A few years back I did a documentary for the BBC with actor and knight Sir Tony Robinson and in the photos taken after the shoot of the two of us I look like Ruth Buzzi if she were stung by a thousand bees. Seriously, I look like Andre the Giant’s sister in ALL of the pictures.
I’ve always been big. My father used to try and console be about my height and general size by assuring me that I wasn’t fat just big boned. The last I looked there were no bones in the area in which I’m most concerned. But the effort, Pop, was most appreciated.
Now physical exercise is not the answer. Years ago, I remember watching a beefy President Bill Clinton exercising. He was living proof that physical exercise could be a complete waste of time. The more he jogged, the bigger he got. I recall thinking, if this guy is reelected, the leader of the free world will be Bib the Michelin Man.
I do notice I’m suffering from a chin crisis as I get older. If I don’t keep my head above sea level when pictures are taken, I resemble the dinosaur that got into the jeep with the lost traveler in the first Jurassic Park movie.
When I think about it, the only exercise program that has ever worked for me is occasionally getting up in the morning and jogging my memory to remind myself exactly how much I hate to exercise. Well-meaning friends have suggested I start walking. Walking? If it’s so good for you, how come my mailman looks like Jabba the Hut with a quirky thyroid?
I’ve thought about joining a gym, but honestly, I think they’re too complicated. You know, there’s nothing quite as humiliating as finishing a thirty-minute workout on a piece of gym equipment only to have the instructor tell you you’ve been sitting on it backward.
Growing up I wished I looked like David Cassidy’s sister Laurie from the Partridge Family. She was cute and a model in addition to being an actress. Models and movie stars are the aesthetic benchmarks against which we measure ourselves, regardless of how unattainable their beauty may be without access to personal trainers, extensive cosmetic surgery, and pharmaceuticals. Ask any little girl what she wants to be when she grows up. Chances are she won’t say president or astronaut or doctor. Chances are she’ll say “Supermodel.” I know I did. I also wanted to be a standup comic and marry Christopher Knight from the Brady Bunch. It’s safe to say I had different goals than Madame Curie or Joan Didion.
What does it say about our culture when Einstein’s original draft of the theory of relativity fetches less at auction than what a flat-line electroencephalograph Giacometti statue gets to stroll down a runway? And for crying out loud, isn’t it about time we passed an absolute edict forbidding these women from uttering the words “Modeling is hard work.”
I choose not to go gently into that saggy night! But what’s a giant to do?
