One More Reason To Love Candace Bergen: Her Attitude On Being Fat
(Which I, by the way, do not share in the least.)
I have a friend who's a fabulous guy -- a brilliant and hilariously un-PC anthropologist who knows history like it happened in his head. He's an enormous guy -- and I mean that both in the physical and general sense.
A few ev psych conferences ago, he made it no secret that he'd had his stomach stapled -- which I am pretty sure he did more for health than vanity -- so a number of us were a little worried when he was still putting down rather huge plates of food.
I don't think anyone expressed this verbally, but he knew. He looked over his food to us at table with him, acknowledged the procedure he'd had done, and said, "But I'm a glutton. I love to eat!"
I just loved the way he put that. No apologies, no weaseling, no attempts to justify.
I was reminded of that by the way Candace Bergan talked about her current shape. I have to say, I found Bergen one of the coolest, nicest, genuinely interesting and interested people I've encountered in Hollywood or anywhere, talked about her current shape. Columnist Susannah Breslin and appeared together on a show she did to talk about us about sex, and then I appeared on Bergen's later show. She sent Breslin and I signed Mary Ellen Mark photo books to thank us. Classy lady.
Anyway, via ET here's Bergen on her 30-pound weight gain:
"Let me just come right out and say it: I am fat," she writes, as the Today show reported on Monday, previewing their interview with her on April 7. "I live to eat. None of this 'eat to live' stuff for me.""I am a champion eater," she jokes. "No carb is safe -- no fat, either."
...Bergen says she is now totally comfortable in her own skin.
"At a recent dinner party I shared bread and olive oil, followed by chocolate ice cream with my husband," she recalls. "A woman near me looked at me, appalled, and I thought, 'I don't care.'"
Though I sure don't think the way she does on this -- and eating low-carb/high-fat, I don't put on weight like carb-eaters do -- I love and respect the way she is just "Here I am. I'm cool with it."
This is the essence of what is described in Joan Didion's 1961 Vogue essay, "On Self-Respect." An excerpt:
Although the careless, suicidal Julian English in Appointment in Samarra and the careless, incurably dishonest Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby seem equally improbable candidates for self-respect, Jordan Baker had it, Julian English did not. With that genius for accommodation more often seen in women than in men, Jordan took her own measure, made her own peace, avoided threats to that peace: "I hate careless people," she told Nick Carraway. "It takes two to make an accident."Like Jordan Baker, people with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things. If they choose to commit adultery, they do not then go running, in an access of bad conscience, to receive absolution from the wronged parties; nor do they complain unduly of the unfairness, the undeserved embarrassment, of being named corespondent. If they choose to forego their work--say it is screenwriting--in favor of sitting around the Algonquin bar, they do not then wonder bitterly why the Hacketts, and not they, did Anne Frank.
In brief, people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called character, a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to other, more instantly negotiable virtues. The measure of its slipping prestige is that one tends to think of it only in connection with homely children and with United States senators who have been defeated, preferably in the primary, for re-election. Nonetheless, character--the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life--is the source from which self-respect springs.
A side note: The ET piece was reported by ET's Antoinette Bueno, who is apparently so clueless about film that she twice referred to Bergen's late husband, French film director Louis Malle, as "Louis Dalle."
Buy her book here: A Fine Romance.
I think psychologists call this *self actualization*.
A rare trait.
Isab at March 24, 2015 6:31 AM
She may be happy about this, but is her husband?
Snoopy at March 24, 2015 6:50 AM
Meh, Snoopy, an extra 30 lbs may help a woman in her late 60s. As the old saying goes, after 40 it's either the ass or the face. (Attempts to circumvent this a la Madonna's chipmunk cheeks only demonstrating the point.)
Astra at March 24, 2015 7:01 AM
She's gorgeous. And her smile is radiant.
Maybe not despite or because of her weight. I think being confident about who you are, self respect, and being comfortable in your own skin have a lot to do with being attractive, beyond the basics of being healthy and happy.
Michelle at March 24, 2015 7:05 AM
She may be happy about this, but is her husband?
Posted by: Snoopy at March 24, 2015 6:50 AM
Shouldn't this be between them and not your concern?
The men I know don't find an extra thirty pounds a big deal. An extra hundred maybe.
Isab at March 24, 2015 7:08 AM
Isab got it.
She looks normal and quite attractive. From the tone of this post I thought I was going to be looking at some whale.
Ppen at March 24, 2015 8:13 AM
How come you guys weren't so patient with Petreaus' wife?
