The Good Body

EVE DEAR, COME in, pussycat … Do you like her? (Referring to slides) She’s the December cover – we’re going rounder for the Christmas season. We’re desperate for the feeling of holiday fullness and cheer. Don’t mind me, I’m multitasking. I do a hundred sit ups for every shot. Nine, ten, one hundred …

Eighty years old, one hundred sit-ups twice a day, I’m down to ninety pounds. Another ten years, I’ll be down to nothing. But even then I won’t feel beautiful. I accept this terrible condition. It’s driven me to be disciplined and successful.

Through Cosmo I’ve been able to help women everywhere. Well, almost everywhere.

Through Cosmo, I’ve been able to help everyone but me. Ironic. Come closer, Eve; I don’t bite. Lets have a treat!

(Opening Edamame) Edamame, my new favourite treat. It’s food that isn’t food. Energy. That’s the closest I ever come to cooking. I never did get the nurture gene.

My mother never saw me. She saw acne. She took me to the doctor twice a week for five years. He opened, postuled, and squeezed my face. He left it battered. He would keep an X-ray machine on my face, five minutes at a time. This was long before we knew about X rays. He burned the bottom layer off my face. After the appointments we would drive around, my mother and I. She would cry, I would cry. “How can I be a happy person, Helen?” she would say. “Your sister is in a wheelchair with polio. Your father is dead. And you, Helen, you have acne.” When I was ten, my friend Elizabeth was swinging from the tree. She fell and everyone came and made a huge fuss over her. I told this to my mother and she said, “Of course: Elizabeth’s pretty. People make a fuss over girls who are pretty. That’s why you, you will need brains.”

(Doing sit-ups again) Don’t get things fixed, Eve. Don’t do it. (Stops sit-ups) If you do, another thing always breaks down. I had my eyes done when I was forty. I thought that would do. But no. Tried it again when I was fifty-six. First full face-lift at sixty-three. Second at sixty-seven. Third at seventy-three. I’m desperate for another, but there’s no skin left on my face. Yesterday they took some fat out of my backside and they shot it into my cheeks. I think even you would approve, Eve. I am recycling. My shrink thinks I’m still doing this for my mother, Cleo’s gone almost twenty years. Can you imagine, I’m still doing this for her? I never had a daughter. But if I did, I would tell her she was beautiful and lovely every minute. If she asked, “Helen”—oh God, she wouldn’t say Helen, she’s not my executive assistant. If she said, “Mother, am I as pretty as Brooke Shields?” I’d have to do a little hedging. “You’re not classic,” I’d say. “But you’re beautiful in your way, dear.” Eve, I would really have to practice this. One thing I never had to practice was sex. I took to it like a duck to water. It’s been a good week. My husband and I had sex two days in a row. Not bad for eighty. My husband, he’s feisty, always has been. The crazy thing is he’s always thought I was beautiful, but of course that doesn’t count, I mean, he loves me.

Thanks for sharing. … I’m so depressed. I think Helen is too, though she doesn’t seem to know it. Is that what I’m going for? I eat another Starbucks Maple Walnut Scone. I run into a friend on the street. She’s strangely enthusiastic, pointing at my stomach.

“Eve, congratulations!”

Eve on treadmill

I go straight to the gym.

I do not pass Starbucks, I do not pass Häagen-Dazs.

I strap myself to the treadmill.

Four hours, six hours. People are pissed off. I don’t care.

I am working on an abortion.

A girl’s got a right to choose.

I have rubber burns on my sneakers

I smell like a traffic accident

Big surprise: Vernon says, “Great! Keep going.”

Eve doing sit-ups

A hundred and twenty sit-ups twice a day.

I feel like a Marine.

Arms up in air

“Pain is weakness leaving the body.”

I feel like shit. How do people do this? Why do people do this? How does Helen do it?

She’s eighty. She’s got an empire, she can cheat.

Six weeks, I’m already tired of taking care of my body. I need someone else to do it. I’ll hire a team. I’ll go to a health retreat. Why not? A spa. They’ll seaweed-wrap it out of me. Exfoliate me. I’m there.