Don’t force yourself into a lockstep routine you’ll quickly get bored with. I have a general overall time-spent-working-out as a target, but I don’t require myself to spend a minimum amount of time doing any one thing. If this means I spend 52 minutes on the elliptical and 5 minutes on the treadmill and 2 minutes and 15 seconds on the stair-climber-thing on a given day, then that’s fine. Another day I may do a round of lifty-weight machines and then spend 20 minutes ellipticalling and 20 minutes treadmilling. Another day I may swim laps for an hour and do nothing else. Keeping my routine flexible is a big deal, even though it’s rare I change it up much — just knowing I’m allowed to switch things around at my whim, that I’m not locked in to any particular schedule, is reassuring.
[One thing I DON’T do is the ridiculous habit many folks at my gym have of cranking up the incline on the treadmill to a 45-degree angle, so they have to cling desperately to the console to keep from falling off the end as they plod away. Why in hell do people do that?]
Third: Entertainment! ForEVER I just listened to music (via specially-created uptempo playlists) on my iPod at the gym. It was fun, it kept me moving, it occasionally got me stared at for dancing on the treadmill. Unfortunately my gym, like many gyms these days, is chockablock with television monitors, so eventually I found myself tuning out my music and getting distracted reading the closed-captioning on CNN. Which is not so relaxing, and I mostly go to the gym to relax. In search of something more engaging than music, last year I started listening to podcasts and audiobooks. This was basically the greatest idea I’ve ever had. I get to catch up on NPR, something I actually look forward to, at the same time I’m exercising. I can’t use my iPod in the pool (YET) which is a bummer, but I enjoy swimming for its own sake so much that I rarely miss it.
Really, the best advice I can give you is to find something you don’t hate, and ideally, something you like. Maybe you’re not a gym person and would rather go for outdoor hikes. Maybe you’d prefer something less workout-centric and would dig a dance class (or a yoga or pilates class) instead. Maybe a social sport friendly to lots of different fitness levels would work for you: for example, Boston has a foursquare league (http://www.squarefour.org/) I’ve been dying to check out, if I can get over my fear of competitive sports (there are also local kickball teams in my area). Try everything, and know that all kinds of movement “count” as exercise, even the ones that are fun.
I’ve written about Carnie Wilson, albeit somewhat savagely, before. When I first heard about her new reality show, Unstapled, I immediately thought about recapping it, given the crazy positive response to my recaps of More to Love last year. I was on the fence, however, mostly because it seems to have a clear weight-loss component, and I avoid shows with that sort of vibe. Obviously, I’ve decided to go forward with it anyway. It’s true that avoiding this sort of diet-happy crap is how I manage to maintain my sanity as a self-accepting fat person, but I also think it’s important to look at these pieces of media critically, and to illuminate other ways of seeing our bodies and our world. Thus, I’m once again forging into the breach (much to my husband’s chagrin, my protestations that “it’s only half an hour!” going unheeded) and attempting to provide a funny, sarcastic, but ultimately smart and thoughtful take on a bit of media that is, however subtly, helping to shape how we perceive and understand fatness as a society. This is not about being snarking on Carnie Wilson. Though that will inevitably happen, Carnie’s TV persona is extremely likeable and relatable overall, and I’m not attempting to make her look like the bad guy. That said, she is inviting a nation of millions into her home and her life, so I feel as though my publishing my observations, which are certainly more kind and better-intentioned than many, is fully justified.
But enough of that. The circus is coming to town!
We open with the totally-not-hackneyed intro in which Carnie says, “Welcome to my world!”—which seems to involve lots of whooping and dancing. There’s a short version of Carnie’s life so far: she’s the spawn of a Beach Boy; she was the fat one in beloved-by-seventh-grade-me musical act Wilson Phillips; she had gastric bypass surgery, live, on the internet (uh, see above link); she made lots of money, but spent even more; she’s the host of the current incarnation of The Newlywed Game (coincidentally right here on this same network!); she’s a mom and wife. There are many pictures depicting Carnie’s ever-changing levels of fatness over the years. Then we get a short snippet of a terrifically annoying theme song. With so much music in this family you’d think they could do better, but what do I know? Maybe Chynna wrote all the songs.
