…is an opinion piece by yours truly about the Dove ads.
Or rather, a certain reaction to the ads, which has been expressed by certain people at certain news outlets. Like, heh, The Chicago Sun-Times.
And you may have noticed the whole damn site looks different, too. Welcome back!
As of August 1st, the site has moved from Blogger to Moveable Type, and obviously, there’s a new design, too. Not all the bells and whistles are in place quite yet, but we’ll be tweaking it over the next couple of weeks or so.
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I’m 34 years old and I live in Chicago, where I work as an editor and a writer. I started this site in November of 2000 to write about body image, weight issues, and diet culture because I thought there was a lot more to say about this kind of stuff besides what you might read here. I have a another site called Candyboots, which I built in April 2003 as a home for my stupidly popular collection of Weight Watchers 1974 Recipe Cards. I write the pop culture column for BUST magazine. In the spring of 2005 I published my first book, I’m Not the New Me.
I grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, hometown to many bright people who were also complete tools. I went to college at the University of Iowa, and then stayed there too long doing God knows what, mostly stuff that I forgot once I moved back to Chicago and got a TV.
You’re always welcome to write me but please understand I’m not able to respond to every email. In fact, it’s very rare that I can answer reader email these days. I have an updated FAQ section and a lot of guilt, if it helps any.
I warn you, as always, that I swear a lot on this site. Not to rock the shitwagon or anything, but I do.
(photo by Mireya Acierto)
My first book, a memoir based in part on the website you’re reading right now. Visit the book site for reviews, FAQs and more.
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Booksense | Powell’s
Essay: “The Devoted at Lake Delavan”
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Booksense | Powell’s
Essay: “Holding My Breath: a Family History”
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Booksense | Powell’s
Okay, so that Chicago Author’s Roundtable is this coming Monday night–not, as I’d totally foggily reported last week, this past Monday. (I guess that’s obvious, since time moves forward and not backward.) I hope you’ll come to the lovely air-conditioned comfort of the Sulzer Regional Library to hear Zulkey and Erin and Kevin Guilfoile and me, along with Kevin Smokler, who is touring this summer as the editor of a very cool book, and who is a great person to commiserate with about the bugfucking crazy business of having to push your own book as much as possible within about six weeks and on about four hours of sleep per night. We’ll be talking about stuff like what it means to have both online audiences and books to promote, whether having an internet presence can help a writing career, and, most importantly, discuss the mystifying differences between a blog and a chatroom (kidding).
So please come. It’ll be fun. I have no idea whether the table will actually be round. That could be awkward.
I feel I ought to provide some updates regarding the dicksmackery observed in Wednesday night’s post.
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Thank you, Sun-Times and Channel 2 fellas, for exposing those Dove billboards for the anti-erection propaganda that they are. That’s right: in their menacing white panties, the Dove women are chunky size-ten threats to the fantasies that Chicago newsmen clearly feel entitled to enjoy at all times, or at least while commuting or running errands, or rushing out to cover a breaking story about a fire or a murder or whatever, or otherwise cavorting through the vast, roofless Playboy mansion that is our entire goddamn city. Because apparently it’s bad enough that actual women are allowed to walk around Michigan Avenue or Navy Pier with their real live fleshy-flesh sticking out from under shorts and halter tops as if it were hot out or something, as if Richard Roeper’s boner wasn’t totally at stake. (Does he think it’s like his thumb and that he gets to vote with it?)
Plus I love it when these editorials say stuff like “ads should be about the beautiful people” (see the second segment), and “if I want to see plump gals baring too much skin, I’ll go to Taste of Chicago,” as if it were all just a matter of venue–because, what, it’s of great masturbatory importance to see chubby chicks in one place and not another? Like are there secret freaky Old Testament-style Jerk-Off Laws that prohibit getting off on “real women” when they’re served up on the same platter used for taut model fantasy fucktoys? I know these guys are talking out of their asses, but there’s a whiff of righteous outrage coming out of there, too, and it’s creepy.
And don’t even get me started on this guy’s remark about these ads encouraging people to be out of shape. Uh, yeah, we can see right through that, and it doesn’t help the “obesity epidemic” any when the chub you’re most concerned about is the one in your pants, dude. We know what’s up with that. (Or what’s not up. Or… ew.)
(I’ve recently upgraded and redesigned this site. To view the reader comments for this entry–and there were plenty–on the old site, click here. New comments can be left below.)
A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That by Lisa Glatt.
I spotted the author at BEA last year giving away signed copies and I picked one up. I started reading it late one night months ago, and in my insomniac haze I had the idea that this was a collection of short stories.
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The panel is NEXT week. Not tonight. I am stupid. And busy.
But I live stupidly close to Sulzer Library, so I’ll walk by there anyway, just to relieve my guilt. If you don’t read this in time and show up anyway we can browse the paperbacks together and do catalog searches for titles with dirty words. It’ll rock!
Pulling myself out from this little online hiatus is to some extent a matter of digging myself out from under a couple hundred backlogged manuscripts at work (including YOURS, probably, but don’t ask), but I’m getting to the point where my office is normal office colors again and not caste in a queasy yellow-beige light from so many manila envelopes. I seem to be making some progress.
If you’re in Chicago, you might wanna hit Sulzer library Monday night to see me at this thing. More later…
already.
I guess I’ve been taking a midsummer hiatus here while I recover from the California trip and get ready for my trip to Durham this weekend. Even though I’m not there yet I’m going to be on North Carolina Public Radio today at 11:00 Central time to speak philosophically about my own fat ass and the fat-assery of the nation as a whole. And then on Friday, I’ll be reading at the Regulator Bookshop in Durham for my last captial-O Official scheduled reading for this tour. There will likely be some other local events (including a panel in a couple of weeks), and I wish I could have hit DC, Minneapolis, Pennsylvania and other cities, but for now, I need a break from flying. The only kind of travelling I want to do after this weekend is of the goofy summer road-trip variety: Dickeyville Grotto or bust!
Expect a wrap-up of the whole damn tour thing sometime after I get back. (Emphasis on the “sometime.”)
