Fat Chance Read online

  In a decision that every plus-size woman should rejoice over, Jazzercise said, “Recent studies document that it may be possible for people of varying weights to be fit. Jazzercise has determined that the value of ‘fit appearance’ as a standard is debatable.” The announcement was made at the 10th International No Diet Day in San Francisco, which was dubbed a celebration of “diversity in shape.”

  Ms. Portnick’s lawyer, Sandra Solovey, who is the author of Tipping the Scale of Justice: Fighting Weight-Based Discrimination, told the New York Times that Ms. Portnick was lucky to be a resident of San Francisco, one of only four jurisdictions in the country where it’s against the law to discriminate on the basis of weight.

  “On one side of a bridge you can be protected from weight-based discrimination,” she said of the Bay Bridge between San Francisco and Oakland, “and on the other side you’re vulnerable.”

  I’m about to press the send key on the column when Tamara struts in like a windup doll on a talking tirade that has a long way to go before it fizzles.

  “So I’m in your office, on my way home, about to turn out your office light.”

  I wait.

  “I’m about to flick the switch on the M&M’s lamp, and what do I see?”

  “I give up.”

  “Your pink phone-message pad with doodling all over it.”

  “Your point is?”

  “Not just any doodles, Maggie….” Her voice begins to trail.

  I won’t go for the bait.

  “Mike Taylor doodles in all kinds of cutesy-poo little writing.”

  Unmasked.

  “Block letters, puffy pastel two-dimensional letters, calligraphy, flowery script, and then little red hearts.”

  I’m not in the mood now for the drama queen who is studying me. She switches gears and is trying another approach as she drops the armload of mail she’s been holding onto my desk.

  “You okay, Maggie? You been acting a little strange lately, you know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Strange how?”

  “Strange like…” She drums her iridescent green fingernails on top of a thick hardcover book called Aberrant Eating Behaviors. “Uh, aberrant…you’re not here, your mind is elsewhere.”

  “My mind’s right here, Tamara, you want to take a CAT scan?”

  “I’m not your doctor, babe, I don’t want to take no CAT scan. But I’ll tell you that you are most definitely not your ever-lovin’ self. You are adrift. Something bothering you?”

  “My job, my column, a water pill, my next meal, the exchange rate of the yen, that’s what’s bothering me, okay? What else could be on my mind? WHAT? WHAT? There is nothing else whatsoever. End of discussion. You read me?”

  Tamara holds up her hands in surrender. “Not another word from me, I swear. I’ll just sit myself back down outside and let you have your estro/progestero hissy fit. I’m out of here.” She cha-chas toward the door.

  I should let it go, but I can’t. “Come back.” I point to a chair opposite my desk. My pencil turns into a drumstick. Tap tap tap tap. “You’re right. You know me. I wear my heart on my sleeve. I can’t hide anything from you…although Lord knows I try.” We eye each other over a drumroll.

  Tamara crosses her legs and leans forward, twirling a corn-row around her finger. She raises her eyebrows and checks her watch. Then she sits back, and uncrosses her legs.

  “H-E-L-L-O—”

  “WHO has a body like no other man?”

  She screws up her face. “Fabio?”

  I fling open the paper to the TV page. “Ever heard of a show called The High Life?”

  “Starring that lowlife…er…what’s his name?”

  “That gorgeous lowlife, yes.”

  “So?”

  “So? The SO is that that sexy lowlife, Mike Taylor, called me last week. He needs my help. He wants me to fly to L.A. and help him with a movie he’s making.”

  This is apparently the funniest thing that Tamara has ever heard. “You’ve been had, girl. Barsky’s at it again. That guy slaughters me, I swear—” She smacks her thigh and laughs harder.

  “No, my child, no no no no—”

  “That man should sell a CD. ‘Get ’em going with Alan Barsky.’ God, he EXCELS! Barsky RULES!”

  “Fine then, ask for a transfer and work for him if you’re so tickled with his bullshit. Of course, you won’t get Godiva truffles, chanterelles, tins of Beluga caviar. On Metro you’ll get Tic Tacs. You like Tic Tacs, Tamara? What color? Or more likely you’ll get gift baskets of poison apples and hemlock.” Vicious pencil tapping now.