The episode starts with Carnie getting on a scale. Of course it does. And of course Carnie has a full-on doctor’s office scale IN HER HOUSE. I initially wondered if this scale wasn’t provided by the show, as I always assumed those things were stupid expensive, but amazon.com will sell you one for between $150 to $250, so maybe not. As an aside, did you know there is a scale manufacturer called “Detecto”? I find that hilarious for some reason. Carnie (sort of adorably if I’m being honest) tells the scale “I never liked you” before heaving her really sort of mediocre fatness onto the weighing platform. If the scale is to be believed, Carnie weighs 216 pounds. Hm. I find myself wondering how short she is.
In the kitchen, Carnie’s older daughter Lola wants candy for breakfast. Who doesn’t? Carnie confessions: “Yes, that’s my Lola. She loves all the sweet things in life, just like her mom.” If this show turns into a document of a mom passing down her body/food issues to her daughter, I may lose my fucking mind. But it’s only the first episode! And Carnie is so likeable! So let’s be optimistic! We’re only 120 seconds in!
Reality show plot point #1: Carnie wants to turn her love of sweet things into a baking business. OH! Okay. Helping her in this endeavour is her Aunt Dee Dee, who was in a girl group in the 1960s. Dee Dee, you had me at “girl group”. Dee Dee, recently laid off, is currently working as Carnie’s personal assistant. And check it out, it’s Carnie without makeup. Her skin looks pretty great. While Carnie and Dee Dee begin their baking prep in the kitchen, Carnie’s husband Rob comes in carrying their baby daughter. Rob has yet to say a word, and I am absolutely sure he’s an awesome guy, a loving husband, and a wonderful father. But I hate his hair. I know it’s ridiculous, I know it’s nitpicky (though these recaps are all bout it), and seriously y’all, I have seen pictures of this guy without That Hair and he is definitely a cute enough fella. But the hair is killing me. It’s like… I don’t even know what it’s like. No wait, I do know. It’s a bit like one of the guys from Air Supply, circa 1982. Rob’s is less puffy, so I suppose it’s like if the guy from Air Supply figured out how to use conditioner in the past thirty years.
Compare for yourself: Old hair. New hair. Guy from Air Supply. (Also worth a look for the camp value, though it features fewer pictures of the referenced hair, is this marvel of 1980’s videomaking.)
Carnie says Rob is a great, hands-on Dad, “but it’s been god knows how long since he’s had his hands on… me.” Poor Rob confessions that he feels left out of Carnie’s busy-ass life. It’s not really clear why they’re not connecting, though I would expect busy schedules and two young kids factor into it more than anything else. Possibly Carnie does not like Rob’s hair either. Rob, consider a haircut.
While Carnie gets to baking, her manager stops in to harass her about taking too much on. Evidently she has to record 768 episodes of The Newlywed Game in the next two hours or something. Basically Manager wants Carnie to reconsider her plan to start this baking business. Carnie comes back, rather emphatically, stating that baking is work she actually enjoys and which relaxes her, and provides balance. So she doesn’t feel the urge to go suck down a box of wine every night. You can have her baking when you pry it from her cold dead hands, Manager. Also, Carnie? Is a super intense person. When she tells Manager to back off, bag of chocolate chips in hand, it’s intense. Carnie could probably kill a man with a bag of chocolate chips. At least, I believe she could.
Carnie decides to defuse the situation by making everyone scambled eggs. She does that flippy-pan thing a bunch of times, and I’m envious, because every time I try to do it I just dump food all over. Already I am impressed with Carnie’s kitchen skills. Ding-dong, who’s at the door? It’s Art the Stylist, pulling a rolling rack of clothing. Carnie tells us it’s Art’s job to “hide the 50 pounds that I promised myself I would lose after having Lucy.” I spy a Torrid tag! Art says he has 65 outfits for her to try on, and Carnie isn’t thrilled. Carnie, girl, you can send Art and his rack of clothing over to my house, I will unselfishly take that bullet for you. Carnie says trying on clothes is “worse than the dentist” for her. WHAT. MADNESS. A MAN IN AVIATORS BRINGS A RACK OF CLOTHING TO YOUR HOUSE AND YOU COMPLAIN? I DO NOT UNDERSTAND YOU, CARNIE WILSON. NOT ONE BIT.
