Let's produce a show

Regulars at Broadsides know: I'm a sucker for this sort of stuff.

Read how they produced it at Improve Improv Everywhere.

Moob over ladies!

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) always takes the sensational, sexist route to make its very important points.

While I agree with its message, I totally loathe how it delivers it. But usually, it exploits women in its ads.

Not this time though:

It is a topless picture that will generate strong emotions. Animal rights campaign group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) has put up a city centre billboard that links meat-eating with man boobs.

The display, outside a hospital in Glasgow, shows a protuberant, hairy chest accompanied by the caption: "Dude Looks like a Lady? Lose the breasts. Go vegetarian."

The campaign claims "meat-eating is forcing many men to get in touch with their feminine side" and bases the claim on a statement attributed to a Scottish surgeon that obesity problems are fuelling the demand for breast-reduction surgery in men.

Glasgow was chosen, Peta maintains: "Because since 2007 Scotland has seen an astounding 80% rise in the number of surgeries performed to address gynecomastia – excessive breast development in men."

The campaign group added: "The advertisment was designed to warn meat-eaters that obesity – which can be caused by a steady diet of animal-derived foods – is linked to the increase in gynecomastia." The billboard is outside Glasgow's southern general hospital.

I have to wonder whether all the hormones and antibiotics being given to livestock don't also have an effect, either directly through flesh-eating or in indirectly via run-off into the water supply.

Either way, meat-eating is repugnant. Animals are our fellow earthlings, eating them is not only cruel but also bad for the planet.

Over at the feminist forum where I picked this story up, there's been some discussion about PETA's constant playing on body image -- and how, now that men are being targeted, the organization can ramp up the use of women's bodies because, after all, they are now giving (not so equal) time to men.

But, as one regular noted:

Fat-shaming to either men/women is repugnant.

Man boobs can result from far more serious causes than over-eating such as testicular tumours, hyperthyroidism, chronic liver disease, drug abuse (marijuana, alcohol, heroin), adrenal tumours, renal insufficiency and even MALNUTRITION.

Well there you go.

Just as an aside. Some years ago, can't remember when, some women's magazine I read, can't remember which, polled guys on what they would do if they could only have breasts for a day.

One reply stuck with me: ''I'd jump rope naked in front of a mirror all day.''

Not bloody likely. Trust me on that.

(H/t to Brebis Noire)

Chag Kasher V'Sameach!

Burt's Bee S?

Well, didn't this just ruin my night:

My first introduction to natural, organic and eco-friendly products stems back to the early '90s,  when I stumbled upon Burt’s Bees lip balm at an independently owned health food store in the heart of Westport, Kansas City, Mo.

Before the eyesore invasion of ’98, when Starbucks frothed its way into the neighborhood, leading to its ultimate demise, Westport was the kind of  'hood I still yearn for. It was saturated with historically preserved, hip and funky, mom-and-pop-type establishments, delivering their goods people to people.

I was surprised more recently when I saw Burt's Bees products everywhere -- in grocery stores, drug stores, corner bodegas and big-box stores like Target and Wal-Mart. I thought to myself, fantastic; the marketplace is working, and good for Burt. He has made his mark, and the demand for his products is on the rise.

Needless to say, I was shocked when I recently found out that Burt's Bees is now owned by Clorox, a massive corporate company that has historically cared very little about the environment, but whose main industry is directly associated with harmful chemicals, some of which require warning labels for legal sale.

Clorox; yes, that's right -- the bleach company with an estimated revenue of $ 4.8 billion that employs nearly 7,600 workers (now bees) and sells products like Liquid-Plumr, Pine-Sol and Armor All, a far cry from the origins of Burt.

I now understood. The reason Burt's Bees products were everywhere was precisely because they now had a powerful corporation in the driver's seat, with big marketing budgets and existing distribution systems.

Burt's Bees is not the only you-thought-it-was-green product to have gone corporate lately.

Tom's of Maine is owned by Colgate-Palmolive, a massive, tanklike company with an estimated 36,000 employees and revenue of approximately $11.4 billion. Its big products include: Ajax, Anbesol and Speedstick.

