Today I Am a Ma'am: and Other Musings On Life, Beauty, and Growing Older Read Online Free
Author: Catherine Whitney, Valerie Harper
tops, sneakers, jeans, flip-flops, work boots, ten-inch heels.
CHAPTER 4
JUST DESSERTS
Let Us Eat Cake
I can remember that cake box like it was yesterday. The bright red Dugan’s logo. The dried frosting stuck to the cardboard sides. Dugan’s was a bakery in New Jersey that delivered pastry and cakes to our house. I was thirteen, and I was standing in the kitchen gorging myself on cake before going to dance class. I cut a slice and ate it with a glass of milk, and then another, and another. I felt a twinge because I should have been eating a healthy breakfast. Mom always cooked so sensibly—meat, potatoes, vegetables, five little lamb chops for five people. Before I knew what was happening, I had eaten another slice, and then another. I was full, but I kept on eating. I left a tiny piece so I could say I didn’t eat the whole cake. I remember thinking, oh, I’ll go burn this off in ballet class.
Dancing off five thousand calories! That was the beginning of my mental illness about food. It took the form of phantasmagoric self-delusion.
Favorite Diet Fibs
• It doesn’t count if you eat standing up.
• There are no calories in the food you taste while cooking.
• The acid in diet soda destroys the calories in pizza.
• Taking a taste of your dining companion’s food is calorie free.
• Energy bars—especially the chocolate-chip coconut—make you thin.
These fibs do support your habit, but they’re very funny. I went out to dinner recently with my close friend Charlotte, another bulge battler. We agreed that we were going to be “good” and really watch what we eat. But when the waiter came around, Charlotte happily reached for the bread basket. Noticing my raised eyebrows, she leaned across the table and whispered, “It’s okay. I’m eating this under an assumed name.”
The Pounder in the Valley
When I was a young actress living in California, I tried every wild scheme making the rounds to get rid of my bubble wrap thighs. My friend Iva and I used to go see a woman affectionately known as “the Pounder in the Valley.” She was the size of a sumo wrestler. She and her daughter had thick, meaty hands—huge hands. They’d stretch you out on a table, face down and naked, and then literally pound the fat off your body. The Pounder was the rage then. All the big movie stars went to her. It was so painful that she would give you a towel to scream into so the neighbors wouldn’t call the police. I can still remember us hobbling out, black and blue from the waist down.
Finally, Iva said to me, “I can’t believe I’m paying so much money to look like I’ve been in a car wreck. These bruises can’t be good.” I agreed but moved on to the next fad—wrapping. It was guaranteed to take off inches instantly. I’d be tightly wrapped in cloth strips that had been soaked in a strange-smelling solution. I’d lie there for an hour until every drop of water was squeezed out. Voilà! Ten pounds gone—until I raced to the water fountain to rehydrate. The pounds and inches returned instantly. It was the dumbest weight loss concept ever invented.
But you see my point. Women will do anything to lose weight. Looking back, I have to laugh at some of the outrageous diets we tried. The craziest diets were those that involved eating only one or two foods for weeks on end. There was the strawberries and champagne diet, the grapefruit diet, the hard-boiled egg diet, the ice cream diet. Even ice cream can start to look sickening when it’s your main staple. I recall one diet guaranteed to take off five pounds in two days. It included steak, hard-boiled eggs, lettuce leaves, and six prunes. None of these diets ever worked for long.
Here’s the irony of the thin-is-in mentality, which is still pervasive: One hundred years ago, the ideal body for a woman was
CHAPTER 4
JUST DESSERTS
Let Us Eat Cake
I can remember that cake box like it was yesterday. The bright red Dugan’s logo. The dried frosting stuck to the cardboard sides. Dugan’s was a bakery in New Jersey that delivered pastry and cakes to our house. I was thirteen, and I was standing in the kitchen gorging myself on cake before going to dance class. I cut a slice and ate it with a glass of milk, and then another, and another. I felt a twinge because I should have been eating a healthy breakfast. Mom always cooked so sensibly—meat, potatoes, vegetables, five little lamb chops for five people. Before I knew what was happening, I had eaten another slice, and then another. I was full, but I kept on eating. I left a tiny piece so I could say I didn’t eat the whole cake. I remember thinking, oh, I’ll go burn this off in ballet class.
Dancing off five thousand calories! That was the beginning of my mental illness about food. It took the form of phantasmagoric self-delusion.
Favorite Diet Fibs
• It doesn’t count if you eat standing up.
• There are no calories in the food you taste while cooking.
• The acid in diet soda destroys the calories in pizza.
• Taking a taste of your dining companion’s food is calorie free.
• Energy bars—especially the chocolate-chip coconut—make you thin.
These fibs do support your habit, but they’re very funny. I went out to dinner recently with my close friend Charlotte, another bulge battler. We agreed that we were going to be “good” and really watch what we eat. But when the waiter came around, Charlotte happily reached for the bread basket. Noticing my raised eyebrows, she leaned across the table and whispered, “It’s okay. I’m eating this under an assumed name.”
The Pounder in the Valley
When I was a young actress living in California, I tried every wild scheme making the rounds to get rid of my bubble wrap thighs. My friend Iva and I used to go see a woman affectionately known as “the Pounder in the Valley.” She was the size of a sumo wrestler. She and her daughter had thick, meaty hands—huge hands. They’d stretch you out on a table, face down and naked, and then literally pound the fat off your body. The Pounder was the rage then. All the big movie stars went to her. It was so painful that she would give you a towel to scream into so the neighbors wouldn’t call the police. I can still remember us hobbling out, black and blue from the waist down.
Finally, Iva said to me, “I can’t believe I’m paying so much money to look like I’ve been in a car wreck. These bruises can’t be good.” I agreed but moved on to the next fad—wrapping. It was guaranteed to take off inches instantly. I’d be tightly wrapped in cloth strips that had been soaked in a strange-smelling solution. I’d lie there for an hour until every drop of water was squeezed out. Voilà! Ten pounds gone—until I raced to the water fountain to rehydrate. The pounds and inches returned instantly. It was the dumbest weight loss concept ever invented.
But you see my point. Women will do anything to lose weight. Looking back, I have to laugh at some of the outrageous diets we tried. The craziest diets were those that involved eating only one or two foods for weeks on end. There was the strawberries and champagne diet, the grapefruit diet, the hard-boiled egg diet, the ice cream diet. Even ice cream can start to look sickening when it’s your main staple. I recall one diet guaranteed to take off five pounds in two days. It included steak, hard-boiled eggs, lettuce leaves, and six prunes. None of these diets ever worked for long.
Here’s the irony of the thin-is-in mentality, which is still pervasive: One hundred years ago, the ideal body for a woman was
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