Here, quoted by a commenter at the Jezebel blog, are the words of Rex Reed in The New York Observer:

There’s nothing wrong with Sarah Jessica Parker that couldn’t be cured by wart-removal surgery. That growth on her face just gets bigger with every close-up, and in the full-length movie version of ‘Sex and the City’ it’s so distracting you can’t concentrate on anything else. It’s not a beauty mark. I guess you can’t tell a co-producer anything, but listen up, girl. At this point, you would make a wonderful Halloween witch. Unfortunately, to fix all the things wrong with ‘Sex and the City,’ you need more than a scalpel.

I think that’s worth a letter or two to The Observer. Are we reviewing films here or just hating on SJP’s facial imperfections, because she DARES to be a major movie star without being physically flawless? Read another take on this issue here.

And for the whole misogynist rant by Reed, click here. Just unnecessary, even for a guy who makes his living dealing bitchy dish.

Lately I’ve been very happy with my Weight Watchers weigh-in, so I tend to do a little “Rocky” arm pumping victory jump when I share my news with him across the room from the scales. He, being a shy guy, gives me a little grin and saves all the “Heeeey, Skinny” comments for when we’re alone (really corny stuff like, “Where’d ya go? Oh, you turned sideways, I didn’t see you!”). He’s very supportive, but it means a lot to me that when we met I was as heavy as I’ve ever been and he was still attracted to me. Hetero men who manage not to have their libidos totally colonized by Madison Avenue and the fashion industry have a special place in my heart. This isn’t to say that all men are necessarily naturally attracted to heavy women, but plenty who are wouldn’t dare act on that attraction for fear of being thought less a man by their peers. As I’ve complained many times in the past, a simple cruise through the personal ads of any American newspaper or on-line dating site will inform even the most casual observer that American men are intensely fat phobic, equating extra pounds with sloth and fair game for ridicule and even demonization. It’s ugly out there for big girls. And no, it seems to matter not one bit if the fat-hating gent in question is himself in possession of a beer gut, flabby or distinctly unhandsome physique, ear hair, foul breath, rampant dandruff or is a self-absorbed, ignorant, unemployed marijuana addict who lives at home at the age of 47. “No fatties need apply!” There is no greater moral crime in America today than to be obese.

With this in mind, it suddenly and with some real horror occurred to Greg and me last weekend that some people probably think he goes with me to Weight Watchers to make sure I’m losing weight, like some abusive control freak boyfriend would do. And Lord forgive us — we laughed our heads off about it. As soon as we leave the Weight Watchers storefront now, we do this whole skit where I say, “Honey, I lost two pounds this week” and he makes a *slap* sound effect and growls, “I thought we said FIVE.” Or he’ll put his arm around my waist, softly grab a handful of flesh and sneer in my ear, “Two pounds? What about this?” And I pretend to cry and say, “I only got to the gym seven times this week! I’m sorry! I’ll do better!” And we laugh like hyenas and get iced coffees.

And yet there are couples who live this way. And I’m sure we all know some of them without knowing that this is going on behind closed doors.

Today we were in breathless hysterics because I lost over 3 lbs. this week (don’t congratulate me for my discipline, I’ve had some sort of flu since Tuesday night) and we decided that, in our skit, before the woman even got the word “three” out of her mouth to announce her great success for the week (”Sweetie, guess what? I lost thr…”), the guy would interrupt by saying, “STILL. FAT.” and totally shut her off.

Of course this is all the funnier to us because Greg is considerably overweight himself and first feared that if he entered the WW building with me, he’d be dragged into a meeting and would be counting points from that moment on. (”C’mon, big guy,” he imagined them saying. “Get on the scale!”).

It really isn’t funny. I know it and so does he. I remember being in my early twenties and starting to get seriously overweight (”seriously” back then being 20 lbs. or so, but in my own eyes I was an enormous blob and desperately insecure about it, although on my good days I felt sexy and curvy and angry that the rest of the world –including women — tended to be so stupid and hateful about women’s bodies). I read Fat Is a Feminist Issue by Susie Orbach and it really opened my eyes to the ways that the diet industry conspires with society’s misogynist impulses to keep women focused on shrinking down to an acceptable size so that they won’t get their teeny tiny brains on other things, like, say, running for president.

