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 In Half-Assed, Jennette Fulda talks about things that tend to be glossed over in weight-loss memoirs. Generally, you assume that the attitude of someone who is dedicated to weight loss, to the point that they've written an entire book about it and their success at the whole endeavor, is absolute delight in the fact that they're not fat any more. You assume the prevailing attitude is going to be that fat is bad, thin is good, and the fat acceptance movement is a bunch of hooey. Why would you lose weight if you accepted your fat, right? There's no happy medium: you're in or you're out of the FA movement. Fulda's got her own take on the idea. She writes: 
 I kind of love crazy fictional dystopias. In fact, on my list of favorite books, you'd find The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I started to think that it was just the dystopian aspect that I was digging, but then I read books like China Mieville's Perdido Street Station and Phillip K. Dick's Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep? and I realized that no, it's not the weird possible future aspect that I was into: it's the fact that in these potential futures, a person's body becomes more political and less individual. In other words, your uterus, your organs, they are all existing as a factor of the greater good. So, I think I'm going to be rocked out of my mind by Kit Reed's newest tome Thinner Than Thou, where religion has been replaced by a worship of thinness. It's won some awards and the reviews are looking pretty good. Check out the synopsis from Powell's:
It took me months and months to tell my mother I had gotten weight-loss surgery, and I still regret that. The only reason I emailed her, the morning I was going in, and told her that I had to be operated on, I was okay, I have a stomach ailment, was because my boyfriend at the time told me he really, really didn't want to have to call her up out of nowhere and tell her, Um, your daughter's dead. Sorry, bye! And uh, I kind of didn't blame him.
But I was terrified to tell her, and there was no good reason for that--my mother is not a terrifying woman. She is, perhaps, the furthest thing from terrifying you will ever meet. She is very petite and very beautiful. She's got tiny hands and a loud voice and a louder laugh (I got that from her), and she loves to be silly. She is very silly, but so remarkably strong, very brave, ridiculously organized and efficient, kind, and compassionate. She's never been a gourmet cook, but she is a hell of a crocheter. My mother is an amazing woman, and not terrifying at all, and I was still absolutely unable to tell her what I was doing; months later, I was completely unable to tell her what I had done.
Whoops, you've got less than 48 hours to figure out what you're going to give to your mom and other nurturing females in your life. Do you have a game plan? Or are you going to be staring down a brunch table at your lovely mother's expectant face, knowing that your Whitman's sampler just isn't going to cut it? Here are five easy and fun suggestions of Mother's Day gifts that don't involve collectible knicknacks or bottles of smelly lotion and I guarantee, it's going to totally show up your annoying sister-in-law with her painfully perfect Martha Stewart crafts and snoozer spa gift card.
 Photo via Splash Of all of the marketing opportunities for Perez Hilton (who has obvs reached the pinnacle of blogger-turned-celeb status), I never ever EVER would have picked "clothing line." Because, Mario, lover, I adore the fact that you exist in this world, but your fashion sense is second on the list of things that are not your most flattering quirks (the spooge-filled Photoshopping being the cherry, so to speak, on that nasty sundae). Seriously, would you look at this hot tranny mess? Would you be seen dead in that dreck? I mean, come on, the Manic Panic hair color is quaint, but don't go playing with the big bois, Perez, you're just going to get burned.
 Heaven help me, but I have become enamored of madras and madras-esque plaids that make you look like an old man who should be wearing dress socks and leather sandals, except way the hell cuter. It appears that I have developed a great and abiding appreciation for old man chic, and I will not apologize. We should all wear cheery, sexy, adorable plaid shorts with white wifebeaters and maybe even a panama hat, and I will not hear a word about how your big butt looks in plaid pants because you know how it looks? Freaking cute.Here's a whole raft of adorable plaids, in every size and length and color. I may buy them all:
Kim serves up some major headlines in health news in today's Daily Specials, and then, our most important guest of all time. For reals. Photos via Splash.  Moms get a bad rap. After all, the woman who taught us how to deal with our bodies, the woman who was probably our first glimpse at a diet in action, the weird way that deprivation becomes some kind of moral imperative, it was probably good old Mom, right? Sarah Hepola (confession: one of my HUGE blogger crushes) revealed that she was 9 years old when she first started dieting because it was a way to be cool and sophisticated, a way to distance herself from gummy bears and Big League Chew with the simple phrase, "Do you know how many calories are in those?" Myself, I was five, but unlike Sarah, mine was not self-imposed and I was not trying to emulate my beautiful naturally slender mom. My sister, who looks entirely normal (whatever that means) and inherited a lot of my mother's body type (although, much to her chagrin, missed out on some of her metabolism), started dieting when she was 11, although I always thought it was because she was emulating her best friend, who loved to indoctrinate Amy into all things illicit and cool. Unprompted, my 9-year-old niece recently told me, "It's okay if I eat some cookies, because I've lost some weight playing so much basketball," which sent my poor overly-sensitive brain into a frenzy trying to think of a way to suggest that cookies aren't a reward for good behavior, they're just cookies. The statistics on little girls starting to seriously diet are staggering, but not only will this behavior mess with their heads but it also messes with their little bodies: kids who experience periods of dieting and binge eating might be reducing their life span. I don't know what is more sad--the idea that kids are dieting or that it's so prevalent there is a study on the phenomenon. The comments are curious to know how old you were when you went on your first diet, and whether or not your mom was a dieter too.
We went out to karaoke, one night, and to do karaoke, you usually have to be drunk. Unless you're a good singer, in which case being drunk is just a nice bonus. We were all very drunk, regardless of our level of singing talent, and talk turned, as talk usually does when you're very drunk and happy, to sex. It's easier, of course, to talk about sex when you're three sheets to the wind and can blame every embarrassing thing that comes out of your mouth on the highball glass filled to the top with beautiful vodka. The sex talk came around, after some meandering, to talking dirty in bed, which ended up becoming a conversation about the very worst thing anyone had ever said in bed to us.
I am very disappointed to report that I don't entirely remember my friends' stories. I know, however, that they were terrible, and painfully hilarious in the way that only something wretched and awful and embarrassing can be, in retrospect. I kind of wish I didn't remember my own story, because it still makes me cringe, 15 years later, when I think about it.
 Photo via Splash I can't believe I'm even writing this, because during my intense obsession with The OC, I sort of loathed Marissa Cooper and her milquetoast whiny personality. She was always needing saving, that Marissa. She never did anything for herself! I mean, sure, who wouldn't want Ryan Atwood to rush in and rescue you, but how many times did she have to be saved? Can't girls save themselves? Of course, she did eventually save Ryan from his brother, but even that turned into a tragic Marissa storyline and ugh, must we? And then there were the clothes that Marissa trotted around in. They made no sense! Seriously, there was no denying that the girl is lovely but I just couldn't understand how Marissa could have been the most popular girl at Harbor when, man, she was just so freaking boring. I am the first to admit that I made the tragic flaw in reasoning. Just because she's never going to win an Oscar and she was working with a poorly-written character, Mischa Barton is nothing like that. At least if you're to believe this article in OK!:
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