Shockaholic

Wishful Shrinking

You know the saying, “You’re your own worst enemy”? Well, thanks to the Internet, that’s no longer true. It turns out that total strangers can actually be meaner about you than you ever could amazingly be about yourself. Which is saying a huge amount with me, because I can really go to town hurting my own feelings. I know where they are.

I Googled myself recently (without a lubricant, which I really don’t advise) and I came across this posting that said, “What ever happened to Carrie Fisher? She used to be so hot. Now she looks like Elton John.” Well, this actually did hurt my feelings—all seven of them—partly because I knew what this person meant. But as I’m fond of saying, “As you get older, the pickings get slimmer, but the people sure don’t.”

Yes, it’s true. All too true. I let myself go. And where did I go to? Where all fat, jowly, middle-aged women go—refrigerators and restaurants (both fine dining and drive-thru). To put it as simply as I possibly can and still be me: Wherever there was food I could be found lurking, enthusiastically eyeing the fried chicken and Chinese food and pasta. Not to mention the cupcakes and ice cream and pies, oh my!

How could I have allowed this to happen? What was I thinking? More to the point, what was I eating? And having eaten it, why did I eat so much of it? And having eaten that much, why did I so assiduously avoid aerobics?

I bravely mustered the long-overdue nerve to literally stand on a scale and while upright, albeit intimidated, confronted my actual unbelievable weight. Of late and for too long I had been making people—doctors, nurses, pimps, stylists, and such—keep my obese(ish) update from me for the better part of an otherwise pretty bad year. I’d been assuming that I was “only” forty pounds above my ideal weight, but it turns out that the actuality was tragically closer to sixty. Way closer. And when I say way, I mean weigh.

What I didn’t realize, back when I was this twenty-five-year-old pinup for geeks in that me myself and iconic metal bikini, was that I had signed an invisible contract to stay looking the exact same way for the next thirty to forty years. Well, clearly I’ve broken that contract. Partly because, in an effort to keep up my disguise as a human being, I had a child at some point. And then, in an effort to stay sane for said child, I took pounds and pounds of medications that have the dual effect of causing water retention (think ocean, not lake) while also creating a craving for salad—chocolate salad. So yes, in answer to your unexpressed question, sanity does turn out to come at a heavy price.

And finally almost a year ago I perhaps inexcusably quit smoking—a famously fattening form of self-improvement whose reward was my being taken over by the famously challenging urge to hurl heaps of non-nutritious nourishment into that hole in my head under my nose. You might say (if you were Henny Youngman and had nothing else to do) that I was throwing good calories after flab. Anyway, before long I left my single-digit-sized slacks eating the dust in my closet’s rearview mirror in favor of leggings. You know, the ones that give and stretch to accommodate one’s ever-widening Sequoia-sized thighs. So I sported the leggings below and what was tantamount to a giant tea cozy above, my fashion statement basically being, “I’m sorry.” (“Hey,” Henny Youngman yelled at me from across my life, “whatever floats your bloat!” What a jerk, right?)

So, until I hopefully managed to get it replaced, the photo on my Wikipedia entry was grotesque albeit accurate. I can only imagine it was put there by someone who hates me and has too much time on his or her hands. I don’t know, maybe it was just one of those über-accurate pictures of someone—myself, say?—situated precariously past her fiftieth year and languishing in very unflattering lighting while being captured, for all time and for everyone with Internet access, in that flattering angle under her jaw, causing me to look not so much like someone with a double chin as someone whose neck starts at her lower lip and continues straight to her alphabet-resistant monster rack. It might just be that my jaw drowned. It was last seen lounging precariously between my face and neck, keeping them apart for pity’s and safety’s sake, and the next thing I knew I was one long head from hairline to treasured chest.

I’ve always wished that I was someone who really didn’t care what I looked like, but I do. And yet, even though I end up caring about it almost more than absolutely anything, it takes way more than a lot to get me to do anything about it. So, wide bottom line, I would rather stay in my house, unnoticed and ashamed, than go out and subject other people to having to think of something nice to say to me like, “I like your shirt.” Or, “You look so… healthy!” Rather than hearing someone I respected until that moment lie to my fat face and say, “Wow, you’re looking good!” and rather than subject us all to hidden painful social experiences like this, I remained behind closed doors.

Now, I’ve always heard that one of the most important things in life is to be comfortable in one’s own skin. Well, I may have unconsciously come to the not illogical conclusion that the more skin you have, the more comfort you’ll feel! Presumably you’ve heard of making a mountain out of a molehill? Well, that once fussy molehill was now this eternally black-clad mountain. And, if my alleged resemblance to Elton John turns out to be a problem for anyone out there, all I can really say (politely and in a sing-song voice) is “blow my big bovine, tiny dancer cock!” Or you could just skip the whole thing—your choice.