Art is cute. Carnie tells him she is most self-conscious of her arms right now, which she says have gone to bleep. To be clear, Carnie doesn’t say the word “bleep”, but “bleep” is the sound we hear. I think bleep means shit. Art confessions that his job is to “make her feel beautiful, make her feel good, and confident.” I am totally enraptured by the idea of Art the Cute Stylist collecting fat-lady clothes and delivering to the fat ladies of the world in need of confidence, like a plus-sized-clothing-specific variation on the tooth fairy. Art talks about “tweaking sizes” and Carnie, seen over his shoulder as he speaks, has a look of mortal fear. “I assume you pulled, like, 2Xs and stuff.” Art says yes. I wonder what “and stuff” indicates. Carnie confessions that Art is supposed to be a “genius at working with the big girls. So, good luck with that, Art!” Carnie tries on a black dress with blue-colorblocking on the sleeves—actually I first typed “cockblocking” there and I think that’s a fair expression of my feeling about this dress. Carnie hates her arms, so let’s wrap them in giant wide graphic sleeves! Okay! There are more try-ons. Lots of dresses. Not my personal style, but frankly they’re all cute and Carnie (who is, in fact, kind of short) looks great in all of them. Carnie, however, disagrees, and exclaims “I hate mirrors!” at one point. Oh Carnie, there ain’t nothing wrong with you that some Gossip CDs and a fabulous dinner with a bunch of self-loving fat femmes couldn’t fix.
She’s unhappy with pretty much everything. Poor Art! Carnie confessions: “I look awful, I feel awful, and at this point, there is only one person that can help me.” She calls this Mystery Person on the phone. She asks them to come by tomorrow, and says she knows they haven’t spoken in while but she really needs their Mysterious help. As we go to commercial here I am taking my chance to say FIFTY US DOLLARS SAYS IT’S GOING TO BE A PERSONAL TRAINER. Or Jenny Craig, Or Kirstie Alley. Oh god, if Kirstie Alley appears on this show I will lose my mind in the best possible way. I don’t even know if they’re friends.
And who’s at the door? It’s a nine-foot dude in a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off! I’m guessing this is the personal trainer I predicted, and Carnie confirms: “Dallas, a former pro wrestler, [SERIOUSLY. SERIOUSLY.] kicked my butt. I lost fifty pounds before I had Lucy. I haven’t seen him in months, and I’m really not sure how this is going to go.” You really get a sense of Carnie’s trepidation—real or put-on—here, and this irritates the shit out of me, because it implies that somehow Dallas has any kind of right to be angry or disappointed with her for getting fat again. This expectation so many folks have that their personal trainer should be a misery-inducing drill sargeant? This is why I can’t find a personal trainer at my own gym who isn’t an asshat. I’m not saying all personal trainers are inherently asshats—I know a couple personally who are not—but I do think a lot of them learn to do their jobs in an asshattish way because that’s what the client expects. And ultimately, just like your doctor, your personal trainer is in your employ. Their responsibility is to deliver a service unto you, for which you pay them. Paying someone to employ their superior knowledge of physical fitness to help devise a great workout routine makes sense. But paying someone to make me feel like shit about myself just seems silly. I can get that much cheaper just by reading Cosmopolitan and watching The Biggest Loser.
Anyway.
Sitting on the couch together, Dallas says they need to clear the air. He says his feelings are hurt, because he worked with Carnie so she could have her newest baby, and then after she had the baby, she evidently vanished. Dallas is sad he hasn’t even met the baby yet. And he seems legitimately upset. Well. That’s sort of a bummer, really. Carnie says but wait! She almost lost her home then! Dramatic music swells! Apparently just after Lucy was born, Carnie was super broke and, like the commericial says, being harrassed by creditors. She says she couldn’t afford Dallas’ services, though she also says she wouldn’t even let her sister and her kids come into the house for a month at one point. (Did she think her sister was working with the bank to steal the house away? This is not made clear.) Carnie’s more upset that she’s fat again, which Dallas seems not to give a shit about (in truth, I expect clients getting fatter again is what keeps dudes like him in business). When she tells him about her plan to start a baking business, he emphatically makes a truly unfortunate analogy between baked goods and cocaine: “That’s like a guy who went through rehab coming out and saying, ‘Now I’m just going to deal the cocaine and cut it up and give it to other people, but I’m not going to do any of it though.”” Okay, first on the list of things I’ve learned from this show: food = cocaine. Wait, does Dallas shave his pits? Am I imagining that?
