Foodie Neediness

It’s May! Which means, of course, summertime. For many people, “summer” has connotations of sunny days, playing outside, going to the beach, and all that other goodness from the song in “Grease.” However, if you’re a woman from 25 – 45 (I was going to put “from 18” but really, what do those young bitches have to complain about?), and I am, then the prospect of summer means one thing: bathing suit obsessiveness. The opportunity and dread, the anxiousness and preparation.

It’ll be good to be old and let all my extraneous parts go to all points of the compass except North, but until then, I will fight off my thighs’ exploration and colonization of new space as mightily as I can, which, being me in the 21st century, always starts with a Web search. Well, it starts with panic, which engenders a Web search. In the course of a Google word-association thread (“bikini fitness,” which makes me think of “DVDs,” then “Tracy Anderson,” then “people who hate GOOP,” [me!] then “detox diets,” then, inexplicably, what was the name of that “Alicia Silverstone movie with Benecio Del Toro” [Excess Baggage], and so it goes), I discovered two disturbing trends and one pretty cute one.

Disturbing Trend Number One: People who simultaneously, compulsively blog and diet
I’m all for blogging. I’m all for dieting—well, I’m all for eating in a mindful way. I get the concept: you go on a diet/change your lifestyle and you blog about the process and your progress. But the people who post about what they’re eating, how they’re feeling, how good/bad they are, what they believe their self-worth to be, sometimes multiple times a day—it’s painful, honestly. It is, essentially, reading their diaries. It’s the tone of guilty confession coupled with seeking approval that just gets me. (A similar trend is the compulsive workout DVD reviewer—people who try out different exercise DVDs, and write about them, though in each review is always something like, “I had run five miles and done a pilates class that day and that 3-hour yoga DVD was a good cool down,” or “I had to do the whole DVD three times in a row just to break a sweat.”) The worst part are the product pushers, who send these bloggers their DVDs or diet supplement or free juice, encouraging them to continue the compulsive blog/diet cycle. Yuck.

Disturbing Trend Number Two: Taking pictures of everything you eat
I’m torn about this one. I don’t trust people who are indifferent about food, and I have several beautiful food memories, so I like the idea of commemorating a beautifully plated dish of yumminess. But some people photograph everything they eat. Everything. Cereal. Snacks. Breathmints. Here’s an article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/dining/07camera.html

Holy eating disorders! Maybe I would just feel better if they didn’t post things, then I could pretend bad food relationships don’t exist. And now:

One Pretty Cute Food Trend: Cupcakes
They’re smallish. They’re cute. They’re much more mobile than a whole cake. You don’t need a fork! You can buy just one! Sometimes, you just want a little nosh. Cupcakes. They’re practically the stuffed animals of the culinary world. And my friend Mary Ann has a shop:
http://www.cutecakeshawaii.com/about.html