And:

Over in the breakfast aisle, my friend was a bit apoplectic when we learned that the "super healthy" Kashi cereals, the favorites of millions of healthy breakfast eaters, was bought in July 2000 for an "undisclosed sum" by Kellogg's, the 12th-largest company in North American food sales, according to Food Processing. I picked up a box of Kashi's "Go Lean Crunch" and searched every word; not one mention of the fact that Kellogg's owns them. That change was rally below the radar. In 2004, Kraft Foods, known for processed cheeses and Kool-Aid, bought the natural cereal maker Back to Nature. Kraft is a subsidiary of Altria, which also owns Philip Morris USA, one of the world's largest producers of cigarettes.

According to the New York Times, "Many of the alternative cereal brands are owned by larger companies, including Kellogg and General Mills."

And:

I didn't have to go any further than the organic chocolate aisle of my favorite deli to find Green and Black's organic chocolate was taken over in 2005 by Schweppes, the 10th-largest company in North American packaged-food sales.

And on it goes.

Now I'm not surprised that the corporate giants are getting into the supposedly sustainable foods game since there is huge market demand for it. Which, as Michael Pollan, Marion Nestle and other writers on the subject of food politics have emphasized, defeats the purpose of this new movement which is all about getting away from the evils of mass production, long distance transportation and factory organic farming and producing healthy food in ways that don't rape the environment or exploit people.

I regularly buy both Green & Black's, Kashi and Burt's Bees products, thinking I am doing a good thing. And maybe I am. I mean, it's better than buying totally non-green products.

But i am shocked to discover that I could be supporting many of the same corporations that got us in this mess in the first place.

Multiple choice

So you know when you go into the donut shop and hem and haw over whether it's going to a maple cream or a chocolate frosted? Well dear reader, don't look now, but YOU ARE SUPPORTING THE PRO-CHOICE MOVEMENT!!!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Seriously. The American Life League -- the same folks who think a zygote is more of a human than a full-grown woman -- has put out a news release denouncing the Krispy Kreme chain because of their presidential inauguration promotion.

Here's the Krispy Kreme announcement:

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. (NYSE: KKD) is honoring American's sense of pride and freedom of choice on Inauguration Day, by offering a free doughnut of choice to every customer on this historic day, Jan. 20. By doing so, participating Krispy Kreme stores nationwide are making an oath to tasty goodies -- just another reminder of how oh-so-sweet 'free' can be.

And here's the ALL release:

The following is a statement from American Life League president Judie Brown:

"The next time you stare down a conveyor belt of slow-moving, hot, sugary glazed donuts at your local Krispy Kreme, you just might be supporting President-elect Barack Obama's radical support for abortion on demand - including his sweeping promise to sign the Freedom of Choice Act as soon as he steps in the Oval Office, Jan. 20.

<SNIP>

"Just an unfortunate choice of words? For the sake of our Wednesday morning doughnut runs, we hope so. The unfortunate reality of a post Roe v. Wade America is that 'choice' is synonymous with abortion access, and celebration of 'freedom of choice' is a tacit endorsement of abortion rights on demand.

"President-elect Barack Obama promises to be the most virulently pro-abortion president in history. Millions more children will be endangered by his radical abortion agenda.

"Celebrating his inauguration with 'Freedom of Choice' doughnuts - only two days before the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision to decriminalize abortion - is not only extremely tacky, it's disrespectful and insensitive and makes a mockery of a national tragedy.''

Pro-forced pregnancy advocates: The gift that never stops giving.

Now, either this is a very smart ploy for publicity, or these people are so fascist that they believe ''freedom'' and ''choice'' -- even in donut flavours -- are the work of Satan.

Hat tip to my friend Philly Markowitz.

UPPITY DATE: Here's Dammit Janet on these holey rollers.

UPROARIOUS DATE: OMG. These people are out to lunch. donuts. Just read the comments.

