Why Kate, Why?

(Sorry this post is late Loyal Reader. Took a while to get it right sinze it's a touchy subject. Probably still not perfect)

“Maria, my mighty heart is breaking.” –Rainier Wolfcastle

Today is a sad day. Kate Upton, my future trophy wife—and her trophy boobs—have turned on me. There I was, minding my own business and fast forwarding through the ads during Monday Night Raw, when I spotted her in a commercial and threw it in reverse. Because not only can girls with huge tits not lie, like I said before, but every thing they say is super important. And smart.

Of course, this is only true if the boobs are in proportion to the body, so don’t get any ideas about trying to grow your boobs by getting really fat. And remember, there is a limit to how big boobs should be. Once you can squash beer cans with them, they’re not  turn-ons, they’re weapons.

But I digress. What awesome wisdom was about to spill forth from Kate’s heavenly hooters—great band name—and, more importantly, what product did I need to buy to make them happy?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXzdbr7HvAc

Imagine my shock and horror when that suave douche entered the scene and said “Kate doesn’t mind a man with a little hair on his chest,” and then Kate cruelly raised her eyebrow and said “but definitely not on his back,” then made a “Sorry back-haired guys, you won’t be touching these” face.

Talk about a boner killer. It was if the gates to heaven—ie, Kate’s vagina—had slammed shut. Because, of course, I have tons of hair on my back, way more than I have on my chest. Or on my head. I guess I could buy the shaver they were selling, but how am I supposed to shave my back when I can barely even wash it? My back is so broad, I can’t even reach parts of it without a (manly) loofa. And I don’t know what I’d do if someone hadn’t invented backscratchers.

With my dreams crushed, I could barely enjoy watching two oiled-up musclemen grappling in nothing but their manties. Instead, I was transported back in time, back to when Becky was still in law school.

I was visiting for the weekend and we were down in the student lounge to shoot some pool. Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, a bunch of allegedly intelligent women were watching Sex in the City.

This episode centered around the prudish one. Well, the prudish one compared to the other ones on the show. Why they would choose to make the only young and attractive woman play the prude while the older women were constantly getting naked is beyond me, but that’s just one of the many reasons I didn’t watch this show. The main reason being, of course, Sarah Jessica Parker’s face.

I’ll never understand how Sarah Jessica Parker has a career playing anything besides wicked witches. I’ll also never understand how women can constantly whine about how the media creates impossible standards of beauty and unrelenting pressure to be skinny, yet still love Sarah Jessica Parker. She’s a stick. Actually, she’s like one of those stickhorses kids used to ride. It’s like she knew that if she ever got even slightly chubby she’d be called Sarah Jessica Porker—sister of SpiderHam—and decided to stop eating for the rest of her life. If there’s pressure on women to be ridiculously skinny, it’s coming from Sarah Jessica Parker, not from us guys. Contrary to popular opinion, most of us don’t like super-skinny waifs. I never met a guy who was attracted to Kate Moss in the 90’s and I’ve never met a guy who liked Sarah Jessica Parker ever. But Kate Upton and Scarlett Johanson...yeah we like them. And before you parrot the media’s BS about this being some new thing where “all of a sudden” men are starting to like curvy women again, go back and watch Dusk Til Dawn. Salma Hayek was all curves in that movie and there was no one hotter. Hell, go back and look at Kelly Bundy. Then look at these pictures and see if you’ll ever find a man who thinks they’re attractive.

(And this is after she's been airbrushed to look her veiny, horsey best)

Case in point, when men talk about Modern Family, they talk about Sofia Vergara, not Julie Boney—er, Bowen. Almost all of us prefer Kat Denning to her moppish co-star. We like curves and always have. We like boobs, not bones. We want some flesh, something we can grab onto, not just hang clothes on. Ok, sure, we do love some skinny girls like Megan Fox and Nina Agdal—mmmmm, Nina Agdal—and that’s a pretty high bar, but we’re not the ones who made the unhealthy anorexic the “standard of beauty.” That’s all on the gay fashion designers and Sarah Jessica Parker. And women went along with it. For some reason, women held this bag of bones up as a fashion icon when they should have chased her out of town with pitchforks and torches, and maybe tossed her into the river to see if she can swim. Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure she can.

Anyway, this episode of SITC centered around the prude who had just dumped someone or been dumped or some other damn thing that no sensible person would give a shit about, maybe she broke a nail. So she was feeling depressed and unattractive, even though she surrounded herself with three hags, when suddenly she found herself being seduced by a stranger. At first she was disgusted because he was bald (ugh!) and pudgy (gross!) and short (vomit!), but somehow he charmed her back to his apartment.

