You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl

by Rivenbark, Celia

  But back to this crazy-ass notion that people are tired of edgy. This is scarier to me than a roomful of yard-sale Beanie Babies. This ghastly culture of cuteness, a massive group hug, if you will, could kill my career. And I believe we can all agree that this would signal the end of civilization as we know it because, in the immortal words of anchorman Ron Burgundy, “I’m kind of a big deal.”

  OK, maybe not. But I do so love the snarky, the sneering, and the snotty. There’s simply no room for all these YouTube videos of laughing babies that you people keep forwarding to me. That little kid who squawks about how “Chah-wee bit my finger again”? Not funny. Ditto the little boy who’s still loopy from his trip to the dentist, which was sent to me by a friend who said, “This is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen!” Yep. Nothing says hilarious like videotaping your kid while he’s recovering from oral surgery. Maybe he can return the favor one day after your hemorrhoid operation. Payback’s a bitch, eh?

  Clearly she has never seen Bon Qui Qui at Burger King. Now that’s some funny shit; Google it.

  The cuteness craze is even taking over food. Cupcakes weren’t cute enough. Now there are miniature cupcakes topped with fluffy-wuffy icing and teeny-tiny décor-wations. Even the traditional wedding cake is being replaced by cupcake towers. Sure, they’re tasty enough, but you can’t really jam a cupcake into your spouse’s face in that weirdly aggressive reception ritual. For that, you need a giant, very un-cute wedge of cake. You want him to be picking red velvet crumbs out of his nose hairs for weeks. You can’t do that with a cupcake.

  Of course I’m looking to blame somebody for all this and I have decided the whole thing is the fault of, you guessed it, the Japanese. Ever since they invented Hello Kitty, the world hasn’t been the same. You can safely chart the rise of The Culture of Cute ever since that flat-faced skank started showing up everywhere.

  The first time I saw Hello Kitty was on a tour boat that was circling the Statue of Liberty. For some reason, I was the only non-Japanese person on the entire boat. And every single occupant of the boat, even the men, were wearing some article of clothing—purse, shirt, jewelry—with that mutant white head on it. Creepy thing doesn’t even have a mouth. How do you get such a fat head if you can’t even eat? OK, I’ve overthinking it.

  Stop the madness. Embrace the snark. Or, yes, I will come to your house, kill your puppies, and kick in the door of that stupid Lego car you drive that you insist is “so ugly it’s cute!”

  News flash: It really is just ugly. What? That hurt your feelings? Oh, no! I’m sooooo sah-wee. Here, have a minicupcake and Mr. Snuggles the Bear to make it all better. Asshat.

  14

  Chinese Bachelors Would Be Lucky to Find Cougar

  You remember that whole one-child limit thing in China? Seemed like a good idea at the time now, didn��t it? When your population hovers around 1.3 billion and you’re not quite as large as the United States, landwise, you’ve got to do something.

  So you set limits and enforce them. One child per family. What could possibly go wrong?

  Well, funny you should ask.

  According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (motto: “Everybody Wang Chung tonight”), in about ten years, there will be approximately twenty-four million Chinese men who won’t be able to find a wife. That’s right; not even an ugly one.

  But wait, that’s not all! In a cruel little quirk of demographics, at the exact same time, China’s elderly population will explode. What does it all mean? That’s easy. Ten years from now, the typical Chinese household will consist of an elderly couple whose bachelor sons are getting older and crankier and less-laid by the minute. Doesn’t that sound dreamy?

  Let’s face it. It’s hardly a harmonious situation, this clash of the generations. Even ten years from now, it’s possible that those very sons will still have to spend the better part of an hour trying to explain to their aged parents that most people have voice mail, not answering machines.

  Which means that you end up burying your head in your hands while your mama shrieks into the phone to your cousin: “Pick up Ming Sai, it’s me! Pick up! I know you’re there! Your auntie said you were home! (very long pause) If you there, why you not answer the phone? You know it’s me! OK, I guess you’re not there after all. Call me!”