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 24, 2015 8:49 AM
I'll never forget it.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 24, 2015 8:52 AM
Well, I don't say this often, but Crid has a point. I missed it the first time around but there's some nasty commentary about Holly Petraeus and her supposed "frumpiness," as distinct from the magnanimous attitude being displayed toward Candace Bergen.
Patrick at March 24, 2015 9:11 AM
"Love might be blind, but male lust usually has a weight limit. There are those guys who are fatty fanciers, but a guy who got together with you 40 pounds ago probably isn't one of them. Male sexuality is highly visual."
--Amy Alkon
Snoopy at March 24, 2015 9:14 AM
"How come you guys weren't so patient with Petreaus' wife?"
Some people have issues; she is an issue. She isn't the one who committed the crime, but she was the occasion of it. I think that's why people go after her. It's unjust.
Jim at March 24, 2015 9:22 AM
I don't recall attacking Holly Petreaus for her looks (or anyone else for that matter)
I was always way more appalled by the way both she and her husband turned into total stooges for the Obama administration.
Also maybe David Petreaus enjoyed his relationship to Paula Broadwell because she was nicer to him.
I have known a few general's wives. My FiL was a two star.
A lot of them are nasty vindictive bitches.
Isab at March 24, 2015 9:59 AM
"Love might be blind, but male lust usually has a weight limit. There are those guys who are fatty fanciers, but a guy who got together with you 40 pounds ago probably isn't one of them. Male sexuality is highly visual."
--Amy Alkon
Posted by: Snoopy at March 24, 2015 9:14 AM
Apparently you think when a person is in their 60's that their marriage and relationship is just as shallow as your average 25 year olds.
It isn't. It is about shared values, companionship, loyalty and commitment.
Isab at March 24, 2015 10:03 AM
Candice is spot on. Being happy w/yourself is very attractive to a mate and others.
As far as Petreaus: I believe that sexual attraction and physical exercise are prominent factors in a lot of affairs. (I believe they jogged/worked out together.)
Throw in a predatory attitude by one party and I think the other party is doomed.
I don't think his wife's appearance had anything to do w/his affair. Petreaus was a dead duck from day one.
Bob in Texas at March 24, 2015 10:42 AM
> I have known a few general's
> wives. My FiL was a two star.
> A lot of them are nasty vindictive
> bitches.
You wouldn't believe what I've heard about some TV stars....
> Being happy w/yourself is very
> attractive to a mate and others.
This kind of rhetoric is often first heard in middle schools, about the time that the most clear-headed young women begin to know better. (It's the same summer where kids are passing around middlebrow novels with fucky passages.) It's a gassy variant of "…But she's pretty on the IN-side!"
Here's the secret to interior lives: When you talk about feelings, know exactly whose feelings are under discussion... On a per-sentence basis. Check ID's, and do so under a black light to minimize exposure to forgeries. Where possible, have all declarations notarized... On a per-sentence basis.
…Because feelings are wickedly individual things. People too eager to affirm that we're all feeling the same thing are [A.] about to get hurt or [B.] preparing to become defensive and accusatory when it turns out you aren't really on the team.
In the 1970's, people started watching a lot of sports on TV, and the announcer's commentary started getting transparently ludicrous... A trend which continues to this day. So Edgar... When you're out there on the court (field/ice/slopes/fairway) doing what you do best, do you think about it?… Or do you just DO it?
There was this basketball coach. One time a journalist said to him "Coach, it looks like Edgar was shooting with a lot of confidence this afternoon!"
The coach replied: "When Edgar takes a shot, whether he's confident of making the bucket is irrelevant. What's important is that I'm confident he'll make the bucket."
I wouldn't want anyone in my life to be a miserable fuck, but one's deepest interiors are most often one's own business, and no one else's. (And some who've been kindest and most enriching to me were deeply dissatisfied with their own lives... They knew that the happiness of people around them was about other things.)
> I believe that sexual attraction
> and physical exercise are prominent
> factors in a lot of affairs.
Perhaps not as much as is abject fuck-headedness.
> I don't think his wife's appearance
> had anything to do w/his affair.
Me neither.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 24, 2015 12:03 PM
Also, F-F's-S, how precious is a man married to a 60+-year-old woman permitted to be about thirty pounds?
I once read a book about Hollywood in the 1960's. Or glanced at it on someone's coffee table or something. There was a picture of Bergen as a teenager over some flowery caption: Apparently her beauty was a compelling and motive force in teenage heartbreak across Beverly Hills and all of Los Angeles. I was never that impressed, but like, whatever... She was a movie and TV star, famous for good looks. So are we surprised that people would find her attractive even today?
