Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank

by Celia Rivenbark

  Oh, yes, my friend. Something is very, very wrong. No woman on the face of the earth would actually stand, fully dressed at the end of the day, on a set of scales. I mean besides Renee Zellweger, who, let’s face it, practically has HELP ME! scrawled across her bony little chest these days.

  For Lisa’s husband to weigh himself while holding a beer is too much to bear. Might as well spit into my “burns more fat” yogurt.

  Women know that there are some essential guidelines to the proper weigh-in. For starters, you weigh only in the morning, before breakfast and after all bodily functions have been attended to. Women weigh after flossing, Q-tipping their ears, and even blowing their noses. Every possible source of added weight must be eliminated.

  Also, and this should go without saying, you have to weigh yourself buck nekkid. I have seen grown, professional women (okay, me) sob in protest at stepping on a doctor’s office scale while fully clothed.

  ME: This dress is heavily beaded; you’ll need to deduct at least twelve pounds.

  NURSE: I don’t see any beads.

  ME: What are you? The frickin’ bead police?

  So I told my husband about Lisa’s insensitive lout of a husband, but he didn’t get it. “What’s the big deal with women and weight? I mean, why are you so worried? What do you weigh, anyway? One twenty? One twenty-five?”

  Suddenly, I felt much better. “Yes,” I said. Well. Maybe in outer space.

  18

  Fashion Forecast

  Run, Run Rudolph, Nipple Jewelry for Morons,

  and Get Thee a Behind, You!

  My closest friends have warned me that I don’t have the guts to write about this subject, but that’s what they said when I wrote about artificial testicles for neutered dogs, so who’s laughing now? Well, probably not the dogs.

  A dedicated humor writer doesn’t shy away from the tough stories, the ones that might even make a few enemies. And that’s why it’s time to take on a subject that is hallowed to many women, even a religion of sorts. I speak, of course, of the holiday sweater cult.

  Those of you who are reading this whilst fingering the delicate silver bells attached to the meticulously embroidered reindeer tableau that is dancing across your chest might want to bail now.

  I never noticed the cult until my daughter started kindergarten, although I’m not a big fan of “character wear” in general. There’s just something not quite right about those grown women who wear Tweety Bird sweatshirts over their leggings at the mall. I mean unless you run a daycare center, isn’t it time to move on and get Road Runner off your chest? And nobody over the age of ten should ever wear any article of clothing that announces I TAWT I TAW A PUDDYTAT. Talk about a cry for help.

  But I digress. It’s the holiday sweater cult that has got me in a swivet. At the kindergarten Fall Festival, I apparently didn’t get the memo that I must wear an elegant themed sweater painstakingly adorned with pumpkins, ghosts, and bats.

  Some of these sweaters are insanely expensive. One cult member confided to me that she once spent $250 for a butter-soft wool sweater with dancing candy canes and nut-crackers prancing around her neck. Her eyes danced, her voice became high-pitched—she wanted me to drink the Kool-Aid, no question.

  Class wars are evident. You’ve got your $14.98 Frosty the Snowman from Wal-Mart versus your $200 Brighton version from the prissy boutique with the size 0 sales staff, and don’t think the cult members won’t know the difference.

  Far be it from me to question another’s sense of fashion (I did, after all, wear a mod paper dress in junior high during an unfortunate Carnaby Street phase) but this whole cutesywootsy, elves-are-eating-my-brain thing where you own an entire wardrobe of sweaters with buttons that can be pushed to play “The Twelve Days of Christmas” is beyond me.

  One friend told me she has enough sweaters to wear a different Christmas sweater from December first to twenty-fifth. My only response was, “Why?”

  Fashion is a hobby for me. I’m fascinated by women who spend five hundred dollars on a single pair of high heels. Even if I had that kind of dough, I wouldn’t do it, because somewhere in the back of my noggin sits Sally Struthers pitifully imploring me to “Please help Save the Children.” (And the awful, shameful me always thinking, Whoa, Sally, if you’d ease up on the Toaster Strudels, you could save a few right there.)

  So, no, I can’t spend five hundred dollars for shoes. Guess I’m just too much of a hick. Here’s another confession: I don’t own a single piece of nipple jewelry.