Of course, it certainly doesn’t hurt to drop them a line and let them know.  If it was a mistake, they should fix it.  Here’s what I wrote:  As Krispy Kreme consumers, my entire family would ask that you please change the wording of your US inaugural promotion not to include the words “freedom of choice.” To a majority of Americans, these words do not connote liberty, or “tasty goodies” or patriotism at all.  These words are synonymous with the painful tragedy of abortion.  Please know that, until that time, our family will no longer be patronizing Krispy Kreme donuts and will encourage all like-minded people we know, to do the same.  We sincerely hope you will not continue to taint the reputation of Krispy Kreme donuts by associating them with a euphemism for the killing of unborn children.  Thank you.

Turkey trots

Maybe Alaska Governor Sarah Palin wasn't very politically astute -- again! -- when she chose to go ahead with a TV interview while turkeys were being slaughtered in the background.

As she answered questions afterwards at Triple D Farm & Hatchery outside Wasilla, cameras showed the bloody work of an employee slaughtering birds behind the former Republican vice-presidential candidate.

"I was happy to get to be invited to participate in this." Palin said. "For one, you need a little bit of levity in this job, especially with so much that has gone in the last couple of months."

If you're the last person in the western world to have seen the video, be my guest.

Palin granted the interview performing that ridiculous pre-American Thanksgiving tradition, the pardoning of the turkey. One lucky bird avoids the hatchet while all the others get executed. For what? For the crime of being plump and stupid enough to be eaten.

There's been much mockery of Palin for this, especially in the left-libosphere. Yeah, well, she's easy pickings, and she keeps sticking her neck out. The Paris Hilton of politics, the woman just won't fade away to the obscurity she deserves.

Anyway, about this fowl story. I have to say that I approve of what she did, even if she probably would be mortified to hear my reasoning. After all, she's a hunter and fisher and, while she doesn't eat everything she shoots, or promotes that others shoot -- like those poor helpless wolves who get cut down from planes -- she isn't hypocritical about the realities of slaughtering animals.

The thing is, most people think of turkeys as these frozen balls of holiday food, defeathered and wrapped in plastic, ready to be stuffed and basted, roasted and carved, as if they never had lives or felt pain. Well they're not, as this most recent investigation proves. (Boldface is mine.)

Butterball workers were documented punching and stomping on live turkeys, slamming them against walls, and worse during an undercover investigation at a Butterball slaughterhouse in Ozark, Arkansas.

One Butterball employee stomped on a bird's head until her skull exploded, another swung a turkey against a metal handrail so hard that her spine popped out, and another was seen inserting his finger into a turkey's cloaca (vagina).

One worker told an investigator: "If you jump on their stomachs right, they'll pop ... or their insides will come out of their [rectums]," and other Butterball workers frequently bragged about kicking and tormenting birds. Read more in the investigators' log notes.

PETA's investigators discovered these horrors between April and July, 2006, during an undercover investigation at a Butterball plant that slaughters approximately 50,000 birds each day. 

At least the birds in the background of the Palin video were slaughtered by hand, at what seems to be a small scale operation, probably humane, and not assembly line, string-em-up, and chop-off-their-heads-with-a-machine factory where disease can easily spread.

I think it's good that people see where their food comes from. This kind of thing should be required viewing, and may result in less meat-eating, which would be good for the environment and the food supply. It's not even that grisly, despite all the shock and awe out there.

So, with that in mind, I would rather that the birds we eat live their short and brutal lives and meet the kind of end that these two in the background did than the the millions of others that will be on people's plates over the holidays.

Palin may be a bird brain in my books -- but this time she inadvertently did the animal kingdom a favour.

Big Boobs

It wasn't so long ago that busty babes were used to sell everything from cars to beer. In fact, I  get a perverse kick out of some of these ads, and actually have a collection of them mounted and hanging throughout my house. What breasts had to do with brakes or (haha) handling, I never understood, except that maybe the ad creators cynically thought that male buyers made their decisions somewhere between belts and their bar stools.

Although this tactic has never really gone away, it's eased off somewhat — although, now, himbos are often being used as selling tools in ads aimed at women. Fair's fair, I guess, and sex always did sell. But really? Is the ad industry so creatively bankrupt that no other strategy will do?

