I think I look OK, I really do—yep, I’d like to have a smaller stomach, a more defined bum, and some serious Michelle Obama arms, but I don’t, and I’m OK with that. You know what I do have? A fucking excellent sense of humor, a heap of empathy for people who aren’t feeling themselves, and bloody good legs.
As I write this I’m about to embark on an American tour of my live show #CelesteChallengeAccepted Live (yep, some of the greatest minds in the Biz came up with that fancy title), and I need to get fit. When I did my Australian tour I found out that I’m really unfit. I dance around onstage, I do a bit of unrehearsed floor work, and I run around like a chicken with no head. It’s awesome, but I can’t talk or keep up with my gags after a dance break, so I’m getting fit.
People who see me walking, or on very rare occasions running, have said to me, “Don’t lose too much weight—you’ll lose your audience.”
I’m not doing these parody pics to show what it would look like for a fat girl to do a Kim Kardashian photo; I’m doing them because I think they are funny. I don’t compare my body with the bodies of the people I parody. The first thing I think when I see a pic I want to parody is, “How would I look doing that?” Not “How fat would I look doing that?” or “How gross would I look doing that pose?” I simply ask myself, “Will that be funny if I do it?” If the answer is yes, then #hothusband is dragged out of the surf, and the three-minute photo shoot is underway.
I can’t fit into my size 14 control pants. Look, I could look a lot better, or sexier (whatever that means), but I don’t want to. I don’t want to sacrifice eating cake at my son’s birthday party (or on Wednesdays and Sundays), and I’m not about to pass on celebrating friends’ successes with a glass of champagne just to fit an ideal. I have a real beef with an unattainable lifestyle being publicized as attainable and healthy. It’s not healthy; it’s one-dimensional. It’s striving for one thing: not for strength, not for health, but to look good.
I think the idea of everything in moderation is a really good one. Maybe we could apply that idea to the bullshit we get fed about how we should all look.
There is so much talk about what we should and shouldn’t look like and very little about how we are feeling. So instead of adding to the already noisy conversation with an InstaQuote of advice, I’m just going to get on with it—and if you need me, I’ll be in the drama room writing some jokes that won’t change the world but will hopefully make you laugh.
The One with My 28-Day Journey to Better Diet and Exercise
Week One
Morning
Wake up at 4:30 a.m., and before you’ve even put your feet on the ground you’re already in your activewear and are sure you’ve lost weight because your attitude has changed.
Today is the start of the new you, so you need new everything—new kettle, new activewear, new blender, new clothesline, new journal, and new dining chairs. New new new. Before the kids are awake, head to the kitchen and boil the brand-new filtered water with the brand-new kettle you bought two days ago. While the water is boiling, juice your organic lemons in your new fancy juicer. As you sip on your hot lemon water, strap on your Fitbit and get ready to start counting your steps.
Make sure to note all the things you put in your mouth over the next twenty-eight days in your brand-new kikki.K food journal that you bought on sale. And scream at your children for even thinking of borrowing the matching pen. Log on to Instagram and start a new page, alerting your followers that you are going in a new direction with your posts and will be sharing your daily food intake and workouts with everyone to hold yourself accountable. You’ll be posting about how fabulous you feel cutting out coffee and replacing it with herbal tea, and how all the clothes you kept from your Year 10 Janet Jackson days are now hanging in your wardrobe waiting to be worn.
Spend your month’s wage when you sign up to a healthy living website, and be sure to jot down the first of many inspiring quotes you need to do to be a better, more attractive person.
Midmorning
Eat one of the 145 boiled eggs you prepared the day before, and drink five liters of water along with a peppermint tea, no honey.
After dropping the kids at school, go for your walk. Your Fitbit goal should be fifteen thousand, and you’re determined to get the steps in before pickup. Because this is the new you. The healthy and skinny you. The REAL you.
Lunch
Slice an avocado in half as a bread substitute and place another boiled egg on top. Followed up by your sixth liter of water. Instead of addressing the dizzy spells, focus on the positives and journal about them.
Afternoon Tea
Consume no more than five activated almonds and a slice of raw salmon. Consume two liters of water and start judging other people.
Dinner
While watching your family enjoy the spaghetti Bolognese you prepared for them, full of cheese and pasta, take a teaspoon of Bolognese sauce and place it in a lettuce-leaf cup and remember how lucky you are, how skinny you’re going to be, and how easy this way of living actually is.
After-Dinner Treat
A cup of herbal tea and a liter of water.
While sipping on your relaxing tea, log on and look at some more inspiring healthy living websites. You will fast realize that you are actually one of those people now and be proud to know that you have started on this new way of life, and as soon as you lose a lot of weight you’ll be a better person.
Bedtime
Check your Fitbit and realize you have done 75K steps. Go to bed knowing you are amazing and can do anything and that wine doesn’t really rule your life like it does the lives of all your friends.
Follow these steps for every day of Week One, and you’ll be feeling tetchy and thin.