  I read recently where Janet Jackson’s personal stylist spent hours perusing nipple jewelry before he found that now-legendary sunburst design that was revealed during the Super Bowl halftime show.

  Who the hell has enough money to hire someone to shop for her nipple jewelry? It makes me feel downright dowdy for getting excited about finally buying one of those shirts with my initial on it. Shopping for nipple jewelry? Doesn’t Janet ever need just, you know, socks?

  My daughter, a huge Justin Timberlake fan who even has a little silver ‘N Sync cell phone that is programmed to call her and say good night every night from J. T. himself, was eager to watch the Super Bowl halftime show.

  So while hubby showered, as he does during all Super Bowl halftime shows, even if we’re at other people’s houses (what can I say—the man hates pageantry), the princess and I settled in to see her beloved Justin perform.

  I like to consider myself a modern mom, capable of handling discussions of sex and stuff without blushing and flapping. Still, I was unprepared for the big rip-off. I stopped my Dorito in midcrunch. What was that?

  I didn’t even notice the, uh, boob. I was wondering what that thing was attached to it, and I don’t mean Justin’s paw.

  “Mommy,” pondered Precious, “why did Justin rip that lady’s top off?”

  Channeling the wisdom of my foremothers (who am I kidding—all they had to worry about was not dying in child-birth, making homemade soap out of cow ear wax, and doing the nasty in the same bed where your eleven children are trying to sleep), I decided to answer her question honestly.

  “Ratings, sugar. It’s all about shock and awe, corporate greed, and a culture that is increasingly morally challenged.”

  “You talk funny, Mommy.”

  All was forgiven that night when her ‘N Sync phone rang right at bedtime with a cheery “Sleep tight, and don’t let the bedbugs bite!” from Justin. Amazing how he can do all that and find time to expose Janet Jackson’s dinners on national television.

  Thank heavens the NFL issued an official statement condemning the halftime show antics as “embarrassing, offensive, and inappropriate” and all but called for its smelling salts and shawl. I can only assume that this means that from now on, all NFL cheerleaders will be wearing burkas and shimmying only slightly suggestively.

  Right. That’ll happen.

  All I want is for someone to please tell Janet Jackson where Talbots is.

  She might want to focus on another part of her admittedly buff body. According to fashion insiders, “The boob, it’s been done. It’s old, but the butt is new!” Only fashionistas can say something like that without cracking themselves up.

  What are they talking about? Buttocks cleavage, you fashion Neanderthal. BC is taking over the nation. Open your eyes and see for yourself. The look once popularized by jovial plumbers everywhere is now hotter ‘n fish grease.

  Not blessed with an audacious onion? Fear not, Jane Hathaway! Buttocks implants are the new must-have accessory for the true fashionista. Just ask Paris Hilton. But remember to speak very slowly.

  In case you still don’t get the picture, let plastic surgeon Bruce Nadler of New York City explain it to you: “You want two mounds that are very discrete so you have a valley in between them. It’s like having the perfect push-up bra,” except for the fact that it’s on your ass.

  This is all, of course, another example of plastic surgery following fashion. All those low-rise jeans out there, the ones with the quarter-i
nch-long zippers, means a lot of butt gets exposed in the process. With surgery, you can actually have your butt puffed up to make rear-end cleavage to keep your pants more interesting. I know! I know! I’m dizzy with the possibilities myself!

  It should be only a matter of time before the “front butt” look popularized by overweight women who prefer very tight pants while cruising the aisles of Wal-Mart becomes the new must-have accessory. (“You wanna see some front butt, honey? When I wear my orange stretch capris, you can’t tell whether I’m a-comin’ or a-goin’!”)

  To go along with all this low-rise, puffed-up-butt trend, you’ll want to add a very large tattoo. Turns out that a tattoo that shows just, like, the top third of an eagle, sunset, or some such before disappearing into the jeans completes the look. As explained by one excited New York tattoo artist, “The lower back is what the ankle was!”

  Okay, let’s see if I got this straight. The butt is the new breast, and the lower back is the new ankle. Now if only we could figure out where the brain has moved.