All these thoughts ran through my mind last night while I flipped through the September issue of Chatelaine — a woman's magazine — and stumbled across this ad on page 103.

Get it? Fresh-cut taters versus silicon tatas.

Now I ask you. Assuming you even noticed the fries, is this a good ad? Does it make you want to run out and ''indulge'' in ''Real. Fresh. Fries.'' — or does it make you want to toss your cookies?

And yes, it has won critical praise.

Unbelievably, it's targeted at women!

With media buys by Toronto's Media Experts, print ads will appear in magazines including Chatelaine, Hello, Flare, Canadian Living, People, Style at Home and Canadian House & Home through May 2009 — specifically targeting women 25-49 because they are key influencers in their households.

In fairness, I should add that the campaign also includes ads that use fake ''nails, hair, Botox and toupees." But one token bad wig on a man can't make up for the blatant sexism here.

Or maybe it's because it's Monday and I'm watching the Democratic National Convention coverage on the U.S. news nets, which are attacking Senator Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama. Speaking of which, read my friend Rosie Dimanno's most excellent column from Denver here.

Stop Slumping!

No, this is not about posture — although mine is horrible. It's a problem because good carriage not only eases aches and pains, it makes you look slimmer, more elegant — and 10 years younger. Which is why, last month while hanging with my cousin Eirini, we both resolved to remind each other to suck in our guts, lift our chests, throw our shoulders back and down and act as if our heads were being pulled up to the ceiling by the ears.

Okay, good. I just made an adjustment.

But, as I was saying, this is really about the 3 or 4 p.m. slump, the one that gets you hankering for whatever crap is on offer at the company canteen, cafeteria or coffee cart. Donuts, chips, Danish ...

Don't kid yourself. Even popcorn ain't so hot, even low-fat microwave popcorn. It's mostly carb — and will do little or nothing to keep you from noshing on everything in sight in an hour or so.

RICK MADONIK/TORONTO STAR

One of the reasons I have lost 20 pounds — had a few tumbles off the wagon last weekend, no thanks to the beginning of BBQ season — is that I have scheduled three snacks throughout the day into my eating strategy. Usually they consist of a mid-morning slice of whole grain toast with a tablespoon of peanut butter and some no-sugar-added jam, a mid-afternoon hit of baby carrots dipped into two tablespoons of store-bought spicy hummous and a late-night dunk of corn crackers into two tablespoons of commercially-made guacamole. (Note that everything is organic. But it doesn't have to be, although I am big on natural peanut butter, with no sugar.)

What do all these snacks have in common? They all have big taste, texture, crunch and all the essentials: protein, carbs, fat, fibre. These not only satisfy your mouth, they fill your gut — all for no more than 150-200 calories apiece.

That's why I enjoyed reading this, which I stumbled on last week while surfing the net. It's all about snacks that ''smash that groggy feeling.''

(W)e need snacks that meet the following 4 criteria:

   1. It must have a low Glycemic Index. The higher the GI, the quicker your blood glucose levels will rise. If your blood sugar gets too high, your body releases insulin to bring it down. This makes you tired and hungry again right after you just ate. Lower carbs, more fat and fiber (to slow absorption) will mean snacks with a lower GI.

   2. It must be filling. Ever take a pill in the morning and as soon as you turn around you can't remember if you took it or not? You don't want a snack like that.

   3. It must be interesting to your mouth. Your mouth likes contrasts: sweet and sour. crunchy and chewy. We want a snack that uses this.

   4. Ideally our snack is self-regulating. That means that we won't eat too much of it. This one is tougher, and we won't always find something that has this quality. In those cases we have to practice the dreaded art of self control.

The piece has some great suggestions, although I have problem with one of them.

Nuts.

I don't know about you but I can't buy a bag of nuts and not eat more than I should. That's why sometimes I go to the bulk food store around the corner and count out exactly 22 tamari almonds, about an ounce. But, more often than not, I am back for more, and maybe some pistachios ... and cashews...

You get the picture.