  You can try to explain voice mail a million times but it will never matter to the elderly parent, Chinese or not. They still think it’s an answering machine and you’re just sitting there ignoring them.

  This could go on, literally, for hours.

  All of which is to say that it’s never a good idea for grown sons to move back in with the ’rents no matter where you live. In America, almost everybody knows an old couple or two whose shaggy-ass son lives in the basement eating Fritos and drinking bong water, and it only makes for a miserable family dynamic.

  Just call me Dr. Phil-lis.

  And how’s that workin’ for ya?

  Being something of a Chinese-history scholar myself—I have watched Mulan at least forty-eight times, learning to love it even after discovering that Donny Osmond was the voice behind the fiercest warrior in China—I feel uniquely qualified to say that this is a recipe for generational disaster.

  The frustrated parents won’t even be able to nag their sons around the breakfast table—“Why you don’t date that nice Kai-ying?”—because Kai-ying will be able to pick and choose from hundreds, perhaps thousands, of aspiring suitors. For a country that hasn’t exactly been supportive of women achieving greatness, or, hell, even supportive of them being born in the first place, this is revenge as sweet as the sticky rice pudding at Ting Ting’s mile-long buffet, no lie.

  I hope my Chinese sistahs are enjoying this attention a little bit. After all, every desperate male suitor will need to bring his “A” game to the courting ritual if he wants to have any slim chance of attracting a wife. That means he can forget about showing up at Chen-chi’s house in some triflin’ rickshaw of a car and expecting her parents to fawn all over him with tea and crumpets and shit.

  Chen-chi’s holding all the cards now and she likey.

  Since the Chinese people, if Mulan is the historical document I accept it to be, are obsessed with matchmaking, it would appear that, at last, the shoe is on the other tightly bound foot, eh?

  Now, it’s the male clients who must seek out a matchmaker or, if that’s too low-tech, there’s always eHarmony or Match.com, though I expect those sites to crash from the sheer volume of desperate Chinese bachelors. Moonlit walks on the beach? Don’t make me laugh. I repeat: “A” game.

  This wretched gender imbalance, some social scientists predict, will result in a surge of marriages between young men and much older women. These most honorable cougar will be too old to have children which is your basic win-win sitchy-ation.

  But what of those who really want to have kids?

  Assuming the Chinese man won’t want to cheat and get himself a mail-order bride from another country, how should he go about making himself stand out from all the rest?

  I’m thinking he could take a page or two from Barack Obama’s playbook. Love him or hate him, the dude knows how to treat a lady.

  Let’s face it: Husbands and boyfriends across this great nation are whining because Obama is making their date nights look lame. This was sooooo not a problem during the Bush years. Remember when W’s idea of a romantic getaway was to fire up Air Force One and fly to Crawford, Texas, for a weekend of brush clearing and faux cattle roping? We never heard what poor Laura Bush did during those less-than-sumptuous vacays but I’m imagining it involved cooking stew for the boys in the bunkhouse and reading some bodice rippers to while away those hot, dull afternoons.

  Never once in those eight years did I nudge Duh in the ribs and demand a date night like poor Laura Bush was being treated to.

  Even Bill Clinton wasn’t known for putting together an awesome date night. At least not with Hillary, bless her heart.

  No, Clinton took virtually no time away f
rom Washington, let alone whisking his bride to a Broadway show and dinner in New York like Obama did. Just because.

  When he needed to go to Paris for some summit thing or the other, do you think Obama told Michelle to watch the kids and he’d bring her back one of those Eiffel Towers with the thermometer inside it?

  Hell, no! He took her along and even carved out a date night of foie gras and pheasant de truffled snootypants right beneath that famous thermometer tower.

  See, Chinese suitors? This is how it’s done. Your dates will have to have some serious “Wow!” factor. Otherwise, and I really can’t state this strongly enough, you’re going to be in charge of the prune juice acquisition for a long time to come, just saying.