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 24, 2015 12:12 PM
I think she looks lovely. The extra weight is becoming, actually. She looks like a sweet, maternal woman.
Patrick at March 24, 2015 4:29 PM
She was a movie and TV star, famous for good looks. So are we surprised that people would find her attractive even today?
Posted by: Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 24, 2015 12:12 PM
No. That said, being thin is often conflated with appearing youthful, and appearing youthful is often conflated with being attractive. Gaining those 30 pounds is often something that happens with age, and welcoming the weight runs counter to a culture where bleaching for baby-white teeth, implanting for firmness, and dying for the vibrant colors of youth is common.
Do the people who undergo those procedures do so to find themselves attractive, or to be attractive to others?
I'll go back to coloring my hair when I reenter the job market. Maybe sooner. My partner wanted me to leave it natural, because the silver in its own right is beautiful, but I have found it to be an unhelpful anomaly in work life.
I'm hoping that as the first wave of Baby Boomers enters their 70s, we can look past a fear of aging and death and see beauty beyond indicators conflated with youth.
Didion also wrote, after the death of her husband of 40 years,"Marriage is not only time: it is also, paradoxically, the denial of time. For forty years I saw myself through John's eyes. I did not age."
Michelle at March 24, 2015 6:19 PM
Food is what you embrace when you do not have anything more important. See "obesity epidemic".
Don't be surprised when people don't find your fascination with eating attractive.
Radwaste at March 24, 2015 6:31 PM
A better link re: Didion, age, and cultural beauty:
The coverage of the Paris fashion house’s decision to make the author of Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album and The Year of Magical Thinking its new face has focused mostly on her age. Didion is 80; when she began her career as a writer at American Vogue in the late 50s, the personnel director of the magazine’s owner, Condé Nast, would from time to time stop her in the hall and ask her when she had last called her mother.
Apparently, we should celebrate Teller’s photograph of her as a particularly exalted example of fashion’s increased willingness to embrace models with wrinkles, liver spots and histories that trail all the way back to the days when women still wore white gloves and little hats to work. At last, the thinking goes, fashion has realised that beauty may also come with silver hair. What? You don’t buy that? Well, then. Think of it this way. At least it seems finally to have grasped that women don’t simply give up shopping the moment they turn 50.
There’s something going on beyond the cunning commercial appeal to the kind of conflicted consumer who values the inner life as much as the outer [...] Isn’t this campaign also in the business of suggesting that to be clever and a touch difficult (Didion is nothing if not unpredictable) is to be timelessly beautiful?
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/11/joan-didion-new-face-celine-smart
Michelle at March 24, 2015 6:31 PM
@"I love and respect the way she is just "Here I am. I'm cool with it.""
I must admit, I think this attitude is wrong. What is the difference, in principle, between the following?
1. "I'm fat, and hey, I'm cool with it"
2. "The brakes and tires on my car are worn, and hey, I'm cool with it"
We wouldn't think positively of someone who proudly neglects basic safety maintenance of their car .. why should we think positively of the behavior of proudly neglecting basic safety maintenance of something more important even, i.e. our bodies?
Lobster at March 24, 2015 6:36 PM
We wouldn't think positively of someone who proudly neglects basic safety maintenance of their car .. why should we think positively of the behavior of proudly neglecting basic safety maintenance of something more important even, i.e. our bodies?
Because fat people won't crash into and kill me?
Just a thought.
Steve Daniels at March 24, 2015 6:52 PM
why should we think positively of the behavior of proudly neglecting basic safety maintenance of something more important even, i.e. our bodies?
Becuase the body is only designed to last 30 years and everything beyond that is clean water, sewage, control, and modern medicine, therefore there is no such thing as "basic" anything when it comes to the human body after a certain point of time
lujlp at March 24, 2015 7:02 PM
We wouldn't think positively of someone who proudly neglects basic safety maintenance of their car .. why should we think positively of the behavior of proudly neglecting basic safety maintenance of something more important even, i.e. our bodies?
Posted by: Lobster at March 24, 2015 6:36 PM
That might be a passable analogy if there was much of a connection between thinness and health, but that link in tenuous at best, especially in women where social pressure to remain thin can push them to develop some really unhealthy habits.
This is totally an appearance thing, and has no direct or even indirect effect on you, so yes, I am quite *cool* with it.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2013/01/if_fat_is_unhealthy_why_are_overweight_people_less_likely_to_die.html
On a personal note, my rotund little mother, 215 at her heaviest 25 years ago, is now 165 at the age of 90, and still of sound mind and relatively sound body.