  19

  Ass-Lifting, Face-Tightening,

  Boob-Bustin’ Products

  Right On or Rip-Off? You’ll Have

  to Ask My Pantyhose

  I hate to admit it, but The Swan has gotten inside my head, and I can’t get it out. Every time I look in my mirror, I hear the velvety voice of the hit reality TV show’s fancy-pants Beverly Hills plastic surgeon saying, “She will, of course, need a brow lift, upper and lower face lift, liposuction on the cheeks, buttocks, chin, inner and outer thighs, calves, ankles, and eyelids, breast augmentation, nose job, tummy tuck, gum tissue recontouring, Zoom bleaching, dental veneers, a lip lift, hair extensions, and—oh what the hell—a brand new head.”

  I know that The Swan has made a lot of thoughtful people ponder the disturbing shallowness of a culture that pursues, at all costs, some random notion of “beauty.” But not being a thoughtful person, it just made me wonder if I shouldn’t apply for the next installment.

  The only bad part would be that Swan contestants are allowed only three ten-minute phone calls home a week for four months. That’s not nearly enough time to explain, in painstaking detail once again, where I “hide” the laundry detergent (on the shelf above the washer—call me devil-may-care!) or the princess’s SpongeBob macaroni and cheese (the pantry!) or, naturally, the car keys.

  One of the biggest complaints critics of The Swan have is that the show deliberately selects sad sacks with zero self-esteem just to boost ratings. Hons, that’s just good storytelling, if you ask me. When one aspiring Swan was being wheeled into a seven-hour surgery, she tried three times to call her husband for a few last-minute words of encouragement only to be told he was on a smoke break.

  Ewww.

  On the final night, when an ultimate Swan was crowned, I had a chance to look at the husbands, who were all in the range from extremely ordinary to butt ugly. Of course, it was a little hard to see through the veneer of drool during the cheesy lingerie competition, when the contestants trotted out their new “full D” figures.

  It was some consolation that pageant winner Rachel Love-Fraser chose not to enhance her smallish bust, a curiously satisfying victory for those of us who just dream of being a “full A.”

  Lest you think Fox was insensitive to every need of these women, consider that they hired a “life coach” to help counsel the women during their four months of mirrorless isolation.

  Still, I was underwhelmed by Coach Nely Galan’s approach to at least one weepy and bandage-wrapped contestant: “Do you realize how many people would love to have this chance? I’m honestly disappointed that you’re not trying harder.”

  Like they say, with a life coach like that, who needs flesh-eating bacteria?

  We women do crazy things to make sure that we look our best.

  My friend Patsy Jo is getting ready to attend her thirtieth high school reunion, and she has prepared for it in a sane and sensible way: She has ordered Face Lift in a Bottle.

  Apparently you paint the stuff on your face, and the goo has a tightening, lifting effect that makes you look years younger. The only thing is, it lasts only about six hours, so you could be taut and fabulous at cocktail hour and seem to have aged horribly by the end of dessert.

  I’d like to try it for my next reunion, but I’m afraid I’d screw up the application and come out looking like a cross between Joan Rivers and the Elephant Man. Or I’d use too much and end up looking like one of those raku crackle pots.

  Although I’d never heard of Face Lift in a Bottle, I have tried a few beautifying remedies of my own that smacked of quackery. The weirdest one was something called the Amazing Disappearing Double Chin-Strap, a sweaty band of very tight latex that you strapped on in hopes of eliminating the dreaded midlife double chin. The ads made it sound so easy: “Wear Amazing Disappearing Double Chin-Strap while you do your household chores!”

  Friends who dropped by were treated to quite a sight. “What happened?” they’d shriek. “Were you in a car wreck?”

  “No, silly!” I would say. “It’s going to get rid of my double chin.”

  Actually, I had to sign most answers because my lips had been pushed up to my nose, making normal conversation difficult.

  After weeks of faithfully wearing the gizmo, I had to admit there was no difference, and I tossed it. The only good news was that I could finally stop doing household chores.