  Tamara waves her arms over her head as if to clear the air.

  “Girl, you are a pushover. Barsky is head and shoulders above you in the pranks department. You are just not up there in his league. Boy, do we have to bring that boy to his knees, make him pay. Oh, I love this…it’s gonna take some thinking, but we can do it, we—”

  I stare at her unflinchingly. “Barsky was out on assignment.”

  One perfect eyebrow arches up, then her whole body slumps. “You mean…?”

  “Yes…it really was—”

  “Mike Taylor?”

  “Mike Taylor.” I take an Internet picture of him out of my desk drawer. We both stare at it for a moment. “How could anyone not want to help that?”

  “Lord have mercy. What are you going to do, Maggie?”

  “After I have my heart massaged? What do you think? I’m going to give him the name of a diet doctor I know out on the coast, and then go back to my column and forget the whole thing. Do you think I’d just take off because I get a call from a smart-ass in Hollywood? Yes he’s gorgeous, but out there they’re all gorgeous—”

  “Well, they’re not all THAT—”

  “They’re plaster casts created in operating rooms. The plastic surgeons out there can carve George Clooney’s face out of Danny DeVito’s behind. Tight skin, nipped eyes, shaved noses, chins, cheekbones, six-pack abs. The only thing they don’t do yet is head transplants. That is one sick universe. So that’s your answer. That’s what I’m going to do.”

  “Good for you, Maggie.” She high-fives me. “You are your own person.” She walks toward the door, and then does a 180-degree pivot.

  “Want me to arrange transpo?”

  “Done.”

  “Huh?”

  “DreamWorks booked it. How’s that for a perfect name?”

  Tamara turns again, but I’m not done. “One more thing. Of course you have to swear on your life—”

  “What life?”

  “—not to tell another living soul.”

  She shuts the door, then stands there, the other eyebrow raised.

  “When I got home last night, I stripped off all my clothes and took a long look in the mirror, and let me tell you there’s a reason my bathroom mirror is the size of a postage stamp.”

  “Amen.”

  “I stared at a body that I wanted to divorce, uncontested. I saw someone who didn’t look like the real me that was trapped inside. So I declared war. The Maggie O’Leary who’s going to L.A. in eight weeks will be nothing like the one that this world knows and loves.”

  “You lost me.”

  “I’m going to do something utterly heretical, and I need you to be my partner in crime.”

  “Maybe you better just tell me.”

  “You have to swear, swear, not to tell a soul, otherwise I’m going to be burned at the stake, excommunicated from the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. They’ll haul me before them, like Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms—”

  “Never tried that diet, any good?”

  I drop my head in prayer. “The Maggie who’s going to L.A. is going to attempt something more far-reaching than ever before.”

  “Like?”

  “With my motivation at an all-time high, I’m embarking on a stealth-bomber food plan and will emerge my thin twin.” I hold up my fist triumphantly. “Chiseled, whittled down, tight, taut, tantalizing, terrific and T-H-I-N!
”

  “Say it,” Tamara says. “Say it.”

  “THIN.”

  She smiles, then suddenly her eyes cloud over. “But how? You can’t diet, you don’t, you won’t. Diets are a sham, a lie, a trap to undermine the empowerment of liberated twenty-first-century women, enslave them mentally and hold them politically hostage. Your whole theory of who you are, self-love and acceptance and all that bologna that you’ve made your name by, not to say a career out of, is going out the window because some movie maharaja calls you up and asks for a little advice? Keep it together, Maggie—we’re talking just another M A N—so maybe you want to think this one through a little more. Maybe you’re bein’ just a trifle rash, you know what I’m sayin’?”

