feeling of “I’m worth it” that comes from a luxurious cashmere sweater, or the confidence you feel at work when you appear taller, slimmer, and more powerful in a great pair of heels? What we wear sends an unspoken message. It shows that you have taken the time to treat yourself well, and that others should, too. I say dress up every day; you never know when you’re going to meet your next husband. Be exuberant, celebrate occasions large and small in how you dress, and remember, everyone appreciates glamour.
THE LAURA BENNETT DIET™
A FEW YEARS AGO I WAS AT A SAMPLE SALE for one of my favorite designers. Most women I know dread communal dressing rooms more than they do the gynecologist, with their impersonal drapes, bad lighting, crowded mirrors, and female security guards watching your every half-naked move. The friend who was with me that day has been known to try clothes on over her jeans to avoid exposure. Me, I grabbed about a dozen garments for myself, handed her a dress I knew would work for her, and pointed her to the back of the room.
“I am not getting undressed,” she said.
“You have to,” I replied, grabbing another dress on our way. The room was packed, as feared, but I didn’t care. I shepherded Rachel to a slightly more protected corner and we quickly peeled off our clothes.
“What are you wearing?” she exclaimed, looking over at me while trying to keep her thonged backside to the wall. “A girdle?”
“It’s not a girdle, it’s a power slip. And instead of worrying about what it’s called, you should be asking me where to get one.”
“But you don’t need one of those—you look great.”
“I look great because I have one of these. Trust me, it’s the best diet out there.” There is nothing like the instant gratification of looking ten pounds lighter and twenty years smoother when you pull on a pair of Lycra™- infused bike shorts.
And now you know the cornerstone of my diet. There have been the most amazing, life-altering advances in technology over the past decade—the BlackBerry, Google, iPods. How did I ever research papers as a college student? Keep up with distant family members? Buy books? Friend my third-grade crush? I won’t do that last, but I could. I simply cannot remember life before broadband. These are all marvelous changes, but they don’t hold a liquid crystal display to the introduction of high-tech fabrics. A glorious cocktail of Microfiber, Lycra, Spandex, and Elastine instantly transforms my butt. I love my shapewear. Perhaps I exaggerate the degree to which I loathe my lowest asset, but I know very, very few women over the age of thirty who don’t have some body flaw here or there that wouldn’t benefit from a firm foundation. Cinch the waist, tighten the tummy, raise the rear: there is a shape shifter for every task. Women wear bras in order to lift and separate; why not wear a bra for your butt?
Speaking of the latter, I do not envy a dating woman who has to remove a pair of nuclear-powered knickers for an impromptu romp. There really is no sexy way to extract oneself. As Bridget Jones found out the hard way, those events need to be carefully planned and prepared. Happily, I’m at a stage in my life where I dress to please myself. Besides, a good girdle might be all that stands between me and baby number seven.
“Six kids! You don’t look like you have six kids.”
I have to wonder what people think a woman with six kids looks like. I suspect they mean, “You don’t look fat enough to have six kids.” News flash: having babies does not make you fat. If having babies made you fat, I would be huge. Beyond huge. Taking in more calories than you burn off makes you fat. I think women get lazy, then blame babies for the demise of their figures. I blame a lot of my problems on my kids—the fact that I have little free time, the fact that I am nearly deaf, the fact that someone came into my bed in the middle of the night and peed—but not the fact that I have a big butt.
I do have to give some credit to genetics. It’s easy to hide five pounds here or there on a five-foot-nine-inch frame. I have hardly won the genetic lottery, though, and I do contribute to staying in shape.
I am not much of an eater. And it’s not that I have food issues or a “disorder;” I simply don’t get a big kick out of great food. I’m what most people call a grazer. This does not complicate my marriage in any way, as Peter is not much of an eater himself. Every three days or so, he helps himself to a huge platter of fries and a bacon cheeseburger, and I rarely see him eat anything else. Because I don’t often sit down for a full, satisfying repast, I tend to snack my way through the day. A handful of Goldfish here, a tablespoon of Skippy there, and a half hour later you might see me squirreling a bunch of almonds into my pocket to nibble on as I turn a seam. I often have crackers and cheese for dinner. Luckily for the boys, Alicia and Nicole make sure they are provided with those things called meals.
I have a deep-seated aversion to diets. I get nervous if my eating is restricted. If I have to have an Oreo, I have to have it. I just try to keep myself from eating the entire pack. I have no idea how women follow those diets that list specifically every item you need to eat at every meal. And frankly, if I ate the amount of food that most of those diets recommend, my ass would be the size of a double-wide trailer. I suspect my distrust of restrictive dieting is rooted in my own childhood. My parents once decided to go on the Atkins diet with the kind of fervor that made the plan so wildly popular—you had a license to eat bacon and cheese at every meal! Vegans aside, what red-blooded American wouldn’t be thrilled with those instructions? Even as a child, I didn’t see how it could be healthy, but they did manage to lose weight—my mom as much as twenty pounds, which she gained back as soon as she ate a serving of green beans. The traumatizing part for me was their breath: the chemical reaction from all- protein all-the-time was so profound that it would knock me over if my parents said good morning. I knew it was the diet because they both suddenly had the exact same odor from hell. In fact, it was so bad I can still conjure the smell today; it transports me back to my childhood home in an instant. Proust had his madeleines, I have my bacon breath.
I stumbled upon another cornerstone of the Laura Bennett Diet, something much more satisfying than food. After thirty years of three packs a day, my husband wisely decided to quit smoking. He endured two weeks of cold turkey, but I sensed he was faltering and bought him some nicotine gum. Having never been a smoker myself, I didn’t understand the draw of cigarettes, but then I tried a piece of his Cinnamon Surge 2-mg coated Nicorette. It was ambrosia. I suddenly realized that nicotine is the most amazing legal substance of the twentieth century. I was immediately, happily, and willingly hooked.
I credit nicotine gum with everything from keeping me thin to saving my marriage, but I admit it has its hazards. Not health hazards—at least, not any that I know about or want to acknowledge—but child hazards. Peter shares my affection for nicotine gum, and if he sits in any one place too long, at the computer or TV for example, he amasses a small pile of chewed pieces. I want to believe that he has every intention of disposing of these properly, but it doesn’t always happen, at least not in a timely manner. Naturally all the nicotine has been depleted, so it’s not as though the children are going to get a second-hand chew if they put it in their mouths, but still, it’s annoying.
One Sunday morning I was taking a bath—my rather long weekly bath, during which I try to catch up on personal maintenance. I heard Finn crying somewhere in the house and called in vain for someone, anyone, to check on him. There were at least six other people in the house who could have checked, after all. Receiving no reply, I left my legs half shaved and got out of the tub. I found Finn in the living room, standing on the coffee table, wearing a T-shirt and no diaper, his little genitals so completely encased in chewed nicotine gum that he looked like a baby hermaphrodite.
“Oh, my God,” I said to Peter, “Look at what he has done!”
“Yeah, I saw that,” he said.
In all fairness, had the problem been easier to deal with, like, say, the two hundredth spill of the day, Peter would have taken care of it, but this was, to say the least, a sticky situation. Well, thank God for the amazing citrus power of late-night-as-seen-on-TV cleaning products. It took half a bottle of Goo Gone to detach Finn’s little testicles from the side of his leg.
Despite the downside of gum chewing, and its inevitable move into the realm of taboo, I will continue to chew nicotine gum because it is the closest I will ever get to Nirvana, and frankly, given all I go through with this