  There was also a failed experiment in do-it-yourself breast augmentation. I have a number of friends who have gotten boob jobs from a licensed plastic surgeon, but that stuff costs money. Nope, I decided I would try Beauti-Breast instead. The way it works is that you place your tatas inside two funnel-shaped cups that attach to “any household faucet or spigot.” (I don’t know the difference either, except I think spigots are usually outside, and this was definitely not going to be something I did in my driveway.)

  Once hooked up, you turned on the water and, according to “scientific research,” the tremendous volume of water shooting through the funnels would somehow lead to what scientists refer to as “really big tits.”

  It was a rip-off, of course. It would’ve been much cheaper to strap myself, topless, to the hood of my car next time it went through the Auto Spa.

  All this just proves there is no magic fountain—or even spigot—of youth and beauty, sister-hons. Only through rest, exercise, and healthy diet can we help ourselves look our best.

  I know; I crack myself up.

  The latest national beauty obsession is to have teeth so bright that we can use them to read at night. (“Aim your choppers over here, Martha, I can’t see the TV Guide crossword.”)

  Don’t get me wrong. I like white teeth as much as the next person. Someday, I even hope to own some, although there’s a better than even chance that they’ll be the kind that must sit, grinning maniacally, from the confines of a watery glass beside my bed.

  The real thing just seems like too much work. For example, those ubiquitous whitening strips that brag that you can discreetly brighten your smile while you go about your life, even while working out! But I don’t want to work out. Do they have any that work if you just want to sit on your ass and watch Judging Amy?

  “I’m getting a whiter smile,” says the smarty-pants spokesmodel on the commercial, as she, like, jumps from a plane or something else more exciting than my typical day: folding laundry while simultaneously eating the last of the mini-Snickers from Halloween.

  People have become so obsessed with whiter teeth that those of us who don’t use strips, gels, brush-ons, and trays are starting to look like Austin Powers in comparison.

  I actually met a young woman the other day whose teeth were so white, they were blue.

  “Your teeth are amazing,” I said, though it was hard for her to hear me because I was speaking from behind my hand, suddenly ashamed of my own teeth, less knockout than Niblets.

  “I know,” she said, smiling even wider.

  “I think you just put my e
yes out.”

  A check of some of the teeth-whitening products out there reveals that you can actually get your teeth eleven shades whiter if you have them professionally bleached. Eleven shades! What are they using? Clorox? I think I’ll take my wine-stained best tablecloth to the dentist next time I go.

  Recently, I read a testimonial for a professional bleaching product from a young couple who spent the month before their wedding getting their teeth custom-bleached so their smiles would match on their big day. Haven’t these idiots ever heard of Photoshop? Hons, if I got married today, I’d have those wedding photos shave off my hips, whiten my smile, and give me the bust that I have so richly deserved all my life.

  And to think, the only thing we used to worry about was making sure the bridesmaids’ dresses matched the punch.

  Everything’s so complicated now, what with all these products to make us gorgeous. Even the simple act of buying pantyhose is maddening. Gone are the days when you could just buy that little L’Eggs egg, size B, nude, sheer toe.

  When I went pantyhose shopping recently, I discovered that a lot has happened, not much of it good.

  Did I want pantyhose infused with microencapsulated caffeine or grapefruit scents?

  No thanks. The way my thighs rub together, I’d smell like Starbucks all day, and that would just lead to me and everyone around me craving triple-fat mochaccinos, and then where would we all be? Size C, that’s where.

  The theory behind injecting grapefruit and caffeine into hosiery is that it makes it last longer, even after repeated washings. This is, to use the technical term, utter crap.

  Some pantyhose boast of chemical additives to make you feel better as you walk. I’m guessing the nude, size B, Vicodin pantyhose are particularly popular with movie stars.

  The rest of us must settle for pantyhose injected with things like “jojoba.” I’m not sure what jojoba is, but I’m pretty sure I don’t want it anywhere near my noonie.

  I also discovered something called “bum boost” pantyhose by Pretty Polly for sagging buttocks. (And, yet again, I’m struck by what a terrific name that would be for a rock band: Sagging Buttocks.) This is great! Next time hubby asks why I’m acting like I have my ass on my shoulders, I can just smile and say, “I do, and it’s all thanks to Pretty Polly!”