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 Hello and welcome back to the Elastic Waist Book Club. This time we're talking about feminism, and the book in question is called Full-Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters, by Jessica Valenti, creator of Feministing.com. The book is aimed at young women who don't know why they ought to be feminists: kids like my 20-year-old cousin who thought I was nuts to consider myself a feminist, and for whom the term "feminism" evokes crazy things like man-hating and lesbianism, because she knows nothing about feminism except what's trickled down through pop culture--the leftovers of a movement that has become marginalized, minimalized, and ridiculed. 
 I watch House regularly, mostly because I really want to analyze my own (and Cuddy's and Cameron's and Wilson's) co-dependent fascination with emotionally detached men. In last night's episode, the Patient of the Week was a Jillian Michaels-esque infomercial fitness coach who was trying to sell DVDs to The Biggest Loser crowd. During the numerous tests for various exotic conditions that she didn't have, the team was surprised to learn that her stomach was "the size of a shot glass" because she had secretly had gastric bypass surgery. As is the case with House, the big reveal was followed by a commercial break and when we came back, we were treated to her Before picture, with a slumpy, large sweater-wearing fattie. Cue the onslaught of fat jokes from Dr. House, but what transpired is very spoilery, so let's meet up after the jump, ok?
 Photo via Splash I have a Monday night guilty pleasure that sends Esteban scurrying out of the room faster than you can say "Chuck Bass," and it is Gossip Girl. I absolutely love it--and really, I am not to blame. Josh Schwartz knows my weakness and it is stories about impeccably stylish affluent teenagers who can't keep it in their pants, all set to an achingly hip soundtrack. And if The O.C. grabbed me, despite my overall loathing of Marissa Cooper and anything that basks in the new money of SoCal-ness, then how can anyone expect me to deny the heady pleasures of teenagers set in one of my favorite cities in the world? One of my favorite characters on the show is Derota, Blair Waldorf's poor beleaguered housekeeper- slash-nanny who has been stealing Blair's scenes since last season. Her character is written as being significantly older than Blair, with several references to Derota having cared for Blair when she was a very small child and the character is often the source of worldly wisdom and guidance for Blair. However, the actor playing Derota, Zuzanna Szadkowski, is not a wizened old matronly woman. Suzanna's IMDB page doesn't list her age, but she graduated from high school in 1997, so it's a reasonable assumption that she's only a few years older than Leighton Meester, who plays Blair. In fact, look at this girl! She's just as fresh faced as the girls prancing around in the Constance Billiard uniforms. However, she's either of a normal healthy BMI or her body has been padded to create a visual distance so that the audience understands that in the world of the wealthy and thin members of high society, Derota is a Have Not.
Next up on the Elastic Waist Book Club: Full Frontal Feminism, by the Jessica Valenti of Feministing.com. It's a primer on feminism, a treatise on why feminism matters, a book that will change the way you think about feminism. I'm excited to read it, and I hope you'll pick it up with me.
 We are talking about Martha Beck's The 4-Day Win, this go around of the book club, and I've found that as a result, I am in an uncomfortable and strange situation. I am reading this book, and I am taking it seriously. I am reading it, and I am nodding thoughtfully, instead of sneering and making sarcastic remarks. I am reading a self-help book that I want to recommend to my friends. I am reading a self-help book, and I think it could help me help myself. I'm a sucker for comedy, and she's hilarious. But more importantly, she's advocating for the idea that everyone procrastinates, that change is hard and we automatically and absolutely resist it with every fiber of our beings, and she works with that, but with an attitude that says it is hard, and I am going to make it as easy on you as possible, and you are going to do it because you are awesome. I like this woman, and I like her ideas--that you can break out of the ruts that you are stuck in, you can stop saying I am like this and it is impossible for me to change, and just--change.
 Remember that scene in Fight Club where they break into the liposuction place and steal a bunch of lipo'd fat globules out of the dumpsters and then use it to make superfine facial soap? It was all very Chuck Palahniuk and crude, except a decade later, even old Chuck is probably irritated that he didn't think of this first: what if bio-diesel cars could run on human fat as well as discarded French fry grease? It's not so science fictiony (although I love the "Ford Flabgrabber" from this spoof): it's been done before. Apparently, the skipper of an experimental vehicle underwent the procedure and then drove 15 kilometers by virtue of his own by-product. A plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills has jumped aboard the "lipodiesel" bandwagon and embraced the greening of our collective vanity, setting up lipodiesel.com, which was then apparently shuttered shortly thereafter (but Google cache still has it).
 Studies are fun, aren't they? They give us all sorts of hard and steady facts to obsess and over-think about. Well, according to a new study, happy people watch less television than unhappy people and spend more time "socializing, going to church and reading newspapers." Wow, okay then, now you know the recipe for good times. Friends, Jesus (do people who go to temples, mosques, synagogues and tree-circling ceremonies not count?) and the Sunday paper will make you happy. Gossip Girl, no, not happy--sad, very sad. Sometimes I think that I've picked the wrong line of work. I think creating and directing studies is what I want to do in my next career. It seems like an abounding amount of money is spent tell us relatively worthless information. I see it all the time: a new study says that this generation has bigger feet than it's parents, a new study says that oatmeal is a slightly tanner shade of tan this year, a new study shows that drinking water that is clear is better than drinking water that is brown and goopy.