When I see slim, fit women at the gym doing their thing, I cheer them on. “Go, sister!” However, when I see them striding into a Weight Watchers meeting and they’re in their early 20’s or maybe not even that old, and they’re thin and beautiful and they’ve joined WW for $9 a week because they’re miserable about the six pounds they’re frantic to lose, I can’t cheer. I want to pull them over and say, “Lovely young woman, take a 45 minute walk three times a week, cut out the sugary beverages, eat three healthy meals a day and nothing in between and you’ll drop that six pounds in no time. Meanwhile, there are so many better things you could be doing with your time than weighing and measuring your food and attending Weight Watchers meetings on a Saturday morning. Whoever told you you should be here, or whatever put it into your head that you need to be a size 2 or 4, let’s do an exorcism for that and you can get out of here and go live large in mind and spirit, ’cause your body is nowhere near it.”

As Auntie Mame said, “Life is a banquet, and most sons-of-bitches are starving to death.” With starvation a reality for so many of the world’s men, women and children, it seems especially important to remind women that there is more important work for us to be doing than achieving conventionally sexy, impossible model proportions that occur naturally in something like 2% of the female population. Health is one thing. My heart and joints are thanking me today for having released 10% of my body fat. Anxiously capitulating to a fat-phobic society that has, at best, a very ambivalent relationship to women’s largeness of being on all levels, is another phenomenon entirely, and not a good one.

If I haven’t made this perfectly clear, let me say to the women reading this that if you are involved in a relationship with a man who viciously shames you about your weight, ridicules your body if you gain a few pounds, objectifies body parts with cruel nicknames, threatens to leave or cheat on you if you don’t lose weight or habitually tears you down, telling you that you’re lucky to have him and that you’re so fat no one else would want you, you are in an abusive relationship. You don’t need to go to Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig or LA Weight Loss Centers or Overeaters Anonymous. You need to call a domestic abuse resource center where you live, your best friend or family member, your minister or priest or other supportive and loving advocate for your health and safety, and make a plan to get out of the relationship. Okay? If you decide to lose weight at some point, that’s up to you.

And I promise that my chubby baboo and I will stop laughing about this issue from now on. We were only laughing because it’s such an atrocious scenario and all too common. Lord have mercy.

(Highly Recommended Natural Weight Loss Method: Beagle Puppy = four or five ten minutes walk per day = hundreds of extra calories expended per month and you won’t even notice it!)

This is another one of those shows featuring a really skaggy dude living in a house full of chicks vying for his approval. Everyone behaves somewhere at the level of rhesus monkeys (only with more sex and worse fashion) and at the end, he “eliminates” a babe or two from his harem, causing them to HATE THEMSELVES rather than him or the producers of this despicable bit of realitrash TV.

I’m only glad I caught it because I was so overwhelmed with disbelief, I stayed on the treadmill an extra 20 minutes to make sure I was getting the premise right. This character (Bret is the lead singer for the band “Poison,” if that means anything to you, and … don’t be offended, but I’m pretty sure he’s wearing a cucumber in his Levis) has these women in such a desperate hysteria of desire and devotion, I hoped they might turn on him in the end in a Dionysian lust-rage and tear him limb from limb, but no such luck.

If they did the same show with Professor Gary Dorrien, now that I’d watch. Heck, I’d even go on the show.

Instead, it makes me loathe her, and I have never loathed Hillary Clinton before.

I’ve seen the spot several times now and my blood pressure goes up every time (good thing I’m usually on the treadmill at the gym when it happens).

It is one thing to mock someone’s specific policy ideas. It is one thing to exchange harsh words about past voting records, hypocrisies on substantive issues, unethical behavior with lobbyists, and political choices you feel your opponent has screwed up. It is another thing entirely to express total contempt and disgust that your opponent has managed to inspire HOPE among a significant portion of the population, and to make that mere fact the focus of your ire. Especially now. Especially now.

I can’t think of a worse misstep for a liberal politician to make, because liberal ideals are, at their very essence, intimately tied to hope and vision. I know that Senator Clinton is no progressive, but for her to throw her arms around in an (perhaps unconsciously) racist parody of the preaching tradition of the Black Church (remember, she was specifically mocking Obama here, not Mike Huckabee or a white evangelical) and to sneer at Hope itself is one of the ugliest moments I have yet seen during this campaign. She has sunk lower in my estimation than I ever thought possible.

This, by the way, is equally ugly but I thought you should see it:

I guess I’m naive, too, but I had hoped that this kind of despicable racism and sexism would have come from the opposing side, not from within the Democratic party. Haven’t we yet learned that the Republicans are brilliant at putting aside differences and uniting behind one candidate when push comes to shove? Let’s not start splintering now, liberals, for God’s sake. And Ralph Nader, if you seriously think of running again I swear I will find you and personally and securely duct tape you to your bathroom wall until November, you quixotic tick.

