I am just sick. Elizabeth Taylor is fat again. It scares me to death. It is depressing. I cannot imagine anyone so beautiful, so glamorous, so rich, being so fat. But worse, she had fought the good fight and won! She was down to a size five, for crying out loud. My upper arm is as big as a size-five waist! Then, battle by battle, pound by pound, she fell to the enemy. It is disappointing. I cried the first time I saw her fat again. To think that she’s in the limelight and still couldn’t cut it. For heaven’s sake, what hope is there for the rest of us fatties? Those who don’t have a public to appear before?
When I saw her on Oprah awhile back, she was gorgeous and glamorous and thin. I was eating my heart out during the whole interview over a woman twenty years older than I am. At one point, Oprah asked her what finally made her click into gear and lose all the weight. Elizabeth Taylor replied, “I stopped in my dressing room and stood in front of a mirror. And it was there hanging out. I had no clothes on, and I looked at it all and said, ‘That’s not pretty… now is the time,’”
Oprah: “That’s interesting, because you’d seen it before. You’d seen yourself before.”
Elizabeth: “Yeah, but I’d managed to fleet. You know, just sort of flit and just catch a fleeting glance of somebody moving…. That blob was… was… that blob wasn’t me.”
So she lost every ugly fat cell on her body. Oh, Elizabeth, you were my inspiration. Now what will I do? I keep telling myself, “She can afford fresh crab legs in her fridge! For crying out loud, she can afford a food guard.” She could hire someone to watch over her twenty-four hours a day and keep her out of the kitchen. Why doesn’t she do it? Here I am, trying to squeeze $1.13 out of my budget for a frozen dinner (260 calories), and she wears diamonds that could buy me a lifetime supply. I don’t get it. But I know she can do it again!
Two Sundays ago, I saw an old acquaintance. She must have lost eighty pounds since the last time I saw her. She was massive before, so she still needs to lose another forty pounds. Still overweight, she insisted on pulling a too-typical fat-person trick: she wore a gathered skirt and a bulky blouse… tucked in! I will not tuck in a blouse till I have a flat stomach. I will not! Why proclaim to the world that your stomach pouches out like the muscles on Popeye’s arms?
January 29, 1991. I saw that same old acquaintance again Last Sunday. The poor woman found every Last pound she had lost! And it’d been only a year and a half. A year and a half! What a bummer. It is scary for me. This is a lifelong experience, this dieting business. I must never forget that.