NB Around Day Two you will be feeling really fucking angry and in pain. Keep some Tylenol on you at all times, and for the after-dinner snack I suggest drinking your herbal tea from a wineglass to trick your brain.
Week Two
Morning
Even though you’ve fallen off the wagon a little since the first day of Week One, today is the day you’re going to get back onto it. Start introducing things back into your diet, because after all, it’s not a diet, you guys—it’s a new way of living. Put on some ill-fitting pajama bottoms and your gym top that hasn’t been washed since your stepdaughter wore it to her athletics carnival, and get ready for the day.
Midmorning
You have replaced the peppermint tea with a large soy latte and the boiled egg with scrambled eggs and a small piece of toast, and some bacon, for extra protein.
When you go to write in your food journal, you realize that due to a sugar, carb, and wine shortage, your blood sugar has plummeted and you have accidentally packed your food journal in your son’s library bag and are staring at the cover of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. You don’t worry, as you still have your new and improved Instagram account to help you stay accountable. While uploading a photo of your scrambled eggs, make sure you charge your Fitbit, which you forgot to do after taking it off last night when you went for cocktails with your girlfriends. One slipup is OK.
Lunch
You are too full from the midmorning snack of scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and a sneaky bag of chips to eat anything for lunch, so you just get a banana smoothie, feeling good about having a liquid lunch.
Afternoon Tea
As you didn’t technically “eat” lunch, you make up for the lost calories with some banana bread. Since you are still focused on your health and hydration, you skull a glass of water and two multivitamins.
Dinner
Still proud of skipping lunch, you celebrate with two glasses of wine and four of your kids’ half-eaten fish fingers.
Bedtime
Try to skull four of the five liters of water you should have been sipping throughout the day while looking at ’90s photos of Jennifer Aniston doing yoga, open a new browser page, and book yourself in for a Bikram yoga class in the morning.
> Week Three
Morning
Wake up, remember you stayed up way too late last night watching The Office outtakes and forgot to set your alarm, and it’s now 8:35 and you have done fuck all.
While ordering your kids’ school lunch online, try to put some leftover lemon from last night’s fried rice in scalding hot water and skull it in the hope that it will somehow cleanse the bottle of wine you’ve been consuming nightly since Day Two of Week Two.
Midmorning
You ran out of time at home to do anything with the eggs your husband keeps boiling and had to be at school by eight. Running late, you whip into the Macca’s drive-through and order a Bacon ’N Egg McMuffin and remind yourself you are halfway through this new way of living, so you check yourself and order only one hash brown.
Lunch
Eat the leftover fried rice from dinner the night before and a protein shake to fill you up for the rest of the day.
Afternoon Tea
Log on to Instagram and realize that you may have slipped a little. Open another browser and realize the healthy living website you took down all the notes from is actually a body-shaming website. Go into your room and scream into a pillow until dinner.
Dinner
While cooking risotto (a family favorite and a personal favorite, as you can drink while cooking), you realize you have done only two thousand steps in the past four days and begin to run on the spot while cooking, drinking, and helping your children with their homework.
After-Dinner Snack
Shame-eat the risotto your children didn’t finish in the kitchen pantry so no one can see you. Wash it down with five liters of vodka, lime, soda, and tears.
Week Four
Realizing you are better than this, call your best friend and organize an impromptu weekend away consisting of wine, caftans, Will and Grace binges, and all-you-can-eat buffets.
Week Forever
And give yourself a fucking break.
The One Where I Explain Why I Don’t Hate Hot People
I want to be clear about something. Something that I think people are a bit unsure of when they look at me or my “brand.” I don’t hate hot people. I really don’t. I just get a bit annoyed that they seem to get away with things that not-so-hot people don’t get away with.
The other day I was talking to #hothusband, and as I began opening up about my feelings and hopes and dreams, he just started yawning.
While he was mid-yawn, I stopped abruptly and asked: “Um, are you yawning?”
To which he responded, “I just get really tired when you start talking.”
Now, if some guy who looked like Trump Jr.12 had said that to me, he would have gotten a swift kick to the dick. I would have screamed at him and stormed off to my room and accessed my emergency stash of wine, nicely placed in my underwear drawer, under the bed, in my shoe drawer, or in the pot plant next to my bed.
But because #hothusband is such an Adonis, I found myself reassessing the way I was delivering him information. Thinking it was me who was the problem, I figured I needed to come up with more exciting ways to engage with him.
But I don’t hate hot people, I really don’t. If anything, I’m concerned for them.
Have you noticed that most hot people you see in the street look confused? They are walking around looking for the perfect light, with a look on their faces of “Oh shit, I only came out this morning to show this face and/or body off; I’ve got no idea what to do with the rest of my life.”
This is worrying. You never see an average-looking person looking confused in the street. We are busy and rude and have places to go so we can prove our worth, because fuck knows we didn’t get where we are based on our faces alone.
Kate Beckinsale (hair flick emoji) commented on one of my photos the other day, to which #hothusband said, “Oh, she seems pretty cool.” He then paused and said, “Oh, I know she’s hot, but she still seems pretty cool.”
