Friday, September 2, 2011

Nora Ephron must be a Dwarf

Did you guys know that Nora Ephron is only four feet and five inches tall?  Actually I don't know that for sure but I am going to assume she must be comically short because in her book I Feel Bad About My Neck she writes this:

"I go off to college. I weigh 106 pounds.  I come back from college three months later.  I weigh 126 pounds. I was once thin and shapeless.  Now I am fat and, ironically, equally shapeless. Nothing fits except for my wool plaid Pendleton pleated skirt, which makes me look even fatter. It's tragic. My father takes one look at me as I get off the plane and says to my mother, 'Well, maybe someone will marry her for her personality.'"


First of all, in what universe is 126 pounds fat on anyone of average height?  I'm five feet and five inches tall and if I weighed 126 pounds I would look like I'd just gone through chemo during a famine, which leads me to assume that Nora Ephron is dwarf-short. I should explain that this paragraph wasn't part of a bigger chapter about what an asshole her dad was.  Maybe her dad was an asshole.  He probably was but I don't know for sure.  She was telling the story as a hilarious anecdote about how good and cold the milk was in her college cafeteria and how she gained twenty pounds in three months and got "fat."  Okay, I'll admit that it's not good to gain twenty pounds in three months, but to be a "famous" "successful" "woman" and say that the twenty pounds she gained in college was "tragic"?  I can see why we are all so obsessed with the scale.  The stupidest part of the whole story is that she is probably lying about the weights!  She probably started at 126 pounds and got up to a whopping 146 (which, btw, I would LOVE to weigh) but could never allow herself to admit those numbers in writing. Women lie about what the scale says all the time because other women lie about it.  It's stupid, and it's kind of sick but when someone famous like her does it, it is tragic.  Thanks for setting women back a few decades, Nora Ephron!

This is part of the diet cycle that is so frustrating to me.  I'm a feminist.  Our culture is toxic to women.  Pick up a Cosmopolitan magazine and see for yourself.  It's not a magazine for women to be better women, it's a magazine that tells how you can drop unsightly pounds, and wear eyeliner to look hot, and how to please your man in bed.  That's tragic.  Even the milder women's magazines are ridiculous.  Have you seen the plus-sized models?  According to women's magazines the average woman in this country is a fat, disgusting mess.  How dare we take up more than our allotted 120 pounds of space!

But on the other hand, I like to be able to breathe when I tie my shoes.  So I think I need to drop a few pounds.  But then I get into an internal struggle about my motivation for losing weight.  Why am I dropping pounds?  Is it really for health, or is it because I want to look a little more like Sofia Vergara and a little less like Ed O'Neill?

I want to look less like Ed O'Neill
I don't know.  I guess at this point I want to feel good.  I'm never going to look like Sofia Vergara.  I don't even really want to because getting ogled at this point in my life would just make me want to throw up.  I'd like to not wake up with a stomach ache and I'd like to not have the squirts and I'd like to have lots of energy.  All that can be fixed with a good diet.  I suppose if I lose pounds in the process that's just gravy, right?  Make tying the shoes a little easier?

If I ever see Nora Ephron in person I am going to (want to) slap her right across her windsock-like turkey neck.

6 comments:

  1. I think I'm starting to get to the age where it's less about vanity, and more about longevity. If I don't start making life long changes, I'm going to have some major health issues.

    I used to love reading all the girly girl magazines... now I look at them and think "this isn't me". I can't even remember the last time I wore eyeliner... but I do remember thinking "whoa, this makes me look really old." Who wants to look older when they're our age?

    We have to do this to feel better; looking better is just the bonus. If it turns heads, great, but that's not what we have to do it for.

    The women we see on TV are, I'm guessing, much younger than we are and nothing about them is 'real'. Fake boobs, botox (at age 24?? really Kim Kardashian??), hair extensions, tooth veneers.... But they get paid to starve themselves and have all the other fluff. So we can watch it and feel bad about ourselves. I've started to "unplug" from some of that stuff.

    Why do we think our lives would be so much better if we were a size 4?? I'll be willing to bet it isn't. I think my life would be so much better if I didn't have headaches, joint pain, risk for high blood pressure...

    I want to be able to keep up with my daughter when she gets older (and not so annoying). I want to be able to travel and not be house bound. I'm tired of being tired!

    Poor Nora E... but I have my own problems!

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  2. LOL, you must be in my sis's new book club! See you there on Thursday! Gee, I wonder what I'll be ordering at Old Chicago??? A small plate of lettuce and bring my own spray dressing from home, or the 2000-calorie chocolate-chip cookie thing they have there? Such a tough choice.

    P.S. I just got my copy of the book in the mail. I'm so cheap I refused to even spring for the Nook book, especially since Dana said she didn't really love it! I haven't started it. ROTFL

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  3. P.S. 126 is NOT FAT, and Nora Ephron has to be smart enough to know this, but she's Nora Ephron, and she's famous, and she's stuck in the Hollywood Machine, and she's completely brainwashed to believe that anything larger than a size 0 is obese. If she weighed 106 pounds when she left for college, she had to have been see-through.

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