Her skinny contemporaries are all either dead, or in a nursing home, out of their minds or bed ridden.
Isab at March 24, 2015 7:11 PM
What Isab said (thank you).
Michelle at March 24, 2015 8:29 PM
> "Marriage is not only time: it
> is also, paradoxically, the denial
> of time. For forty years I saw
> myself through John's eyes. I did
> not age."
That's a great line.
(Favorite JD.)
(I said meen things about her once, and should probably take them back.)
Another thing about Bergen is that she was essentially born into tremendous celebrity... With good luck and beauty doing work on her behalf for which most actresses need to toil and connive. And she was crazy-shit successful, if never particularly brilliant or driven. So she probably watched all the showbiz machinery swirling around her, for better and worse, with more detachment than most people in that realm could manage. She knew perfectly well that it was nothing personal, that gifted people fail all the time while weasels often thrive.
It'd make sense that such a person would eventually turn away from Hollywood's fiercest strictures and commandments("Don't eat that shit!") with no patience or regret. What else could showbiz do for her at this point in her life?
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 24, 2015 9:48 PM
"On a personal note,..."
Ah. An anecdote. What is said about those here?
You're saying the fat live longer. Link, please.
Radwaste at March 25, 2015 12:13 AM
Not mean so much as lazy but fair enough - you made it clear you hadn't bothered to read more than the squib.
Thanks for the link.
As for "She knew perfectly well that it was nothing personal, that gifted people fail all the time while weasels often thrive." - so much freedom in that.
Regarding body weight and what is (oddly) referred to as "risk of dying":
http://www.everydayhealth.com/columns/jared-bunch-rhythm-of-life/obesity-paradox-weight-longevity/
Michelle at March 25, 2015 5:57 AM
Michelle has some intersting observations: "Do the people who undergo those procedures do so to find themselves attractive, or to be attractive to others? "
That's a good question, and the answer may often be that it is neither one of those things. It is more of an attempt to "fit in", to not stand out from the crowd. If everyone is, say, shaving their heads, the one who doesn't stands out. A lot of people are not comfortable with standing out.
(I'll throw in this caveat: With actors and entertainers, keeping up their physical appearance is often a career requirement. My brother was in that industry for a while, and he told me that when you're in the industry in Los Angeles, you have to be on all the time. You can't set foot out the front door without preparing and getting into your role first. We all know how the gossip mags love to publish paparazzi photos of celebs looking frumpy as they take the trash out.)
"I'm hoping that as the first wave of Baby Boomers enters their 70s, we can look past a fear of aging and death and see beauty beyond indicators conflated with youth."
Us X'ers have for a while now watched the aging of the "Never trust anyone over thirty" generation with wry amusement. Of course, it's happening to us too and we'll be in the same place in a few more years. But many of us never expected to live as long as we have, so to us, every additional day is a gift.
A concluding thought: As Isab pointed out, there is a qualatitive difference between 30 extra pounds and 100 extra pounds. The former, you might can work with, and if it's your spouse that you love, you probably don't notice it much (Michelle touched on that). If it's the latter, that's just damn unhealthy, and if it's your spouse, their physical appearance is really just an indicator of more serious problems. (This is probably why our monkey-brains regard really fat people as unattractive -- evolution has taught us that such people are of poor health and therefore the reproductive possibilities with them are low.)
Cousin Dave at March 25, 2015 7:28 AM
As Isab pointed out, there is a qualatitive difference between 30 extra pounds and 100 extra pounds. The former, you might can work with, and if it's your spouse that you love, you probably don't notice it much (Michelle touched on that).
And, as I noted above, often 30 lbs enhances the looks of a woman in her 60s. Take a look at the picture of Bergen: her face looks full and healthy. A little fat can replace the lost collagen at that age.
Astra at March 25, 2015 8:37 AM
@Cousin Dave
While I am technically a boomer, the *never trust anyone over 30 crowd* was protesting the Vietnam war while I was in grade school.
The draft ended a year before I graduated from high school.
Mine was the generation that fought Gulf War I, and also the second iteration as senior leadership in 2005.
In that respect I kind of resent being lumped in with the Clintons and their ilk.
Too hell with growing old gracefully, my plan is to never grow up period.....
Isab at March 25, 2015 9:01 AM
Isab, I hear you... I get lumped in with the Boomers by a lot of the generational philosophers because I was born in 1959. However, in terms of my attitudes and the circumstances in which I grew up, I am totally GenX. It was some of my generation who, as buck privates and airmen, participated in Carter's disasterous Iran hostage-rescue raid.