[Thanks to the readers who directed me to the YouTube clip. - PB]

That and the Jamie Lynn Spears thing is really getting me down about that bizarre, Girls (And Guys!) Gone Wild feeling in the culture lately around pregnancy. Is it just me, or are we getting mad stoopid about pregnancy? We’ve got this carnival of international celebrity adoptions that no one can shut up about (one recent tab headline: “SHILOH IN TROUBLE:” because, apparently Angelina Jolie pays more attention to her adopted than to her biological daughter). We had Bridget Moynahan working her swollen belly in front of every available paparazzo after her break-up with Tom Brady for maximum media coverage and feminine sympathy (I felt manipulated and suspicious — why should pregnancy make someone suddenly SO famous? Tacky, Ms. Moynahan. You’re a grown woman. Put that stomach away. People break up, men cheat. You should not be leveraging that fact in order to get your abdomen front page coverage. Before your pregnancy, I had never heard of you. Way to exploit your child for fame before it’s even born!).

Let’s not even talk about the statistics on murdering pregnant women. It’s too horrific to even contemplate.

The Britney Spears spectacle isn’t even close to funny any more. She was apparently hospitalized today for being high and refusing to give up custody of her two sons. (Anyone else out there guessing that a woman of lesser fame and income level would have been cuffed and taken to the slammer for pulling similar shenanigans?)

Columnist Ellen Goodman wrote a terrific piece here, “Changing the Script on Teen Pregnancy” that expresses my mixed feelings about the spate of she-got-accidentally-pregnant-and-is-keeping-the-baby movies out now (I ADORED “Knocked Up,” but I’m still leery of the cultural trend here); please read it. What I see is a widespread fantasy-spinning about the realities of child-rearing along with a total lack of simultaneous discussion on the failure of abstinence-only birth control, and about social services, health care, and poverty issues that affect millions and millions of children in this country alone. And I have a feeling that the conservatives in power want it just that way. We just love pregnancy stories and we looooove the bay-bees, but we really don’t want to sacrifice any of our own comforts or privileges to assure that they all have decent health care, food in their bellies, a decent education no matter where they live, and child care when their mothers have to work.

I’m looking around lately at messages to women in this culture and what I’m getting is something like, “At her very best, the American Woman should be be thin, rich, an ideal consumer, plastic-perfect, and pregnant.”

Meanwhile… Mike Huckabee’s triumph in Iowa makes me want to go take an 8 year nap.

Is this misogynist commercial that preys on women’s insecurities and America’s pathological fat-phobia someone’s idea of funny? I don’t eat at Subway, but I definitely won’t now. I hope that those of you with a moment of time will call their corporate headquarters at (203)877-4281 and talk to Monica at extension 85, who will take down your complaint and share it with the marketing and advertising team. I just did, and she was really polite and nice.

Thanks to Jezebel for the link.

Me, the dumb do-gooder and peacemaker, goes, “Hey Buddy. Whoa!” I figure if I can interrupt his invective maybe he won’t keep escalating into a more dangerous fury.

“Whoa WHAT?? Mind your own f-ing business!” he shouts at me.

“Whoa, watch your mouth and calm down!” I say, fool that I am.

“Shut the F up! It’s none of your f-ing business!” he says. And I say, “Yes it is my business! Keep your foul mouth off my streets!”

So then SHE gets in on it!! “You don’t know what’s going on! Mind your own business!”

Me: “Honey, this is what we call an ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP, okay? And when you bring it onto the streets, it’s definitely everybody’s business!”

Her: (starting to cry) “You don’t know what’s even happening! You have no right!”
Me: I DO know what’s happening — and let me tell you this — this man is a violent nightmare and it doesn’t matter WHAT’s going on — you never, ever deserve to be talked to like this.
Her: (screaming) SHUT UP! SHUT UP!

Him: You think I give a F about that cloth around your neck? I don’t give a S—!

Me: (forgetting that I’m even wearing a clerical collar) Well, obviously!
(yelling after the woman) Get help! You’re going to need it!

So hey, that was effective, huh? Because what I managed to do was (1) enflame the violent dude even more (2) put myself in harm’s way and (3) make her feel protective of her may-an. Oh, great.