  To be honest, the Obamas’ European adventure made me a little pouty because, like a lot of American women, the closest I’ve come to an exotic European vacation is ordering the “Tour of Italy” trio of I-talian favorites at the Olive Garden recently.

  And since you ask, yes, it was pretty damn tasty.

  Chinese men, listen the hell up! I know what I’m talking about when I tell you that Obama is The Man when it comes to planning date nights.

  Even on a night when he was going to an NBA playoff game with the boys, he made sure to have an early date with his wife, at Citronelle, an uber-ritzy restaurant in Georgetown.

  Do not follow the example of poor duh-hubby when it comes to a date night. When I complained that he never took me anywhere unless I suggested it first, Duh ran out of the room and returned a few minutes later holding aloft a raggedy coupon he’d found in the newspaper for two-for-one dinners at Ruby Tuesday.

  Anticipating that I would squeal with glee at this, Duh held up his hand as if to stop the celebrating that hadn’t actually happened in the first place.

  “You can’t use it for the premium steaks and you have to eat the broccoli instead of the salad bar,” he said.

  “But broccoli gives me gas,” I said, regretting it instantly. If I want to be treated like Michelle Obama and taken to tony restaurants all over the world, I can’t go around talking like that. “I mean, er, flatulence.”

  Of course, Chinese men, your girlfriend can make pooty noises with her armpits in front of your whole family and y’all can’t complain because, as the social scientists have said, there just won’t be enough women to go around. You’ll just have to suck it up if she’s weird, demanding, and wants to bring her fire-breathing dragon of a mama to live with y’all.

  Don’t even think about complaining when they both ask you to cut their toenails. It’s the least you can do.

  Don’t be cheap about the wedding either. Here in the American South, we all know that only heathens and Yankees get married at hotels. Just remember that when it comes time to pick the spot. Don’t complain about how much it’s going to cost because Hop Sing is right around the corner waiting to pounce.

  A final bit of politico-inspired advice: In general, when it comes to women, if South Carolina governor Mark Sanford did it, you don’t. This is an excellent guideline, regardless of country of origin.

  While Sanford was highly hateable for his insistence on asking his wife’s blessing for his affair with the Argentinean hoochie-mama, it wasn’t until I read Jenny Sanford’s tell-most book that I realized what a turd he really was. Is. Turns out he once asked his wife to give back the diamond necklace he’d given her for Christmas because he decided it was too expensive and he wanted to take it back and get the money.

  Be generous, Chinese grooms-to-be. Before your lotus flower can even mention something she’d like, anticipate it and present it to her.

  The world is her oyster now, big boy. Don’t blow it unless you and your brothers want to be sitting at your mama’s kitchen table clipping those Poligrip coupons out of the Sunday paper for a very, very long time to come. Think about it.

  15

  Crappy Science Fair Didn’t Even Have Any Rides

  After six years of science fair projects, the Princess had never advanced beyond competition in her own school. Not because her projects hadn’t been exceptionally innovative, impeccably researched, and masterfully displayed, but rather because the judges were idiots.

  Hey, I call ’em as I see ’em.

  But this year would be different. This year, the Princess collaborated with a friend on an awesome project that involved building an incubator to grow germs and then proving that, yes, double-dipping chips and dips does transfer bacteria from one person to another. They even had a clever title: “The George Costanza Project,” named after the Seinfeld episode in which George gets in trouble for double-dipping at a party.

  My participation in this project was limited, as always, to driving to Staples and buying the trifold display board. I’m all about the science. As long as it isn’t too science-y, you know.

  The project turned out great (but then, they always did, year after year, see “idiots” above). But this year, something wonderful happened: The project was selected to compete at the county level!

  OK, here’s the thing: I’ve never been to a countywide science fair before. I mean, who goes to those things unless their kid is competing, right? Other than those wacky homeschoolers who like to go so they can snicker behind their hands at the pitiful public school kids’ ideas of advanced science.

