Saturday, December 25, 2004 posted by Jen at 12/25/2004 09:12:00 PM
Two days before Christmas and I get an email from a producer of a national TV morning talk show. She’d like to talk to me about a piece they’re doing on Neil LaBute’s latest, “Fat Pig.”
“We thought it would be interesting to speak to real women who have had similar experiences dealing with weight issues in the ‘dating game.’”
So I call her up. “I haven’t seen the play or read it. I’ve just read about it…”
“Oh, no problem! We’re just looking for real women to talk to.” Her voice dropped. “That must have been so terrible, having your ex-boyfriend write about your weight!”
It took me a minute to figure out what she was talking about. “Um, actually, that never happened.”
Pause. “It didn’t?”
“No. No, I actually made that up when I wrote GOOD IN BED.”
Lengthier pause. “Did anything like that ever happen to you?”
“No, not really. I knew that I wanted to write about a really bad break-up, and that was the worst thing I could imagine, and…”
“Well, do you know anyone where something like that did happen to them?”
I told her no; gave her the names of a few funny memoirists who have chronicled their experiences dealing with weight issues in the ‘dating game,’ and sent her on her way. Now I’m dealing with the fact that as far as TV is concerned, my dating life was the Diet Coke of tragedy: just one calorie, not tragic enough.
But The Sound of Music is on. So I got that going for me.
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Thursday, December 23, 2004 posted by Jen at 12/23/2004 08:37:00 PM
One of the best questions I got on the book tour for LITTLE EARTHQUAKES came in, where a reader asked about plus-size celebrities who lose weight. Do they have an obligation to talk about how, or why, they’re doing it? By going from large to small, are they betraying the cause?
I’m not sure I had a good answer then, but basically, what I think is this: what individuals do with, or to, their own bodies is entirely up to them. If a woman, famous or not, decides she needs to diet or have weight loss surgery for her own health or happiness, far be it from me to sit in judgment.
What bugs me is the way that some dieting celebrities downsize their tolerance, going from “I’m big and I’m beautiful” to “I’m thin and I’m sexy and I’m SO MUCH BETTER NOW, so fie on you fatties, I’m getting naked for Playboy!”
I try not to judge. I try to be ever mindful that actresses and singers labor under different constraints than writers, who are almost expected to be on the frumpy side (or at least to look less lovely in person than they do in their author photos, on the rare occasions when they get recognized at all).
But can I just say that Kirstie Alley is breaking my heart?
I had high hopes for Kirstie. She’s beautiful, talented, and brave enough to call her show “Fat Actress.” If anyone could tell those nasty tabloids or narrow-minded Hollywood to get bent, Kirstie’s my girl!
And she was…for about ten minutes.
Now, as devotees of People know, Kirstie’s over her big-and-proud phase, which lasted about as long as Veronica's Closet, and has proceeded directly to penitential-dieting purgatory.
She had fun getting fat, but now she wants to get skinny. She hasn’t had sex in four and a half years, because she doesn’t want to have “fat sex” (whatever that is). She’s miserable, and unhappy, and most of all she’s sorry that she let herself go and drank too much soda pop and wound up with a body that’s an affront to….to who, exactly? The National Enquirer’s photo editors? Hollywood casting agents? Hugh Hefner?
Whoever she was worried about offending, it wasn’t her fellow size-fourteen-and-beyond sisters. We cheered when she posed for People, critiquing her old photographs, talking about how ridiculous it was that she felt too fat to wear a two-piece bathing suit during her Star Trek era.
We cried when she posed for People again and said that fat isn’t pretty, or sexy, and that she’s going to be thin by the time “Fat Actress” is released – one of the odder promotional strategies I’ve heard.
The final nail in the coffin – Kirstie’s now shilling for Jenny Craig, because “their food is, hands-down, the yummiest!”
The yummmiest? I think I just threw up a little in my mouth. Which means that this Jenny Craig weight-loss regimen is going to work for one of us.
Monday, December 20, 2004 posted by Jen at 12/20/2004 05:58:00 PM
Damn, it's freezing here!
Lots of deep thoughts about "Fat Pig," Kirstie Alley's expanding waistline and diminishing common sense, and why female writers don't get male groupies (actually, the only thing I have to say about that piece is: the vast majority of readers of women's fiction -- or, really, any fiction at all -- are other women. Hence, no twenty-year-old boys flinging their boxer shorts at Toni Morrison. Or, alas, me).
But first, some small administrative details.
One: there's a link on www.jenniferweiner.com that will whisk you off to Simon & Schuster's website, where you can sign up for updates on my latest efforts.
Two: IN HER SHOES is now available in a fetching little mass market paperback edition that fits nicely into stockings for the bargain basement price of $7.99! You can buy it online, at your local independent bookseller, at the drugstore, the grocery store, Wal-Mart, and even the occasional well-stocked gas station. And did I mention that it's $7.99? A bargain at twice the price!
Actually, I do have one more thing to say about the Curtis Sittenfeld essay: how pissed do you think poor Erica Jong was to be included in the "writes a lot about sex category" as opposed to the "is really sexy" group?
After she took such pains to remind us in last week's NYTBR that back in the seventies she was, like, really hot stuff, and widowed male poets could barely keep their hands off her?
Welcome to A Moment of Jen, author Jennifer Weiner's constantly-updated take on books, baby, and news of the world. Email me at jen (a) jenniferweiner.com.
