Eat! No, Diet!

After work last week I went to my Pilates class and from there to the supermarket to get cat food and the drug store to pick up a prescription. Feeling fine after my class and a steam shower I was startled when I skimmed the magazine racks at both stores' check-out counters. Suddenly I was less than fine and somewhat confused. Wasn't it just last week that every magazine had favorite recipes and special holiday libations on their cover? Every front page photo was an artistic delight calculated to make one rush home and if not immediately make the proffered recipe or at least open the refrigerator-or even better the freezer-and pull out something “forbidden” to eat. As if standing at the refrigerator, freezer door wide open with the ice cream carton in one hand and your spoon in the other made eating extra calories OK. Many would slowly even out the ice cream ridges, spoon after spoon, never closing the door or heaven forbid taking the ice cream out of the container and putting it in a bowl. Everyone knows there are no calories when you stand in front of the refrigerator and that all those nasty carbohydrates and fats exist only in the bowl and exponentially increase if you sit down at the table and eat as mother taught you.

So why was I confused? Seemingly overnight fancy recipes had been replaced by how-to diets. Almost every non news magazine explained how someone had become half their size or how now you can too. I try to eat fairly healthily and exercise on a regular basis, not only as a new year’s resolution to be broken within a week or month. One reason I think I can more or less keep my routine is because I don’t usually linger at magazine stands that explain how I am supposed to live. I stayed in the stores long enough to pay my bills and quickly fled. One more time I felt the clutch of Madison Avenue trying to regulate my life. First they tried to get me to eat, then they told me how to lose the pounds I should have gained. I am sure if I looked more closely I would have also been told what to wear during my requisite exercise and toning schedule and which form of exercise would serve my body type best. I love living in America. But I don’t love being told what type of American I am supposed to be. I don’t like being told eat then “purge.” I wouldn't mind living as an American who is given credit for thinking for herself. On the other hand, the latest issue of People sure looked enticing.