NOOOOO! He’s missed my entire point. Kate Beckinsale is allowed to be hot and a cool person. Most cool people are super hot. It’s not individual hot people that I’m talking about; it’s our dumb-arse culture, which tries to make us believe that the way we look is the most important thing. A culture that says if you look a certain way, then different things will be available to you and you will be treated differently.
But after #hothusband made this remark, I stopped and remembered he was a hot person and just needs to sit there and be pretty, as he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about, so I patted him on the head and ignored him.
One of my favorite scenes in 30 Rock (as if there could be only one) was when Tina Fey’s character Liz Lemon went out on a date with a hot guy and the waitress was super rude to her and super nice to the hot dude. It was hilarious, because that shit is spot-on. People have always been overly nice to #hothusband and only mediocre to me—until I got internet-famous and started naming and shaming, so now people also throw me some pity attention.
It doesn’t stop there, though. #hothusband doesn’t know when people are flirting with him. And I don’t mean innocent flirting that is acceptable at the school cafeteria; I’m talking full-blown “here’s a sneak peek at my nipple” flirting.
We holiday on the Gold Coast a lot. It’s near where I grew up, and it’s got some totally epic and gnarly surf breaks, so #hothusband is a happy man. And I myself love a happy, hot Maori.
It gets super busy where he surfs, and we always seem to head up there when there is some totally wicked surf competition on, and all the supermodels from Brazil and Japan flock to see the sick surfer dudes do epic shit on waves. OK, no more surfing lingo, it’s making me (and no doubt you) nauseous.
So this means the beach is crowded. The beach and the waves are full of people wanting to catch a sweet-arse ride (soz) on a world-famous break. I just want to go up and see my family and show the bitches I went to school with what a success I am, but he’s all about the waves.
The last time we went up, #hothusband got a lot of attention. He usually gets a fair bit, but this time there was extra, because he’s a bloody celebrity by osmosis.
He went for a surf, and I frolicked around on the beach with the kids. After he came running in from the surf, Baywatch-style, he seemed confused (hot-person confused).
“Are you OK?” I asked.
“Yeah, all good.”
I didn’t believe him. “What happened?” I pressed.
“Oh, well, I was out there and the surf was awesome and this chick paddled up to me.”
I stopped burying my four-year-old in the sand and got up. “Go on,” I said without blinking.
“Well, she was just talking to me about the surf . . . ,” he started.
“And . . . ?” I questioned, fearing the worst judging by the look on his face.
“That’s all. She was just talking to me.”
“Right.” I relaxed and blinked for what felt like the first time in twenty minutes.
He wasn’t as relaxed. “But she was really hot, obviously; she’s Brazilian.”
“Obviously.”
“And she wasn’t really wearing anything, and I got confused.”
“Confused?”
“Yeah, I didn’t know what to do.”
“Are you serious?! Because you are both hot and half-naked in the water, you got confused about how to have an adult conversation? Just don’t fuck her. It’s not hard. She can be sitting on a surfboard talking to you about whatever she wants, and you’re allowed to engage, but just because she’s hot and you’re hot doesn’t mean you instantly need to get into each other.”
This is what I worry about with the hot ones.
To be completely honest, I don’t really care what anyone looks like. That’s the whole point—I want the world to be exactly like me when it comes to this issue. Stop valuing people on their appearance and expecting different things from different people judged on the varying degrees of hotness. And I also want Sally Field to be the president of the United S
tates of America. So if someone could get cracking on both those things, I’d really appreciate it.
12 Sorry.
The One No One Cares About
Times have changed.
Things that used to be common pet peeves, like high-cut swimsuits cutting into places they promised they wouldn’t, general nepotism, and people who don’t need to wash their hair every day, no longer register on my annoyance radar. What has taken their place is menial shit that shouldn’t matter—like rich people filming themselves opening things they were given by other rich people.
This isn’t just reserved for us women; it’s something that my children are also obsessing over. They are addicted to watching people they will never meet open toys they will never have.
So many things are being given to people who don’t need them.
Surely these people don’t keep all the things they are given, do they? DO they?! They must regift.
Is this a new thing we are going to start seeing? Influencers regift the gifts they were originally gifted, and then the new person films themselves opening the secondhand gift, and we all watch them and realize that the gift has been regifted, and everyone laughs and cries and no one says “gift” anymore? Is this what Gen Y thinks is charity?
I thought I’d do what any levelheaded adult would do and draft a letter to no one in particular and not send it but instead print it in my book to be read by people it’s not intended for.
Dear Influencers,
Sup, fam? I feel like I’m talking to my sorority girlz! Yass, let’s celebrate that we are big online and only address each other with the hashtag #girlboss, #queen, or #thisone.
It’s fun getting free stuff, isn’t it? I know, I get gifted some super-fun things, and it makes me feel so super important and superior. I remember the first month’s supply of toilet paper I got. I grabbed that box and ran upstairs screaming for all of my well-dressed children to come and open the gift with me. Every time I had a movement I would wipe with gratitude, and I made sure my children did the same.
Challenge Accepted! Page 18