Anyway, I don't need to tell you that, once you blow it at the office at 4 (like when a colleague brings in candy, or there is a birthday cake), you always seem to feel you have a license to go nuts at night. You know the all-or-nothing-thinking routine. You ate a cookie in the afternoon, might as well eat a tub of ice cream at night.

Well, stop sabotaging yourself and bring some cheese and high-fibre crackers to work, with an apple. Or whatever works for you.

And sit up straight, will you?

Good posture works your core, without your having to go to the gym. How cool is that?

Do you believe in magic?

I don't.

After I lost 100+ pounds -- a total of 120 by the summer of 2003 -- I always knew exactly what people would ask me as soon as they'd hear about this spectacular makeover.

''How long did it take you?''

Not "How did you do it?" Not ''What did you eat?'' Not ''What diet did you follow?''  Not ''What exercise did you do?''

''How long did it take you?''

In the fall of 2002, I wrote about the experience for The Star. In that article, which elicited some 600 emails and letters, I wrote (unfortunately, the article is not on the woo-woo-woo):

Everyone is always disappointed by my answer: "It took about two years to lose the first 90 pounds, four years for the next 20," I explain, as their shoulders slump. "And no, no special diet. I eat balanced meals, lots of fruits and veggies, lean protein, beans and whole grains, and work out regularly and often."

KEN FAUGHT/TORONTO STAR

Antonia in 2002.

 

Oh, they say, as if I had been about to hand them a winning lottery ticket - only to snatch it away from their eager fingers.

That's because what most people want to hear is that I stumbled upon some miracle formula. A pill I took on Sunday that allowed me to drop 20 pounds by Friday. A lotion, a potion, a concoction, a cream. An esoteric diet, with weird food combinations. Infusions of foul and exotic herbs.

Or perhaps I've discovered a brilliant doctor, a diet centre or weight-loss club that has the answer to all our wildest get-into-that-bikini fantasies.

There ain't no magic. If there were, kids wouldn't be waddling through malls; men wouldn't be complaining about throwing out their backs because of outsized guts, and women wouldn't be squeezing their rolls of fat and hating themselves.

Nothing has happened to change my mind.

And yet, this morning at the drugstore, while waiting for a prescription, I cruised the supplements shelves, gobsmacked by all the products out there. Soups, bars, powders, pills, herbs, teas, metabolism boosters, you name it.

Business is so good that Kirstie Alley, who lost 75 pounds with Jenny Craig, is no longer working with that company and is launching her own.

Hey, as soon as I finish posting this entry, I am going down to the kitchen to concoct a miracle and slap a misleading label on it to give you the impression that you'll drop a ton -- as well as a fortune. Just don't read the fine print, okay?

Forget it. I won't exploit people that way.

Anyway, as regular readers of this blog know, I gained back 50 pounds of the total 120 I lost as of this past New Year's.

I am pleased to announce that I am now down -- drum roll! -- 12.

How have I been doing it?

Some real tough weight training two to three times a week, which is not enough really for me. And maybe a couple of hours of cardio, at most. Today I had a kick-ass kickboxing session with my trainer Sebastien Rahman. It left me sweaty and stress-free.

The rest is walking with the dog, about three to four miles a day at a less-than-aerobic pace. But Jericho gets me up and out three times a day, which shakes up my metabolism, I think.

Slow and steady, just like I did it over the period 1996-2003.

It's the main reason I never wrote a book about my experience. I had no gimmick to sell. (And by the way, The Star's Megan Ogilvie regularly test drives the newest diet and exercise books for our treeware pages. Check her stuff out.) You can't hawk a book when you write, as I did back in 2002, that the only way to do it was to change your habits:

Don't try to incorporate these all at once. Choose one thing
you believe you can manage and then work on making it second
nature. It may take days, it may take months. Then choose a
second habit. Even if you end up changing one thing, you'll be
healthier.

Drink at least 8 to 10 glasses of water a day. Try a couple as
soon as you're up in the morning. It may be tough at first, but
one day, you'll realize how much you were depriving your body.