Anyway, I finally reached the point where nothing in my closet fit other than a few socks, some hats, and a scarf. Ultimately it might just as well have been an entire other human’s closet. Basically, I was drifting closer and closer to that point of no return where one has to buy two seats on an airplane and/or their families are forced to bury them in grand pianos.

But come the fuck on, how many women do you know who are over forty-five, or over fifty—and don’t get me started on over fifty-five—how many women of this ever-advancing age do you know who are effortlessly lean and impishly lithe? Oh sure, I’d be thin, too, if I starved myself and spent a tragically huge portion of the day jogging and/or hurling myself ever forward, drenched in sweat and downward dogging my sunrise salutations, before moving on to Pilates sessions filled with far-from-free weights. Sure, if I did all that, it would be virtually impossible to not resemble a busty clothespin. But to be a feast for an army of snacking eyes requires devoting enormous chunks of your time to denying yourself on the one hand and forcing yourself on the other.

There’s a breed of women in Hollywood who wander among us looking very tense and very mad. Of course they’re angry. Who wouldn’t be enraged about having to ensure you’re looking an age you haven’t been in a generation? Regarding the concept of letting yourself go, shouldn’t we be able to at some point? Of course, whether or not we should be able is moot. There are two choices post forty-five: letting ourselves go or making ourselves sit like good, well-groomed, obliging pets, coats smooth and wrinkle-free, stomachs flat, muscles taut, teeth clean, hair dyed, nails manicured—everything just so. The thing is, though, not only is this completely unnatural, requiring warehouses full of self-control and perseverance, but it demands a level of discomfort you have to be willing to live with ’til death by lap band or liposuction. Until then, everyone marvels at how almost completely unengaged you look! It’s spooky. You look like a teenager! To the point where I kind of want to ground you. “Go to your room! Because I said so. And no dinner!”

People spend oceans of time ensuring that they are camera ready at all times. They glide through this unofficial American-Idolized world aching to impress the very judgmental audience that we move among, inspiring them to say, “No! I don’t believe it! You can’t be. I could have sworn you were sisters! You must tell me your secret! Please!” Because given a choice between youth and beauty or age and wisdom, I’ll let you guess which one most of us would opt for. Take all the time you need. I’ll wait here…

Then, just when I’d almost resigned myself to living out my remaining years as Betty the fat girl, my unexpected ship came in, the S.S. Jenny Craig.

I mean, is this an amazing planet or what? There I am, ginormously minding my own business—show, monkey, and otherwise—when where should I suddenly find myself but right up there in lights on none other than Jenny Craig’s list!

That’s right. I am getting paid to do something I ought to have done years and years and pounds and pounds ago.

Now, before you think, Sure, just because she’s a celebrity she gets all the breaks while all the noncelebrity…

Hang on. Before you go any further, don’t forget—not only do I win the wacky Jenny Craig lottery, I’m also a bipolar recovering addict who woke up next to a dead friend after getting left for a man—these and a few other such shrink-employing events could be seen, from a certain vantage point, to kind of balance out the Jenny eat-less luck fest.

Of course the Jenny Craig folks are always on the lookout for giantly fat celebrities to go on their program and prove how easy and effective it is. And I was humiliated—being the poster girl for enormousness is not something any kid grows up aspiring to.

And though much of this makes me a whore of giant proportions, I also wouldn’t be a whore with just any John. See, I’m not that good a liar. I mean, there’s a lot of other things I could do for money. I could sell autographed ECT machines or rhinestoned mood stabilizers or even Star Wars scented laxatives. But do I do that? Do I do a commercial on television to (attempt to) sell a medication while running around some random backyard with some rented golden retriever laughing and looking cured and totally amazed to be so worry-free while a voice comes on and says, “Reginol is not recommended for wayward fish or Libras with dementia. If you notice swelling in your femur or notice a subtle beam of backlight glowing northward from your anus or the anus of someone you went to school with, call your doctor immediately as this could be a symptom of hydrocephalus that could lead to roughhousing and misguided bloat. Reginol is not recommended for pregnant Nazis or yodelers over seventy. Reginol does not protect you from unpopularity or autism…”

All I’m ultimately saying is, how great is it that I’ve been paid handsomely to get healthy and weigh what people have to weigh to be pretty? Or pretty thin. In any event, this is a fuckin’ awesome confluence of debt reduction and cutting my swollen self down to social life size.

Craig is great,

Craig is good,

Thank you for this portion-appropriate food. A-men!

And by “men” I mean the four or five that might look at me again in a few Jennified months. And when I say look, I don’t just mean in amazement at my vague resemblance to a space princess from the silent screen era, but because I look good for my age, and maybe even for the age I was a year or two ago.