Dallas says Carnie needs to think about whether she’s committed to make this lifestyle change (yes, he actually says “lifestyle change”, boldly ignoring what a cliche this term has become), and call him when she decides.
Carnie, feeling beat up on by everyone, goes to visit her “gay BFF” Daniel, who works in a salon. She brings him banana bread, with “extra chocolate chips”. I gotta say, there are few things I find so disappointing as a loaf of perfectly good banana bread that somebody’s ruined by putting chocolate chips or raisins or whatever in it. Next we meet Brian, Daniel’s “better half”. I should pause here to note that I had to rewind this sequence twice to check their last names because they look like twins. I mean, seriously like twins. Tall, blonde, tanned twins. It’s kind of creepy. But they have different names so I presume “better half” actually does have its usual romantic context and isn’t a cute/weird way of indentifying a twin. Carnie is BFF with both. They do her hair, and Carnie unloads on… uh, I think it’s Daniel, about her distance from her husband and how they’re strangers in their own house and… yawn. Next Carnie starts talking about being such a giant fatass—she’s actually gained sixteen pounds when she’d planned on losing weight prior her gig on The Newlywed Game coming back up—and…. um, Brian I think, says “you know you’ve done it before, you can do it again.” I find these sorts of encouraging statements so profoundly depressing, as it basically lays bare the reality that most folks who lose a large volume of weight will likely have to go through the process more than once, or more than twice, or more than three times, etc., over the course of their lifetimes. I don’t doubt ?Brian’s good intentions, but ugh, it’s so bleak.
You know, for expediency’s sake I’m going to start referring to them both as DanielBrian because there is no way I am going to remember who is who. In the meantime, Carnie’s hair is done. I guess it looks different. She seems happy, though probably more with the company than the results. Commercial.
[Oh hey, it’s the Sham-Wow guy’s new piece of crap, the Slap Chop! I can’t believe he says “You’re gonna love my nuts” with a straight face.]
Later, Carnie’s having a dessert-tasting party at a local baked-goods shop in hopes of getting support for her new business. She’s wearing a seriously cute brown and black zebra-print dress with a studded belt. Dude, I want that dress. She talks to Rob and his hair in the bedroom. She says, “You don’t like my banana bread,” and Rob counters, “No, I don’t, not the peanut butter” — at this, Carnie starts making a nasal whining noise that sounds EXACTLY like Lucille Ball whenever Ricky hurt her feelings on I Love Lucy. Rob and his hair then finish with, “Stop adding so many things!” Rob and hair, the three of us are simpatico on this issue. Carnie and Rob (and hair) hug. Carnie is totally melodramatic in a good-natured way and whenever she starts to annoy me I realize how much she reminds me of myself. How sobering.
Carnie trudges off down the hall to finish getting ready, and we see she has a giant framed print of a Rolling Stone cover with Wilson Phillips on it. Guys, I…. I don’t know how to feel about that. Like I imagine Tyra Banks has her whole house wallpapered with photos of herself, and I’d be disappointed if that weren’t true, but… Carnie Wilson? If I were on the cover of Rolling Stone, would I get a giant framed print of it to hang on my wall? I don’t think I would.
Carnie has double-barrelled assistants tonight, both Dee Dee and her PA from The Newlywed Game. They bring a ton of Carnie’s baked goods to a local baked-goods shop called Sweet Harts. The plan seems to be for folks to show up for this tasting party and respond well, as well as to impress the shop owner, and then BAM: Carnie’s got a new business (and a new source of income). Oh, sister Wendy (also late of Wilson Phillips; her name on screen is subtitled with the words, “Rock Star Sister”) is there. Sadly, nobody else is.
Back at Casa Carnie, Rob and his hair are reading a bedtime story to Lola, which is actually adorable. Meanwhile, Sweet Harts’ owner is about to take his first bite of Carnie’s confections and EVERYTHING RIDES ON HIS RESPONSE. Oh, commercial.
Yay, Dean the shop owner loves it. Carnie worries about other folks turning up. DanielBrian shows up next. And then a few more other people, ostensibly strangers drawn in by the promise of free baked goods, appear as well. Moderate success!