At this point, I felt like I was watching a horror movie in a Harlem theater. All the girls were shrieking “No girl, don’t go in the house!” “Run Charlotte, run.” “Nooooooo.”

But Charlotte must not have heard them because she still decided to get naked. And that’s when things took a turn for the macabre as Charlotte made a terrifying discovery. Not only was he short and bald and pudgy, but he had...BACK HAIR!!!!! AAAAAAAAARGH!

And now I was intrigued. Could this horribly deformed man overcome his disgusting handicaps, thwart God’s will, and score the only attractive woman on SITC? Yes, somehow Charlotte managed to swallow her revulsion and presumably something else as she soldiered on and fucked him. What a trooper. But as I silently gave a fist pump of solidarity with my blobby, balding, back-haired brother who had beaten all the odds, the girls watching were pressed back in their seats, covering their faces. I can still hear the screams.

“Ew girl, nooooo!”

“Oh, this is sooooo gross!”

“I think I’m going to hurl.”

“Ugh, I can’t watch. Is it over yet?”

And suddenly, I understood why serial killers do what they do.

Flash forward 10 years to when I was watching some quality television—wrestling—and I was once again assaulted by the same vicious hate. Was I seriously expected to be tall, skinny, with hair only on my head and not on my back? How could I possibly meet this impossible standard I ask you, how?

Now if I was a woman and I killed myself in some horrible back-shaving accident, everyone would be furious. The media would never stop blaming itself for daring to tell me that I wasn’t perfect, thus giving me no choice but to take insane risks and torture myself trying to achieve the unachievable. Those monsters!

And yet, no one’s going to complain about this ad, unless there’s a woman somewhere who’s got her panties in a wad because it objectifies women—even though they’re the ones describing how men need to look—not to mention the fact that they mostly remain silent and look pretty while a man does the talking for them.

But imagine what would happen if this commercial was flipped around. Imagine if an ad starred Channing Tatum, Justin Bieber, and Ryan Gosling hanging out in a bar until some good looking woman walked by and said “Sorry ladies, Ryan Gosling doesn’t do fat chicks.” I bet you’re already cowering beneath your bed. A thundering herd would descend on Washington, angrily waggling their fists and crying out for justice. “How dare you suggest men don’t like fat women!” they’d wail, “We’re all equally beautiful, like delicate but enormous snowflakes.”

No, you’re not. Sorry, you’re just not. You’re not Heidi Klum or Padma Lakshmi, just like I’m not Colin Farrell. So what? It doesn’t mean you’re not attractive or beautiful, just not as beautiful as they are. You’ll have to work a little harder to succeed or get out of traffic tickets or find a lover, but that doesn’t mean you can’t. It doesn’t make it impossible. Hell, even Roseanne’s been married 4 times. And she’s rich. So however you look, and however bad you feel about how you look, you can find success and you can find love. And all without lying to yourself or complaining about some impossible standard or pretending that fat is beautiful. That’s not productive and it’s not healthy.

Because we’ve got this other problem; Our kids are giant fat fucks. They all look like Augustus Gloop or Violet Beauregarde after she chews the experimental gum. (Hey, these jokes are current again. Finally, something good about Johnny Depp’s Chocolate Factory remake.) And how are we supposed to do anything about childhood obesity if we’re too busy lying to little girls and telling them that fat is beautiful? Years ago, even before they named Gwyneth Paltrow their “most beautiful person in the world,” People magazine revealed their list was a sham by putting Gabourey Sidibe in it. And everyone was so happy. “Oh, what a victory for fat people, how progressive, what a triumph”. Are you kidding? Gabourey Sidibe looks like a chocolate munchkin. In the time it takes you to read this sentence, she probably just polished off a peanut butter waffle pizza and got that much closer to her destiny of replacing Wilford Brimley in those diabetes ads. That’s who you want to hold up as a role model? Do you really want to point at her and tell your daughters not to worry about their weight because Gabourey is beautiful?

But we still need to do something to keep girls from feeling bad about their looks and starving themselves to live up to “Hollywood’s” impossible standard, right? But even if we changed Hollywood, and made Melissa Mccarthy and Gabourey the lead of every romantic movie, there would still be a problem because good-looking women exist in real life. And men don’t need the media to tell us that we like them better. Maybe we should throw all the good-looking girls out of school and force the boys to only date the homely ones? Anything to keep girls from feeling bad about their looks. Because being beautiful is impossible. Unattainable.