Eat breakfast. Include whole grains, fruit and a reasonable
amount of lean protein such as skim milk cottage cheese or
yogurt. A big muffin or bagel doesn't cut it. I eat Red River
cereal, topped with fruit, chopped walnuts, cinnamon, flax seed
and sweetener, with a big bowl of skim milk cafe latte.

Eat two to three fruits a day. How hard is it to bite into a
tart Granny Smith apple? I can eat a dozen. Toss a banana and a
pear in your bag and go.

Work up to five veggies a day. I'm talking a handful of baby
carrots, half a large green pepper, a couple of cups of leafy
greens plus some tomato sauce on your pasta. Once you see how
easy it is, work in more. Aim for 8 to 10. The more you eat, the
less hungry you'll be.
 
Eat protein with every meal. Tins of flaked white tuna are
this girl's best friend. Many boneless, skinless chicken breasts
have died for my past sins. Protein keeps me going.

Don't touch that box. Chances are, if food comes in a box,
it's processed garbage. Cereal is the only obvious exception if
we're talking unsweetened, whole grain cereal. Bodybuilders call
this "eating clean." It becomes addictive. Not as addictive as
Doritos but as close as you can get.

Eat whole grain carbs. God didn't invent white wheat. You
shouldn't eat it. It's amazing how quickly you get used to whole
wheat spaghetti. One day, the regular stuff will taste like
mush.

Use a calorie counter. Learn about what you're eating. Discover
that, for the calories cost of a plain croissant, you could have
had three slices of whole wheat bread plus a dab of butter. Use
the book to calculate how much you should eat. Measure your food until you
can eyeball what four ounces or half a cup is.

Keep a food and weight diary. It is amazing how focused you
can become when you write down what you weigh and what you ate,
with the calorie counts, every day. Patterns start to emerge.
This is one of the hardest habits to acquire but it's one of the
most important. My diaries go back to late 1996, when the pounds
really started to come off. And no, I don't keep the diaries during
holidays. The pages aren't big enough for the feasting.

Get moving. My gym time has become my most precious time. I
schedule it every week, the way I would important interviews or
big parties. I allow very few things to interfere with it. Exercise
has not only burned off fat, it's reshaped my body,
improved my mood and sleep and given me more energy than you can
imagine. One of my favourite things to do when I can't get to
the gym? Blast on the stereo and dance like nobody's watching.
Wiggle that butt or it wiggles in ways you won't like.

How did I fall off the wagon?

I slacked off the exercise, ate too much (but kept up the healthy eating at the same time) and, most important, stopped journaling my food and exercise. Nothing keeps you on track like that.

Sure, as I explain in my video, menopause and some meds added to the burden, but I am not going to kid myself. I ate more and exercised less. End of story.

So, if you want to lose wight, here's an exercise for you, jog straight down the supplement aisle of the drugstore and head for the produce department of the supermarket.

Presto change-o. You'll be thinner and your wallet will be fatter, I promise.

Off your feed

Most of today was wasted on thinking about Skinny Bitch, the vegan-with-a-vengeance diet bestseller that's all about insulting women and making them feel guilty about the cruel abuse of the animals whose flesh, milk or eggs land on our tables.

As if we don't have enough issues around food, you know?

Don't get me wrong: I am all for significantly cutting back, or even cutting out, all meat, poultry and most seafood. My reasons are partly humanitarian and partly environmental. It's green to eat green. I haven't had veal in 30 years, loathe lamb and I don't touch pork anymore. (I never got over Babe, and I believe pigs are so intelligent that killing them is like slaughtering dogs.)

That said, I continue to enjoy cheese, although I eat it sparingly because of its fat content. I only buy eggs from chickens that are free-run and given organic feed.  And I avoid those fish which are endangered.

That's the good. The bad is that I eat a lot of chicken. The ugly is, I will never give up putting milk in my coffee.

I do pretty well, considering. That's because, having grown up in a Greek-ish family, I quite enjoy the Mediterranean diet of fruit, veg, whole grains, legumes, nuts, olives and fish.

If Greeks (in Greece) are among the longest-lived people in the world, they can thank (a) their mountainous country which forces them to climb a lot and (b) their Orthodox religion which has so many ''fasting'' days on which you have to lay off animal products that, 200 days a year, you're virtually a vegan.