  This countywide fair was, I have to say, quite an eye-opener. Turns out this is really kind of a big deal. To the parents. You’ve heard the term “helicopter parents” I’m sure. The trendy way to describe the current culture of parents overseeing everything even their adult children do? Well, these were more like Sikorsky Super Stallion helicopter parents.

  Me? Not so much. I dumped the girls in the gym and immediately went in search of the $3 pizza slice I’d seen advertised out front.

  I bought a slice and stood around observing some of the other parents. Who all seemed to know each other really well. The only thing missing was the secret handshake. There was a lot of “Hey! Great to see you again’!” but I had the feeling they probably kinda hated each other a little. There were clenched teeth, through which they would say things like, “Ohhhh, I hear that the judges are hoping for something along the lines of optimizing turbine blade efficiency by manipulating boundary layer separation but that’s sooooooo 2009 in my opinion. What’s your Andy Jr. doing?”

  And this would be followed by discussions about winning projects of the past. Things like “national organics control aggregation of mercury sulfide nanoparticles in freshwater systems” and “functional genomic frameworks for chemotherapeutic drug improvement and identification.”

  OK, dipping a potato chip into some onion dip and then doing it again was starting to look pretty damn lame at this point.

  I wanted to join in all the “fun science talk” but was clearly out of my league. These parents were battle-scarred veterans of some weird science wars I’d never known anything about. Until that damn potato chip landed me here and away from my planned normal evening of eating said chips and watching E! TV live from Sundance, where Jon Gosselin has now stepped into the role of “pudgy asshole who shows up everywhere pretending to be actually famous” that was occupied at one time by Kato Kaelin.

  Standing in the hallway, alone with my pizza, it was obvious that this was a middle-school clique of an entirely different kind. These parents were pretty damn smart with all their talk of genomes and cantilevering.

  I’m not for one minute implying that the kids don’t do all their own work on these science fair projects. No, I’m just coming right out and saying it.

  After a half hour or so, the judges walked toward the gym doors and there was a somewhat hysterical plea over the PA: “All parents must exit the gym, repeat, must exit the gym, in order for the judging to begin.”

  A couple of the moms looked as if they might have to be Tasered to get out of there as they fluffed with final details at their kid’s display area. Almost every single kid with one of those hovering parents sat in a folding chair in front of his project
, head buried in a book, oblivious to the fact that, apparently, his future, and perhaps the future of the entire free world, was on the line.

  Finally, the fifteen or so judges filed into the gym, all wearing white lab coats and holding clipboards.

  “Look! It’s a nerd parade!” I squealed to the mom standing next to me. She walked away. If I’d been a science fair experiment, the title would’ve been called “Corrosive Relationships.”

  The truth was, I wasn’t used to the rarified air of the advanced competition and it showed. The in-school contests were more laid back because almost nobody really expected to win. That’s how you end up with my all-time favorite: “Meth: Friend or Foe,” beautifully displayed for all the world and, most likely, Child Protective Services, to see.

  The judging was followed by an open house and assembly for the awards ceremony. By this time, duh-hubby had gotten off work and was able to join me and several hundred other parents in the auditorium. I’d seen the competition during a walk-through in the gym and was fairly certain that unless the Princess had cobbled together an atom splitter in the past ninety minutes, she was, I believe the scientific term is: “toast.” I consoled myself with the knowledge that I’d TiVo-d Jon Gosselin at Sundance so the night really wasn’t a total loss.

  A very serious and sincere woman who looked a lot like Ms. Frizzle in The Magic School Bus books told us that she was in charge of this rodeo and there was much applause. A few of the parents stood up and applauded. “Suck ups” I said-coughed into my hand. Her assistant stood like Vanna White, repeatedly motioning to a table full of trophies in varying sizes.

  Trophies that we damn sure wouldn’t be taking home.

  The couple beside us, fortunately, were also first-timers.