  “I’m doing it, Tamara—total body and fender work. This is just a short leave of absence from my public persona. And it will surely be my last attempt to shake my booty and get it together. I’m doing it because if there was ever a motivation for me to recreate myself, this is it. If the thought of coaching Mike Taylor can’t fire me into a body makeover and be successful where legions of others have failed, then there’s no hope for anyone—EVER! This is the acid test, Tamara. BIOLOGICAL WARFARE! I can’t ever really and truly accept the concept of self-acceptance unless I know what my capabilities are. I need to do this. You with me?”

  “Spreadsheets are starting to call my name again,” she says, going out the door.

  “Now, that’s aberrant. C’mon, Tamara,” I yell as she leaves. “This is going to be fun!”

  four

  Don’t Worry. Be Happy. Weigh Less.

  Stress. I’m an expert, aren’t you? Isn’t everyone? Does it make you eat more? Duh.

  Who doesn’t walk, zombielike, into the kitchen for comfort as soon as the world gets too much to handle? Well, now the scientific community weighs in (ha) with this news and I hope it helps rid you of some of your guilt because, dear hearts, it’s not just a matter of willpower: Your body chemistry is partly to blame.

  Stress does make you eat more—especially sweets—because it causes the body to produce more of a hormone called cortisol. And not only do you eat more, but the fat that you put on as a result, is the “deep-belly” stuff that’s associated with a higher risk of health problems such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke and cancer.

  And while some women experience elevated levels of stress and cortisol periodically, depending on what is happening in their lives, others suffer from “toxic stress,” in the words of Elissa Epel, Ph.D., a health psychology researcher at the University of California at San Francisco. “Toxic” or long-term stress is associated with feeling helpless and defeated. It leads to perpetually high cortisol levels that invite deep abdominal fat to be deposited—and that can happen whether you’re fat or thin. So bottom line: It’s a lot more complicated than just blaming your paunchy gut on the fact that you can’t resist that second or third Krispy Kreme.

  What to do?

  * If stress is long-term, ditch the lousy job, or the lousy husband, or at least think about therapy to change the dynamic.

  * When you’re tempted to pig out, try to steer clear of the refined, sugary stuff that causes insulin levels to soar and then drop, making your urge to eat even greater.

  * Try to counteract the urge to eat by doing something physical—sweeping the floor works and so does scrubbing the bathroom—at the very least, get yourself out of the house, and particularly away from the refrigerator.

  * Next time you do head to the refrigerator, stop and ask yourself: Why am I eating? Better yet, needlepoint those words onto a pillow that you can stare at every time you get up off the couch heading for the kitchen. If the answer, honestly, isn’t hunger—assuming you remember what that feels like—get yourself into another room.

  “So you’re heading home?” I look up from my column to see Tex carrying his briefcase. He looks like he could be a poster boy for my article on stress.

  “Mitchum’s on the late movie,” he says, as if that explains it all.

  Tex, the movie buff, worships Mitchum. I’d heard it all before. Mitchum, the sadistic ex-con in Cape Fear; the American destroyer skipper in The Enemy Below; the cool American up against Japanese gangsters in The Yakuza. The heavy-lidded, laconic Mitchum.

  “No one came close,” he said. He had seen every one of his movies three, maybe four times. “That swaggering stride,” he says, “the great laid-back antihero. So completely his own man, no matter what the role. And so cool.”

  I bought Tex Mitchum’s biography and we laughed over the part about the end of his life. When Mitchum’s emphysema worsened, he had to be put on oxygen. His droll comment: “I only need it to breathe.”

  When Tex walked into the office the next morning, it was clear that his moviefest had included a six-pack, maybe two.

  “You okay?”

  “If you don’t count the fact that the back of my head feels like it was slammed with a brick.”

  Before he opens the mail, he reaches into his bottom desk drawer and shakes out two extra-strength Excedrin. He grabs his University of Texas mug, and goes over to Metro’s Mr. Coffee and fills it too full. Coffee starts to flow over the rim.

  “Shit,” he says, trying to sip it down, failing miserably, not to mention scalding his tongue. “What a piece of shit this is,” he says, slamming the coffeepot.

  Tex puts on a good show. I sit down to enjoy it. I consider telling him he’s cute when he’s mad, but decide against it.

  “With Brauns, Toshibas and Cuisinarts, what MORON spent the company’s money on a Mr. Coffee?”