But then I remember one time eleven years ago when I was eating a sushi dinner in Rochester, NY and reading a book while eavesdropping on the (hetero) couple next to me. I couldn’t help it: they were like 7″ from my table. The man was tearing the young woman apart in the softest, most malevolent of tones, ripping to shreds her every idea and attempt to assert herself. He insulted her family in hypnotic tones, and when she feebly protested, he would lean forward and stare at her as though he was moments from plunging his chopsticks into her throat.

I was so terrified by what I saw that when I got to the theatre I called the restaurant and asked to be put through to Jennifer (I knew that was her name). They brought the phone to her.

This is what I said to her:

“Jennifer? This is the woman who was sitting next to you a few minutes ago reading. Just pretend I’m your uncle calling to let you know of a change in the party for your mom, okay? (she made frightened little sounds, but stayed on the phone) But listen to me: you are in a very abusive relationship and your boyfriend is a very dangerous person. I know you know this: I can see it in your eyes. He is trying to isolate you from your family so that he can tear you down and destroy you, and if you don’t get help, he will. I am really worried about you, and I want you to tell someone exactly how he treats you and talks to you, because I think he’s a master manipulator and no one has any idea how vicious he is to you. But I heard it and I saw it, and I really hope you get away from him. I’m going to let you go now, but I want to tell you that I really care about you.”

“Yes.” she said.
And then,
“Thank you so much, Uncle Barry.”
Me: “Be strong.”
Her: “Okay. (quavering voice) Love you, Uncle Barry.”

I think of her even today.

I was more than a little bummed by the last sentence but hey, I don’t find Leonard Nimoy sexually attractive, either, so I’ll live. It’s just that most men in this culture have a default setting not to find fat women sexually attractive as a group, with very little sense that they’ve been essentially brainwashed by Madison Avenue and Hollywood to respond that way. I kind of want to say to Lennie, “Hey Lennie… have you met *every* fat woman? Are you *sure* you’re not attracted to any of them?”

I know aesthetics matter, but I think it’s a lot more than that. I’ve talked about this before, but I don’t mind ranting about it on a regular basis because it’s a serious issue. Too many people in this country equate fat with moral inferiority, sloppiness and laziness. I’ve read literally thousands of personals ads in my day and you’d be surprised how many guys stipulate that they want “a woman who takes care of herself” — when what they mean is “a thin woman.” I work out three times a week and eat really well. I don’t smoke or do any drugs except the occasional cocktail. But fat girls are assumed to not be taking care of ourselves.

What really burns me is the hundreds of guys who take the clarification one step further by writing something like, “I don’t want some woman whose [sic] sitting around eating bon-bons all day,” or “Don’t say you’re ‘curvy’ if your [sic] JUST FAT!”

Oh, I just love those gents. What darlings. They’re just so clear about what they want. You can apparently be an uneducated, drug-addicted felon who spent most of her formative years in juvie hall, but that’s okay. Just don’t be FAT!
Yea, dude, we get it. We get it.
Meanwhile, Prince Charming, I’d like to date a guy who can spell. We all have our dreams.

ANYhoo, this book Rethinking Thin has won rave reviews and is basically a debunking of much of the conventional wisdom about fatties and fatness. It’s on my Amazon wish list and I plan to read it this summer. Gina Kolata, I’d like to take you out for sushi, baby!

Why should you be punished and impoverished for your “sins” while the Washington moralists and hypocrites sit smugly in their offices, confident in the knowledge that you’re just a woman and can’t touch them?

If she has to go down, let her take her entire clientele down with her. Brava, I say.

It all seems of one piece to me.

I was talking with my sister yesterday about a friend of ours whose husband is controlling, insulting and hyper-critical. Our friend is considering separation or even divorce. My sister and I were talking about the fact that times have changed a lot, and women no longer feel that they have to be married for social acceptance or for financial survival. Therefore, they are less likely these days to tolerate verbal abuse and constant harping on their imperfections. They want a supportive partner, but here’s the thing… they also want to be treated as a cherished woman, in that specifically romantic hetero-fantasy mode that we’ve all grown up with.

I’m not sure the hetero male world has figured this out yet. But let me explain it. Fellas, it’s not either/or proposition where either you get to be the big macho lug who treats your “little lady” like a fragile, dependent flower OR you get to have an equal partner in life who doesn’t need all that old-fashioned girlie stuff, and with whom you can be sloppy and coarse as you wanna be. The fact is, women — even feminists — still appreciate good manners, and even — I’m giving away a big secret here! — a tiny bit of the princess-on-the-pedestal stuff.

But at the very least, we don’t want to be called pigs, bitches and whores.

Could you all talk amongst yourself about this? Thank you, PB.