The D Word

And here's a clue, it's not diabetes, dementia, dysentery, or dick. The word: diet. It's a word that women think, and talk about, ad nauseum. And how can they help it? The first caption on every magazine cover is how to lose weight by eating more, the perfect workout to shed pounds faster, how to become an entirely different person in 30 days or less without going all American Psycho on someone. And thus the obsession continues.

This is not to judge, because I am one of those women. Should I not eat carbs after six in the evening? If I'm only supposed to eat egg whites, what the hell am I supposed to do with the yolks? How can I possibly be eating 1300 calories a day, working out an hour a day, and still not be losing weight?

The answer to all these questions—nobody but me cares. Sure, everybody will admire a svelte, newly-slim figure from afar, and the women will off-handedly wonder how I did it (while simultaneously hating me for my success), and the men will stare at my ass. But nobody really wants to know how.

I call this the Miracle of Hotness Phenomenon. Men and women will accept that one woman is hotter than another, but nobody wants to know how it's done. It's just like every other cool thing: CGI in a movie, a magician's secret panel, Kim Kardashian's boob job—thinking about the process is not at all fun.

The problem with the Miracle of Hotness: how on earth is a woman supposed to get real advice from a real person when nobody wants to talk about how to get skinnier? Talk to your man about it, he gets bored and annoyed. Talk to your mom about it, she'll tell you you're beautiful. Talk to your best friend about it, and suddenly it's a competition. And constantly trying to one-up your best friend doesn't help your Miracle at all.

So while the Miracle of Hotness remains quietly under wraps, except in obnoxious magazine covers (New Secret to Losing Weight: Eating Nothing But Strawberries and Pepper! And See Insider Special: Hate Your Body? Take a Pill That Rewrites Your DNA!), the rest of us have to struggle without assistance or support, hoping that with enough determination and hours of spinning classes that we will look like Halle Berry.

Of course, there's always the American Psycho option.