My Guilty Secret (Or, The Real Truth About Women, Weight...and Envy)

(Not that I noticed)

Here's something many women feel and few women admit to: We look at women's bodies, perhaps even more than men do. And not (for the most part) because of latent lesbian tendencies. We are--and I know I can't speak for all women, but I also know I speak for many--very often if not nearly constantly checking. I wish I could remember when I first started asking whoever would answer me (be it girlfriends or boyfriends): "Is my ass as big as hers?" I really wanted to know. I wanted an honest assessment, so I could understand how I appeared in the world: Yes, your butt looks just like that (only more so).

What I don't know but wish I did: Do guys do the same vis-a-vis other men's bodies? But really, how can they--except perhaps at the beach, where everyone's lats and pecs are out for inspection? Our fashions are such that women's goodies are nearly always on display, breasts and behinds and waistlines cinched into the season's latest bodice or "skinny jeans." When was the last time you could discern a guy's junk when he was sporting office-wear?

In fact, while men's clothing has almost always been more concealing and forgiving of so-called figure flaws, it has become even more so in the last few years: as women's bikinis have shrunk and styles become more form-fitting, men's swimsuits and shorts have ballooned into gigantic baggies. You could hide a multitude of sins in there. As you could in any men's business suit: tush and belly handily concealed by a jacket that hides the evidence of last night's or week's or year's pig-outs (unless you're Chris Christie, in which case there's no hope).

The fact is--I'm sorry, there's no getting around this--whatever you may read about men becoming more self-conscious and more concerned about their beer-bellies, they still have a long way to go before they catch up to women's level of body-self-consciousness. And, because who else do we have to size ourselves up against, we scan the rest of womanhood for validation/confirmation/our place in the body-sphere. I once walked down the street in a ridiculously short skirt with my husband, and he later told me that women's heads swiveled more than men's ("is my butt as big as hers?"). And I recall, honestly, that the biggest diet I ever embarked on, The Diet that brought me close to Eating Disorders-Land, began when I worked at a women's fashion magazine (where the size of butts was always noted) and watched a co-worker lose 15 pounds and suddenly look stunning in stretch-pants.

Was I simply inspired by her example (hey, I could do that too!) or was I spurred by something less admirable (I want to look skinnier than her)? And, is this comparison-dance a naturally occurring phenomenon from cavewoman days, or a natural result of the disheartening fact that women are still often valued far more for their looks than for their abilities? Two questions I still find very hard to answer.

I wish that our butts were all beloved, by ourselves first and foremost. But I also do wonder how deep the urge to look, compare, and covet runs in human nature. Exhibit number one: this incredibly revealing shot of Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield. Two women of rare, almost otherworldly beauty...and one is just checking.

Are they bigger than mine?

Food Lust, Food Guilt: Who's Normal Anymore?

"Be honest honey, what would you rather have--cheesecake or thin thighs?"

Standing in the current of cool air from the open fridge door, thinking. No, make that obsessing. Thinking is what my teenage son does in that situation: Should I have that leftover pizza? A salami sandwich? An apple? Some ice cream? It’s all good—the only difficulty lies in deciding which sounds most delectable at that precise moment.

Obsessing goes like this: Should I have that leftover pizza? No, I already ate too much of it last night; I’ll have to work out extra hard later. But it sounds soooo good, especially if I slip it into the oven and make it all gooey again…No, I have to be good today and have cottage cheese, some carrot sticks, a salad for lunch. What goes on is not a decision of appetite, hunger, and taste but a complex moral/ethical conundrum that invokes words like deserve, guilt, bad, and should.  Sound familiar?

Until a few days ago, you could have seen this incredibly common mini-drama played out in a TV ad (if not in your own life) for Yoplait Raspberry Cheesecake Lite.

Weird Food of the Week: The Big Ass Burger

Dateline: Arizona. You could also call it "Prophetic Food of the Week." On vacay in northern Arizona, I couldn't resist scoping out the native vittles. Behold the Big Ass Burger, served up at Scottsdale's Roaring Fork restaurant, composed of an astounding 12 ounces of beef, crispy bacon, Colby cheese, iceberg lettuce, tomato, and grilled onions. Because Arizona doesn't require restaurants to post nutritional facts (as New York City does), I can't give you an exact calorie count--but I do know that the beef alone brings it close to 1,000.