Except it’s not. There’s literally a thousand of those impossibly beautiful women in Hollywood, in the music industry, in professional sports, and in the pages of the Sears underwear catalogue. And for every one of those, there’s another thousand still waitressing or stripping. There were gorgeous girls in my high school and college and now there’s even more at my office and, more importantly, at the gym. At any given moment, you can walk into a spin class or a yoga class at any gym in any major city and see a dozen fantastic looking women. But how? How are they achieving this impossible goal?

Well, for one thing, they all look different. There is no “standard of beauty.” Much as people like to pretend that men and Hollywood just love big-breasted blondes like Pamela Anderson and Kaley Cuoco—Kaley is fucking awesome by the way—there’s still Tyra Banks, Naomi Campbell, Halle Berry, Beyonce, Shakira, and that fucking gorgeous Indian girl from college. Some people even think Khloe Kardashian is attractive. All different shapes, sizes, and colors but all equally awesome—except Khloe. And they never decided that they didn’t have a chance of being beautiful because they didn’t look like Barbi. They believed in themselves and they worked hard to be beautiful.

And that’s the other key. Hard. Fucking. Work. Yeah, some women have the genes, but the rest have to work at it. That’s why they’re in those spin and yoga classes. I see these women in the gym, doing work, kicking their own asses, and I want to applaud—which  I never do because complimenting a woman is creepy and should be outlawed—and not just for the skinny ones. They all deserve it, because they’re not quitting. They’re in there every day earning their beauty.

Sure, some of them are just doing it to get a man—or woman—which is apparently a terrible thing to do. But most of them are just doing it for themselves, to feel healthy, to feel the pride of a job well done.  

So maybe the problem isn’t that there’s a high standard, but that we spend so much time telling girls that it’s impossible. You might be saying “Don’t worry about being as skinny as her because it’s impossible,” but they’re hearing that they’ll never be beautiful. So they either quit or they go insane trying to prove you wrong. And the sad part is that it’s totally possible. Yeah, they’ll probably never be as skinny as Mila Kunis or Keira Knightley, but they don’t have to be. They just have to not be as fat as Gabourey—and really getting that big is the thing that should be considered impossible. It just takes some hard work and willpower, and they’ll be able to be a healthy size that they can be proud of. 

I’m not saying it’s easy. I’ve been a fat guy all my life and probably always will be. I’ve been working on it for 20 years—done every diet, every exercise, crossed the world on treadmills and bikes and ellipticals and rowing machines—but I’m still fat. So I know how it feels to try and to fail, to be the one that doesn’t fit in. Just because I’m a guy doesn’t mean I don’t understand. Do you think I enjoyed watching shows that only portrayed fat boys as evil bullies or pathetic jokes? Do you think I enjoyed standing in the corner at every dance, every event, never even kissing a girl until college? Do you think I ever noticed that all the girls who said they just wanted someone funny wound up with someone handsome, that I didn’t know every girl who said she wished she could meet a guy just like me meant a guy like me who also skinny? Do you think I never noticed that I don’t look like anybody on the Abercrombie and Fitch catalogues or the underwear ad or pretty much any superhero besides The Blob? If you want to talk impossible physiques, then pick up a comic book. Oh wait, you already have and for some reason only complained about the impossible looks of the women—who, by the way, typically have huge hips.

Why? Because only girls have feelings? Because only women ever think of dying alone? Men think about that stuff too. We just don’t let it control us. Either we get over it or we focus on fixing it instead of whining about it. Do women even realize how weak they make themselves look by always complaining and blaming everyone else for their problems? It’s almost as bad as admitting that you can’t figure out whether the toilet seat is up or down.

So stop worrying about it and stop pointing fingers at everyone. It’s not Kate Upton’s fault she was blessed with tremendous ta-tas, and it’s not the media’s fault that men dream about them. And it doesn’t mean that you need them to be happy. Just deal with it.   

Yeah, it hurt to hear that Kate Upton won’t have sex with me. But I’ll get over it. I won’t cry and chug a pint of Ben and Jerry’s, I won’t decide that I hate myself and never eat again. I won’t start worrying that Becky’s going to leave me for some smooth-backed stud. I’ll just keep working at losing weight and being ok with myself.

Besides, it’s not like I really ever had a chance at sex with Kate Upton. But if I did, you can bet I’d be willing to swim a mile in a lake of Nair for it.