 When I was a kid, I watched a lot of TV and absorbed the commercials like a sponge. I remember that whenever a fast food commercial would come on, I would feel almost a physical ache of want as the camera showed glistening burgers and melty rivers of cheese. It was food porn, and I could not look away. Sometimes after the advent of remote controls, I would mute the commercials, but even the silent images held me in their thrall. It was a burger. A burger that I did not have. No matter that I knew darn well that the real stuff never really looked as good as the commercials, the damage was done. I did deserve a break today. I needed it my way. The answer to the question "Where's the beef?" was "Not in my hand, thank you for pointing that out." And even now in my thirties, I am constantly fighting with my fast food urges. When I travel, I have to check out the exotic local drive-thrus, just because it's my only opportunity to get In-n-Out Burger or Chick-fil-A. Esteban sneers at the fact that I can be a snooty gourmand one minute, demanding truffle salt and imported Irish butter and then debase myself by eating who knows what out of a waxed paper wrapper. I know, I know. It doesn't make sense. Interestingly enough, a study has found that the presence of fast food ads is connected to the rate of obesity in children, and that banning fast food ads during children's programming would reduce the incidence of obesity among children by as much as 18%:
We are discussing, with great enthusiasm, Martha Beck's The Four Day Win. It's a self-help book, which always gives me the shudders, but it's the kind of self-help book where I read through it and actually feel the urge to help myself rising up in my breast. I actually find myself nodding and going okay, that sounds reasonable. And that sounds logical, and that sounds totally doable and totally possible and oh my god, am I really self-helping, here? And then I have a cocktail and cry a few crystalline tears as I pour the sweet vermouth with a heavy hand. When last we left our discussion, I was suggesting that I would possibly maybe consider thinking about trying her 4-day win strategy, in which we don't say I am going to change my life immediately and forever, but instead say, I am going to try to do something for four days. Anyone can do just about anything for four days, right? I think I can. I totally can! I can try, anyway.
The beauty of the plan, though, is that Beck breaks it down even further. You can see her excellent explanation here. Basically, she is saying okay, you want to climb Mount Everest! Let's do it. But let's break that down into increments. No, smaller increments. No, smaller increments than that. No, smaller. Or, as she puts it, "Keep playing 'halvsies' until the goal feels just South of totally realistic, and just North of so easy it is insulting." So your first step in climbing Mount Everest is looking at a picture of the mountain. Your first step in quitting smoking is having one less puff of every cigarette. Your first step in writing an epic poem is considering possible rhymes for "dove." You can do that.
 I often wonder how much I'm discriminated against at my day job. I am a great interviewee and have a reasonable amount of responsibility, but I also watched as a very slender peer was groomed for management and became my boss and then rose a tier above that. I strongly suspect that I'm not making as much money as my coworkers. I'm not playing victim: I'm not very aggressive when it comes to going for new positions, and I tend to freeze when it comes to salary negotiations, strongly undervaluing my contribution. Stephanie from Back in Skinny Jeans describes it well: You are constantly judged on your image and your "brand". WTF! No one in college ever taught me that I would have to create a "personal brand," and that my brand could hurt me or catapult me up the ladder. And for women, a major part of your personal brand at work is your looks. Yeah, yeah, talent does matter but it has been proven that better looking people get bigger pay checks, faster traction up the ladder, better opportunities, and first dibs on all the good stuff.A new study backs up our anecdotal evidence. Overweight women suffer more discrimination and stress in the workplace and are more likely to be fired than a thin counterpart. From the Daily Mail, which earns kudos for leaving the head on its accompanying photograph of a fat girl:
 Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Outliers: The Story of Success, reveals how exceptionally successful people like The Beatles and Bill Gates, were able to become so wildly outstanding. He attributes their success largely to extraordinary circumstances, incredibly good fortune, and "the magic number of true expertise"--10,000 hours of practice. Gladwell says he achieved his 10,000 hours of practice during his ten years as a reporter for the Washington Post. The Beatles collected theirs in their early years by playing long sets in clubs in Hamburg, Germany, that led them to be more creative and confident as a band. By the time they achieved their first success in 1964, they'd already played a staggering 1,200 shows. This 10,000 number got me thinking about the hours of my life spent doing different activities--sleeping, eating, reading, working. I shudder to think how much time I spend in front of a computer screen. I need a pie chart. I am serious about committing myself to a healthy living lifestyle, but when I tallied up the actual amount of hours I spent working out in October I dropped down on my knees and yelled a glorious "Noooooooo!" to the ceiling. I only spent 450 minutes at the gym for the entire month of October. I feel like I'm at the gym all the time, but apparently I can't even break the 8 hours/month mark. I suppose those early mornings when my gym comrade and I decided to skip our spin class in favor of sleep really added up (or, didn't add up, which is the problem).
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