Cousin Dave at March 25, 2015 11:30 AM
All I know is I want Didion's Celine sunglasses.
Astra is right. Plus Hollywood women inject fillers to look like Bergen just with skinny bodies. The look is called "fat face bony body".
Ppen at March 25, 2015 11:43 AM
An article on women, curves, and fat:
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bodysphere/the-science-of-why-womens-bodies-are-the-way-they-are/6343312
Conan the Grammarian at March 25, 2015 1:14 PM
Crid nailed it here:
Here's the secret to interior lives: When you talk about feelings, know exactly whose feelings are under discussion...
If you are a woman, yes, there are men who would pull the measuring tape out every day. Take your morning shit, and then submit to the tape measure for your first inspection. And your morning team stand-up is still ahead! Watch the numbers. You might be fine with that if you already pulled out the measuring tape and have a "management report" ready ahead of time.
Other men, like Isab says, don't even notice until you gain like 100 lbs.
You just have to find someone who cares about the same things you do.
Most people on this earth are of average appearance. I live in a place with a relatively elderly population. They're like hobbits - plump, happy, enjoy simple lives, and take care of each other. None of them seem to obsess over the waist-to-hips ratio, and none of them would probably see Candace Bergen as fat. Not that their eyesight is all that great, but still.
Maybe you don't HAVE to have a perfect body. Perfect according to what? I recommend this:
1) Make a list of all the things you enjoy, and find a way to spend as much time as possible doing them.
2) Make a list of all the things you don't enjoy, and find a way to spend as little time as possible doing them.
3) If following #1 and #2 makes you gain weight, decide how much of it you can stand and increase #2 (which of course means decreasing #1) and act accordingly.
But don't ever stop enjoying life.
Pirate Jo at March 25, 2015 4:36 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2015/03/24/one_more_reason_5.html#comment-5926408">comment from Pirate JoYou just have to find someone who cares about the same things you do.
Exactly.
Also, as men get older, they don't see as well as they used to.
Amy Alkon at March 25, 2015 5:08 PM
Also, as men get older, they don't see as well as they used to.
Posted by: Amy Alkon Author Profile Page at March 25, 2015 5:08 PM
Exactly, but vitamins will help with that....
Isab at March 25, 2015 5:46 PM
> Not mean so much as lazy
Umm... There might have been other times, too.
Listen, if you don't do fiction, and your main exposure to it is reviews by pompous newspaper critics who are trying to glom onto the careers of truly talent people through showy, verbose copy, then this is what happens.
I don't consume any Justin Bieber product. He might be a nice and talented guy. But the people who write about him hate him... So I'll probably never know.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 25, 2015 6:29 PM
Yeah, *that* was mean.
For good book reviews, check out Brain Pickings. Her reviews often add to my understanding and appreciation of books I've already read and value.
Pirate Jo - great advice. Thank you.
Michelle at March 26, 2015 8:00 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2015/03/24/one_more_reason_5.html#comment-5928117">comment from MichelleMaria Popova is a thief and I advise everyone to avoid reading her site.
She posted the entire book of Elmore Leonard's Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing, was called out on this numerous times by me and by Gregg (my boyfriend, the late Elmore's researcher, who had the idea for this book and the illustrations and pulled it together). She would not remove the post.
Roman Genn, by the way, was my suggestion for the illustrator, and Gregg loved it, but the publisher went with someone else.
http://romangenn.com
Amy Alkon at March 26, 2015 9:31 AM
Amy, I had no idea. I'm sorry I posted the link on your blog. Thank you for letting me know.
And I love Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing, which I learned about on your blog. I keep giving away a copy, missing it, buying it, giving it away... (Thank you Gregg.)
M
Michelle at March 26, 2015 7:41 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2015/03/24/one_more_reason_5.html#comment-5929344">comment from MichelleThanks so much, Michelle. I knew you didn't know. I didn't know, either, until I saw what she did and then saw her ignore the entreaties from both Gregg and me to take down or edit the post.
Amy Alkon at March 26, 2015 10:33 PM
She looks good for 68 years old. And 30 pounds over a starved-down Hollywood body is both better looking and healthier.
markm at March 27, 2015 8:01 AM
"At a recent dinner party I shared bread and olive oil, followed by chocolate ice cream with my husband," she recalls. "A woman near me looked at me, appalled, and I thought, 'I don't care.'"
Lou Viggiano of Jersey City writes: "At a recent dinner party I attended with my wife, I wore a tank top, gym shorts and flip-flops. A woman near me looked at me, aghast, and I thought, 'I don't care.'"
JD at March 28, 2015 10:19 AM
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