The next day, Carnie heads out to the pool with her day planner and her iPhone and calls Dallas. She observes that, “When I weighed 300 pounds and I had a gastric bypass surgery, it was a life or death situation.” As she dials the phone (with her amazing manicure): “This time,” she says, “I’m doing it for me. I’m ready to commit.” Again.
Next week: Carnie spends too much money; Art gets a fashion award; Carnie moons a crowd (?). Maybe she invested in those Gossip CDs after all.
Something you should know about me is that when I was eighteen and preparing to leave the enveloping but mundane warmth of my lifelong home in South Florida for the brilliant chilly intellectualism of Boston, all I wanted to be when I grew up was a filmmaker. I had all these stories to tell, you understand, stories both real and imagined, and though I had been writing them down as early as nine years of age I had always resisted the idea of being “just” a writer. Writers were dull grey people sitting at desks in cat-hair-strewn sweater vests, at two in the morning; filmmakers, however, were magicians. They built their imaginary worlds in three dimensions, toured them with a camera, then shared the result with an audience of rapt and eager participants in the fantasy. People are moved by good books, yes, but in a culture that so heavily privileges the visual media, nothing reaches and moves so many people as a compelling film. I wanted, very much, to wield that magic myself.
However, my interest in filmmaking was influenced as much by bad movies as good ones. The bit of media that was most influential to me during my formative years as an adolescent and teenager was Mystery Science Theater 3000. For the unfamiliar: this was a television series—since elevated to cult status but at the time, sadly underappreciated—which featured terrible B-movies being relentlessly made fun of by three cast members. It was sarcastic, and obscure, and bizarre, and it spoke to everything I loved in the world. My darlings, calling me a fan of this show would be an understatement of gargantuan proportions. It also was a driving force behind my desire to make movies, because it had to be understood that even the worst of those films were made by someone who believed in the story, who believed in their ability to make something wonderful, who believed in magic. There is little quite so reassuring as seeing something done badly to make you think you can do it too, and maybe better than that. Thus it happened that MST3K made me want to be a filmmaker.
Of course, like so many film students, by the time I finished my film degree, there was nothing I wanted so much in the world other than to never have to make a film again. Filmmaking, in my opinion, is something done best by those who are besotted with film to the exclusion of nearly everything else in life, and as much as I loved film, even when accepting my degree at 21, I knew I lacked the single-mindedness and momentous ambition that is absolutely necessary to accomplish even moderate success in that world. There were simply too many other things I was interested in, too many other things I wanted to do. The whole world was distracting me from filmmaking; I’d just barely gotten to know Boston and now I was supposed to up and move to Los Angeles? No. So I left filmmaking behind.
I learned a great deal about film and the film industry in those four years, but one of the most particular memories I have is the distinction between a film reviewer and a film critic. It’s funny how sometimes the things that seem most inconsequential in the moment turn into memories that carry you through years to come, and so it was that this line between reviewer and critic was something I remembered all through the many years of graduate school to come, right up til today. According to what I learned in film school, which I’m sure some folks would debate, a reviewer, you see, is someone who simply describes a film (or a book, or a friend’s outfit or a plate of food) and their assessment of it. “I liked the spaghetti.” “The length of that skirt is little frumpy on you.” And so on. It’s an opinion, and if it’s coming from someone whose opinions tend to jibe with yours, it’s definitely useful. A critic, on the other hand, tends to not only assess the criticized work, but also fits it into a broader cultural or historical context, using a range of theoretical approaches, and/or analyzes its symbolic meaning, and/or interrogates its value, and/or suggests how said work speaks to our world, how our world speaks to it. Reviewers recommend. Critics complicate.
Though I may have ticked “filmmaker” off the list of possibilites for what I want to be when I grow up, criticism is a habit I’ve never managed to shake. There was an uneasiness about both critics and reviewers amongst my peers as a film student. Though we were, absolutely, taught to analyze what made great films great, we were, absolutely, not taught to properly criticize them. Because these were great films. Because everyone agreed they were great. How do you criticize Bergman and Persona? (I actually tried, upstart that I was.) You don’t. You just soak up the genius. Obviously, this approach was a little different from what drove me, in part, to film school in the first place, those sardonic attacks from the front-row seats on Mystery Science Theater 3000. But I learned to play along. I learned to sneer at criticism and wonder why, if the critics were so smart, did they not make films themselves? Whether I ever believed it, even for a moment, I can’t say. I’ve since some to believe that critics of all kinds are vastly underappreciated, and I am only partly saying so because I write so much cultural criticism on this blog.
