beenie

Scared, offended, or just plan pissed?

Bryan and I are fans of the FoodTV show Good Eats, and its host, Alton Brown. Alton recently released his second book and is currently on tour. Imagine our surprise when we found out he'd be in Brookfield (a suburb of Milwaukee) doing a signing!! We immediately wanted to go, and had planned on doing so.

However, upon thinking about it, we've changed our plans.

Now, I'm paraphrasing here because it happened so long ago that I can't find it (I believe it was on his blog and has dropped off due to how long ago it was), but some time ago Alton said something like this: that when he does demos and book signings, he sees all of the overweight people in the crowd and thinks that maybe they all should have just stayed home and exercised or ate something healthy.

Now, I don't know about any of you other people without perfect bodies, but I worry enough about how people look at me when I'm out. I'm always pretty sure they see me and think bad things. I'm definitely a lot better than I used to be, when I didn't even want to go out in public (many years and much less self-esteem ago), and I generally don't care what complete strangers think of me, but there's always that little... "twinge."

It's bad enough to be thinking that people are thinking nasty things about you - however, there's always the chance that nobody really noticed me at all and if they did they really don't give a rat's patoot what I look like. But we've got better things to do than stand in line for 2+ hours to meet someone who readily admitted that he would think poorly of us.

So Alton, we'll spend our money on your books and DVDs and spend our time contributing to your show's ratings because we like your show and find you to be wonderfully hilarious and clever. But stand in front of you so you can silently mock and/or pity us? No thanks.

Posted by beenie at January 17, 2005 08:46 PM