But back to Skinny Bitch.

(When friends go on and on about how it opened their eyes to the cruelty-to-animals industrial complex, I have to ask them how they can then justify their leather shoes, suede bags, lambskin jackets or down coats. I'm a fat bitch, I guess.)

In yesterday's edition of Salon, Julie Klausner does a fierce job of flailing the Skinny Bitch authors, Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin.

Many women, hoping to get saucy advice from two stunners about staying slim, have felt duped by the offerings of what the authors proudly tout as a "manifesto." Aspiring Bergdorf blondes buy copies of "Skinny Bitch" at L.A. boutiques, only to be blindsided with accounts of live cows skinned alive on the assembly line. At least when a Hare Krishna gives you a vegetarian cookbook in the airport, you know -- thanks to their flower-wielding characterizations in Zucker brothers movies -- that they are cultish wack jobs. But Barnouin and Freedman, under the ruse of weight loss expertise, alternate concern for animal abuse with reader abuse.

The relentless bullying peppered throughout the authors' advice accounts for much of the book's humor, including quips like "you need to exercise, you lazy shit," "coffee is for pussies" and "don't be a fat pig anymore." It was a formerly anorexic friend of mine who nailed it when she read excerpts from the book. "When you have an eating disorder," she told me, "that's the voice you hear in your head all the time."

Thanks to "Skinny Bitch," women who hate their bodies no longer need rely on their own self-loathing to stoke the flames of what seems like motivation but is actually self-flagellation -- penance for the sin of being too fat. Now dieters can have the convenience of a former model (Barnouin) and a former modeling agent (Freedman) putting their transgressions in the black-and-white terms of right and wrong. "If you eat crap," they chirp, "you are crap."

That pretty much says what I feel about the book. But hey, women will subject themselves to any amount of abuse  -- even self-abuse -- in their quest or desire to be thin.

Which brings me to this, a column by The Guardian's Kira Cochrane, who today launched a series about her own struggles with weight.

Taught from a young age that looks and size are all-important, women often learn to keep a check on their eating, and each other's, too, before they even reach kindergarten. So, for instance, you hear grandmothers tell their three-year-old granddaughters that they'll never get married if they don't cut out the cake. You hear one schoolfriend (OK, me) being asked by another how much she weighs, to which the only reasonable answer, of course, is to subtract 10lb from the actual amount and announce the revised figure. Being met with a look of disgust and "Oh, how awful" told me all I needed to know. Next time I'd subtract 20.

As an adult, the conversations often become less vicious, but descend instead into a soul-sucking round of apology and reassurance. A constant run of dialogue between women that starts, "Oh, I'm so fat" (meaning, "Do I look fat? How much do I need to deny myself today? How long can I leave it before I ask this question again and make it clear to everyone around me that - yep, that's right - I don't actually like myself all that much?"), to be met by the reply, "No! You look amazing!" (meaning, "You look fine, same as usual, and please respond similarly when I assail you with this question.")

I understand why women engage in these conversations, and why we feel that if we don't apologise for the space we take up, we're afraid that someone else will get in first and cut us down. I understand, too, that for some women these conversations are actually a way of highlighting just how thin they are, thus shoring up their place in some vast unspoken pecking order. And while I find it utterly depressing that a woman would feel that her weight - or lack of it - represents her major achievement, given that we live in a society in which women are, on average, paid 17% less than men, make up only a fifth of MPs, a 10th of leading company directors, and have little choice but to watch in horror as less than 6% of reported rape cases end in a conviction, I can understand why women often don't feel that they or their abilities are really valued, and try to assert whatever small slice of power they can through drawing attention to their body by denigrating it. I understand it, and I don't blame anyone who does it, and I have done it myself, but I also really hate it. It is boring. It is tiring. It is sad.

Cochrane has some great insights, and you should read the whole thing.

As for Skinny Bitch, really, you don't need the book. There are plenty of vegan websites that offer the same information without your getting abused by, well, two skinny bitches.