All of this is taking a very long time for me to acknowledge that it took me a long time to learn to appreciate film critics. And by extension, it took me a long time to learn to appreciate Roger Ebert (though his take on last summer’s Transformers 2 went a long way in securing my allegiance, as it gave voice to the wordless, fist-clenching disgust and frustration I was feeling about how so much money is spent on something so artless and depressing). But I’ve since come to believe that Roger Ebert is a national fucking treasure, someone who sees things through a vivid critical lens and who, luckily for us, sees fit to share his observations regularly.
My whole purpose in writing this post, meandering as it is, was to link to something Ebert wrote last week, something I have since read probably six or seven times, and which has nothing to do with film (making my long ruminations above more than a little pointless, but that’s how I roll). It is, instead, about how Ebert’s cancer surgeries have ultimately led to his being unable to drink, eat, or speak, and what he misses about that.
Let me return to the original question: Isn’t it sad to be unable eat or drink? Not as sad as you might imagine. I save an enormous amount of time. I have control of my weight. Everything agrees with me. And so on.
What I miss is the society. Lunch and dinner are the two occasions when we most easily meet with friends and family. They’re the first way we experience places far from home. Where we sit to regard the passing parade. How we learn indirectly of other cultures. When we feel good together. Meals are when we get a lot of our talking done — probably most of our recreational talking. That’s what I miss. Because I can’t speak that’s’s another turn of the blade. I can sit at a table and vicariously enjoy the conversation, which is why I enjoy pals like my friend McHugh so much, because he rarely notices if anyone else isn’t speaking. But to attend a “business dinner” is a species of torture. I’m no good at business anyway, but at least if I’m being bad at it at Joe’s Stone Crab there are consolations.
When we drive around town I never look at a trendy new restaurant and wish I could eat there. I peer into little storefront places, diners, ethnic places, and then I feel envy. After a movie we’ll drive past a formica restaurant with only two tables occupied, and I’ll wish I could be at one of them, having ordered something familiar and and reading a book. I never felt alone in a situation like that. I was a soloist.
It’s a visceral piece of writing, and speaks to me of the value of being willing to witness, catalog, and analyze our world, to better understand ourselves—even in a culture where difficult questions, and those who ask them, are often dismissed. Would the sociability of eating together have occurred to me as something to miss? Probably, eventually, but it’s unlikely I’d ever be able to articulate the loss so beautifully, or so clearly. You can read the post in full here.
Have a great weekend, folks.
So it seems my new hobby as a fat advice columnist is coming along swimmingly. I’m especially fond of the Q & A below, and want to thank the anonymous person who posed the question to me.
If you have a question, or want to read the rest of the questions I’ve answered, you can visit my Formspring page. Thanks, dears.
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Q. If you had the opportunity to address a room full of 16 year olds for 15 minutes, what would you say?
A. Besides, “wear sunscreen”?
I would say,
Everything to you right now is vivid and surreal and overwhelming. Your life is like a film you’re composing with bandaged hands and serious case of writer’s block. Everything is open to you, though, and little is impossible now, and this will eventually change, so embrace it.
The older you get, the quicker time will pass, like a microcosm of the universe that is expanding faster and faster as everything flies away from everything else. Today things that are a month away seem impossibly distant, but when you are twice your current age a month will become a devastatingly brief period, surely not long enough to do everything you need to do before then, surely not. At this future time you may look back on these days wistfully, longingly; or you may look back and think, “There is no amount of money in the world that could compel me to be 16 again, not for a day, not for an hour.” Either way your experiences and choices now will have profoundly shaped the person you become.
You will, slowly, cease to feel everything so acutely. Pain will hurt less, but joy will be more fleeting. Injustices that once seemed outrageous and blinding will fade into the grey background noise of life. Some of you will be relieved to leave this behind; some of you will fight ferociously to chase after your enthusiasm and your rage and to not let it slip out of view over the horizon.