I have nothing against burgers; love them in fact, especially charred on the outside, a little pink on the inside, topped with bleu cheese, and resting on a pillowy toasted bun. BUT...much of that delectable pleasure is lost, swamped, overwhelmed by the sheer heft of 12 ounces of oleaginous beef. I do believe humans were designed and programmed to eat some meat--chased down on the savannah and greedily devoured; lean, protein-packed, life-giving meat--but not to waddle from car to restaurant table and cast oneself into a sea of factory-farmed, chopped-and-fried, fatty flesh.

The result of such regular excursions, of course, is the "big ass" of that (surely somewhat self-aware?) title. Bottom line (pardon the pun): just because you can do something doesn't mean you must--something food purveyors in the U.S. don't seem to have grasped.

All that said, if you do decide to splurge, just this once, on the Big Ass Burger, don't forget your Big Ass Fries--a remarkable case of life imitating art...thousands of years in the (ironic) future.

Reason #6,514 Why it's Easy to Gain Weight

Because our biggest, most powerful corporations keep telling us that really bad foods are actually really good for us. Latest case in point: Coca-Cola's VitaminWater. Coke has been assuring consumers that VitaminWater is, just as its name implies, "a vitamin-enhanced water beverage," and has used the phrase "vitamins + water = all you need" to promote it--when in truth it has nearly the sugar content of Coke itself.

If you go to VitaminWater's website, all you see are healthy young people skateboarding, surfing, modeling hip clothes, downloading playlists, and doing all those other energetic things you do when you're pumped up on vitamins. In fact, Coca-Cola--in this its 125th-anniversary year of peddling sugar-water--is desperately fighting off a class-action suit claiming that the company has been misleading consumers in suggesting that VitaminWater is anything other than sugar-water (with a few supplements mixed in as window-dressing).

Just today the company agreed to go to mediation (translation: they may be ready to settle just the get the damn thing out of the news). They've already lost one court battle: they tried to get the suit dismissed last year, protesting that their nutrition facts are there on the bottle for anyone to see--courtesy of FDA laws that even one of the most omnipotent companies on the globe can't get around. A judge last year ruled that, regardless of the small print, all the large print on the bottle violates what is known as the jelly-bean rule--a guideline that prohibits companies from claiming their nutritionally empty junk food is "healthy" because they've thrown in a little Vitamin C or calcium.

It's hard enough to keep one's waistline while navigating the obvious calorie calossi--the cheese-stuffed-crust pizzas, the hauntingly fragrant cinnabons that wreathe every airport and mall. The lies of the unscrupulous jelly-bean peddlers of the world make it well-nigh impossible. But then, why expect anything else from a corporation that fought long and hard to install soda machines in schools across the country? Hey, the kids can always opt for the "healthy" option: VitaminWater.

Image of the Week: "True Beauty"

At least, I think that's how Vogue Italia's coverline, "Belle Vere," translates to English. This month, Vogue's Italian cousin puts three plus-size models on its cover--and they are delicious, scrumptious, timeless (paging Sophia Loren), and real. Though "true" (vere) is perhaps the more perfect word: finally, some truth about women's bodies. The other subtext, of course: even big girls buy clothes.

Sometimes a Carrot is Just...a Carrot

The USDA plate has landed, and it looks oddly…familiar. A primary-colored circle divided into nearly equal quarters, it has clean, retro lines reminiscent of the 1950s Four Food Groups. The huge difference, of course, is that Fruits and Vegetables have moved up in the world—from one-quarter of the diet in the meat-centric ‘50s to a full one-half today. The plate is in fact almost aggressively, preternaturally basic in design: Look how easy this is! it proclaims. Eating right is child’s play!

 And in some ways, it is. But Americans have been making nutrition way too complicated for more than a century now. The first USDA recommendations for a healthy diet came out in the mid-1890s, on a wave of brand-spanking-new nutritional science. We’ve been in love with evidence-based eating ever since. And where has it gotten us? One has to wonder.