Shut Up and Eat

Dave Barry's column this week was about the ridiculousness of woman's perennial question, "How do I look?" The article requires registration to read, so I'll just summarize for you. Basically, a man would never ask, "How do I look?" because all men think they either look crappy or fine. And they're OK with both. Women, on the other hand, spend hours trying to use make-up endorsed by supermodels to look like those supermodels. In a great comparison, Barry said that men would never sit around and try to use the hair gel Brad Pitt uses because most men don't think Brad Pitt is any better looking than they are. But women are obsessed.

As one of those women Barry makes fun of, I'm ashamed to admit that we are obsessed. But it doesn't stop with how we look. It carries over into how we look WHEN WE EAT. Take the following scene: four apparently normal women stroll into a restaurant for a nice meal. The waiter seats them and the chatter begins.

"This chicken sandwich looks so good," swoons Woman A, "but it's probably loaded with calories and I had some toast for breakfast so I don't really need all that food. Oh look! Salad! I'll have that. And water with lemon."

Two of her fellow lunchers can't find the salad section of the menu fast enough.

"Oh look! 'A mouthwatering blend of watercress, spinach and romaine served with fat-free raspberry vinaigrette,'" said Woman B. "That sounds perfect. But I think I'll get it with the dressing on the side just in case it's not really fat-free. Oh, and I'll need a water with lemon."

"I'll have the same exact thing," quips Woman C. "I've been craving watercress all morning and I really need to pay for that piece of Juicy Fruit I chewed after breakfast. It's not really fruit you know! And I'll need to double-check that the dressing is fat-free. Ooohhh, and some water with lemon."

Woman D watches all of this in horror. You see, she's hungry and not for bunny food. She wanted a sandwich, could virtually feel the texture of the bun as her teeth cut through the first bite. She's been looking forward to this lunch for a long time and has privately justified the break in her attempts at healthy eating, chalking it up to a fun day with the girls that won't kill her. And now this. She can either order a salad or suffer the social stigma of eating real food in front of other women--one of the worst crimes a 21st-century female can commit.

"I'll get the chicken club sandwich," she blurts before she can help it. She looks at the waiter. "That comes with bacon, right? And lots of American cheese and pickles? It says here I can get a side salad, but I'd really just like some fries. And a Coke."

Women A, B and C stare at her open-mouthed. Woman D has done it. She's ordered what she actually wants to eat. From this point on, she's the enemy.

You men out there are probably reading this and chuckling, thinking it's the work of my paranoid (yet highly entertaining) imagination. Like Dave Barry argues, men would never do this—sit around a table, telling people how fat they are and how they don't deserve to eat certain foods. But the sad truth is that female peer pressure about food is one of the worst things I personally have ever had to deal with in my life. Lunches like the one I described, or breakfast meetings at work when female colleagues talk about the fat and calories in the Danish, opting instead to go have a cigarette and drink a cup of coffee, scowling at you when you slather reduced-fat cream cheese on a cinnamon raisin bagel....They're absolute torture. You learn to say things like, "I know these are so terrible, but I just can't resist," or even worse, you ignore the bagel you desperately want to avoid the stigma of actually eating it.

What irritates me most about the salad movement isn't so much that people want to eat salad, but that they have to share it. If you want a salad, don't justify it by running it past me first. Don't make me massage your ego by ordering a salad too. Just order the damn thing and don't put on a Broadway song and dance about it. Don't itemize your caloric intake for day and tell me how horrible you've been. Don't make me feel guilty because I'm hungry and I'd like to splurge for the week and eat a burger on the bun with lots of pickles.

And that's what happens—the guilt inevitably sets in. Woman A gets a salad and women B and C follow suite out of guilt, thinking Woman A will ostracize or make fun of them for eating, say, a turkey wrap. But Woman D has the balls to eat what she wants, and you know why? Because Woman D is a round woman who has always been aware of what she eats and how people view her because of it. Woman D has tried not eating, eating only apples, eating breakfast, skipping breakfast, skipping lunch, drinking coffee, not drinking coffee, eating junk, not eating junk, not snacking at night and eating only popcorn. Her battle with food is waged deep within her soul and is not to be shared with others over a friendly lunch with expressions of "I'm so fat, I don't deserve the house dressing." Years of struggle have taught her that her body needs food to think clearly, function properly and sleep deeply. Without food, she grows weary, dizzy and irritable.

Above all, Woman D has learned that the chicken she ordered and the bread it comes on aren't going to impact her life so dramatically that she needs to make everyone else's life miserable because of it. She's tired of the pressure and she's rebelling against it.

Life would be so much easier if people would just shut up and eat.