Do not forget your friends from these days, but do not let them be the only friends you keep over your life. Someday you will look back at the people you knew and the things you did and shake your head with sheepish embarrassment, but hopefully with sympathy for your younger, stupider self. It is okay to be stupid. It is okay to not know what you’re doing. It is sublimely okay to make mistakes and cause catastrophes, so long as you learn from them.
Do not hate yourself. Have regrets, engage in second-guessing, be insecure, scared, desperate, lonely. But do not hate yourself. Do not hate your body, because whatever about it bothers you today will seem patently ridiculous years from now. Do not punish yourself, mentally or physically, for failing to look a certain way; for not striving to be an athlete or a model; for being socially awkward; for never quite living up to the expectations others set for you. Do not punish anyone else. Even the most confident and popular among you struggle with insecurities and pressures, no matter what you say. Be kind.
This is a magical time of your life. I don’t mean a sparkling Disney magic, but a cataclysmic wrath-of-god magic. Everything is changing, all of the time, but years from now it will seem nothing is changing, ever, and change will only come through a whole lot of effort, or with resistance, or with crisis. In the meantime, eat ice cream, listen to music that speaks to your soul, go on long pointless late-night drives to nowhere with your friends, windows down. Walk in the rain. Wear whatever you want, even if people stare. Have fun. Be safe. Most importantly: have fun.
And then I would say,
Does anyone have any questions?
Last week, on a whim, I set up a page over on Formspring, fully expecting not to get much interest. Hells bells, was I ever wrong. Apparently lots of folk have questions, and I’ve been cheerfully answering them. Below are two excerpts; you can also read the rest, or ask me a question of your own. I’ve got a handful of questions backlogged right now, so your patience is appreciated.
Q. Why don’t you call yourself a feminist?
A. I should have expected this! Ha.
I prefer to use the words “feminism” or “feminist” to describe certain ways of thinking, rather than as a part of my identity. My reasons for this are pretty clear-cut. When I first began turning my mind toward things like fatness as a cultural construct, and body acceptance as a means of surviving, I was a hardcore capital-F feminist. What happened, you inquire? I discovered that feminism at the time, and the feminists I happened to know, wanted nothing to do with this. Where I had expected to find support, or at least tolerance, I found a bunch of feminists (both real and textual) who couldn’t see past their own personal body issues to even entertain my ideas.
So I took it personal, is what I’m saying. Feminism totally dumped me and I was hurt and angry and all that stuff.
Even then, though, I didn’t stop calling myself a feminist or identifying with feminists. It was only once I began doing academic work in race and GLBTQ issues that I really lost my taste for feminism, as feminism has a long and terrible history of not playing well with folks who aren’t white or cisgendered (or, in some flavors, people who are queer, or people who are straight, or people who are disabled, or poor, and and and). Is this true of all feminism everywhere? Nope. But it’s true of enough of feminism in general, and entangled enough with feminism’s legacy that I no longer felt comfortable (or true, or real) identifying myself as a card-carrying part of it.
I don’t hate on folks who do choose to identify themselves that way, I just don’t do so myself. After all, some of my best friends are feminists. (Har.)
Q. im sure u have had this one but how do you condone being overweight and praising it knowing the serious health issues related to it – and i am a lard ass
A. Well, I don’t really “praise” fatness. I think it’s normal for some folks, for any number of reasons, and not really something to be praised or disdained. Ideally, it’d be something that was just… normal.
Regarding health issues: there are lots of FA folks out there way better at arguing about the health issues than I. My position is that health is individual, subjective, and above all, private. And in fairness, none of us make 100%-health-conscious decisions throughout our lives. Sometimes we drink too much; sometimes we talk on the phone while driving; sometimes we neglect to have our annual physical; sometimes we go for a hike in the woods and get mauled by a bear. Life is a series of personal decisions, not all of which are geared exclusively toward healthiness, and I think anyone who lives their life that way probably isn’t going to have a lot of fabulous experiences to reflect on in their declining years. Frankly, I can’t imagine myself lying on my deathbed thinking, “I wish I had spent more of my life dieting.” But I can see myself thinking, “I wish I’d not let my fear of bears keep me from hiking more.” Our choices about our individual bodies are our own to make; we’re fortunate to have this freedom, and I believe we should exercise it in whatever way we choose.
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Got a query of your own? You too can speak up here.
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