  The secretary’s back becomes his target.

  “Not that nine-tenths of the idiots in this office know the first thing about good coffee anyway.”

  He picks up a coffee can bought at the supermarket and looks at it mockingly. “I should shove the poor excuse for a coffeepot—and the swill that’s in it—off the shelf, but as sure as day follows night, it will be magically replaced the next day with another one, a clone, that makes the same weak, lousy, piss-poor excuse for coffee.”

  The moment he sits down at his desk, he reaches for his prop: the black cowboy hat that he wears when he wants to disappear. He pulls the brim down, nearly covering his puppy-dog eyes. It looks good, actually. What is it about the cowboy mystique? He glances at the slew of mail that always greets him.

  “Releases, releases, more releases,” he mumbles, tossing a pile of them in the garbage. They land with a thwack that makes the secretary turn and give him a stern look.

  “What a job it is to sit in an office all day and write pumped-up garbage about your client and their great new innovative product. NEWS. EMBARGOED UNTIL…” He laughs weirdly. I should be going, but I stay.

  Larry Arnold, the number two man on Metro, sits down at the desk next to him and peers under the brim of the hat. “So, who are you doing? What news from down under?”

  Tex massages his temples. “Actually, I feel like complete shit.”

  “PMS?”

  “Caught it from you, sucker. What’s goin’ on?”

  “The mayor’s holding his press conference at eleven to put the rumors to rest about his affair, so now we’re more convinced than ever that he’s getting it on the side…. There’s a school board meeting tonight that we have to cover because it’s rumored that the chancellor’s going to be ousted. The police commissioner is holding a press conference this afternoon about the police brutality investigation in the Bronx. The Lion King is opening in yet another theater, a murder in Brooklyn and your mother called to tell you her ‘dawg’s’ vomiting.”

  Tex closes his eyes and shakes his head. “Get somebody down to hammer the mayor. Payback time. And send someone to get a quote from his wife. See how she’s reacting to the mess. Let’s do a man in the street, too. We’ll give it a full page.”

  “Boy, you really are in a pissy mood,” Larry says, heading back to his desk. “Sharon dump you for a fatter guy?” Sharon was Tex’s latest flame.


  Tex pulls the hat down lower. That’s my cue to get to work.

  Instead of research, I do something that shows my true colors. I log on to Google, opening one after another of the Mike Taylor entries. I want to see the pictures, read interviews, hear his words. I can’t help looking over my shoulder. Not a smart move to be caught by the publisher while gawking at movie-star pictures when all of America is waiting for my next column. I open up one of “Melanie’s pages,” a picture gallery of “gorgeous Mike.” There’s a shot of him in a black T-shirt and a black leather jacket at a movie premiere; hair gelled back, dark eyes sparkling, dressed in a tux at the Emmy Awards; shirtless in a tight bathing suit playing basketball at the beach. I enlarge it.

  In another, his arm is locked around the waist of his current flame, French model Jolie Bonjour. Clearly, she is having many bon jours these days, thanks in large part to the fact that she’s probably the one broad who fits into those stupid size 0 clothes, or worse still, 00, that always piss me off because they’re made to fit only anorexics or eleven-year-old adolescents, in which case they belong in the children’s department. To boot, Miss Bonjour is barely drinking age, and has luminescent blue eyes, and poreless skin. Was there even a word in French for zit? And that platinum hair. No wonder hair color manufacturers offered five hundred shades of blond that were used by more than a third of the women in the world. Now, brown hair, on the other hand, came in something like three shades. Light brown, medium brown and dark. End of story. Dullsville, really.

  The plastic-Barbie image of perfection never died. No matter that if Barbie’s body were translated into human scale, her measurements would be 38-18-34. So what if no one on the planet had those proportions, women still wanted them.

  At least, to their credit, Barbie’s manufacturers were now giving the dolls wider waists, smaller busts and closed mouths, a far cry from “Lilli,” the prototype for Barbie—dating back forty years—who was a German doll based on a lusty actress who was in between gigs.