Episode Transcript
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0:11
God, it's been so long. I forgot how to do this with
0:13
you. Isn't it super fucking
0:15
weird? I don't like
0:16
it.
0:16
I don't like it either, Michael. I'm
0:18
so glad to be able to talk in a
0:20
sustained way.
0:23
Talking, I like it.
0:24
It's good, comma, actually. Okay.
0:26
I've had like a month think about this fucking tagline.
0:29
And now let me come up with this still bad.
0:31
Welcome to Maintenance phase. The podcast
0:33
that has been married nine
0:36
times but continues to
0:38
hope. Is that a thing that I know about her? Am
0:40
I thinking of someone else? Eight times.
0:42
You were so close. Eight
0:44
times to seven dudes. Oh,
0:46
really one of them was a a repeat offender.
0:48
I didn't know that.
0:49
Yeah. Richard Burton. Mhmm. It's the big
0:51
one. You know, it's the big one.
0:53
I am Michael Hobbs. I am Aubrey Gordon.
0:55
If you would like to support the show, you can do that at
0:58
patreon dot com slash maintenance phase.
1:00
You can also buy t shirts, mugs, tote
1:02
bags, all manner of things. At
1:04
t public. Both of those are linked for you in
1:06
the show notes. You can also subscribe
1:09
on Apple Podcast. You'll get the same
1:11
audio content as you get on Patreon.
1:13
Same stuff. And Michael and Aubrey.
1:15
Today, we're talking about
1:17
a diet book written by none other
1:20
than Elizabeth
1:21
Taylor.
1:21
We're doing it. We're doing all the Hollywood royalty.
1:24
We've done Gwyneth Paltrow. We've
1:26
done Elizabeth Taylor. We've done Ed
1:28
McMan. Michael,
1:32
tell me what you know about Elizabeth Taylor.
1:34
It sounds like, you know, generally,
1:36
that she was married a
1:37
lot. What else do you know about Elizabeth Taylor?
1:39
Literally, an actress who
1:41
was married a lot. Great. We've reached the limits
1:43
of my knowledge. I should also say before we
1:45
sort of dig in all the way. That
1:47
this episode includes some
1:49
really gnarly abuse stuff and
1:51
some extra gnarly anti fatness
1:54
in it. So like really, really take care.
1:56
It's an extraordinarily one. It's worth noting that
1:58
Elizabeth Taylor is like an incredibly complicated
2:01
person. Mhmm. She received
2:04
incredible scrutiny for her
2:06
appearance in the press from her loved
2:08
ones across the board. And
2:11
she was also repeatedly referred
2:13
to as the most beautiful woman in the
2:14
world. So
2:15
in other words, a famous woman.
2:17
She was famous and have the audacity
2:20
not to be a man. This is what I wanted
2:22
and
2:22
a living nightmare. She's also
2:25
A white person who played cleopatra in
2:27
one of the most famous and foundational cases
2:30
of white watching African history. Right?
2:32
Like, off the charts. She's
2:34
a Democrat, a lifelong Democrat
2:36
who married a Republican elected
2:39
official. Oh. And started hosting
2:41
fundraisers for Republicans on
2:43
the eve of Reaganism. She
2:47
was disabled. She had scoliosis.
2:49
And was scapegoated in the press
2:52
constantly for these sort
2:54
of costly production shutdowns.
2:57
Okay. Some of which are the result of
2:59
her being sort of a frivolous rich lady and being
3:01
like, I wanted to go to Greece this weekend
3:03
or whatever. Yeah. And some of which are like
3:05
I'm in the hospital for complications from
3:07
my disability or I'm really
3:09
sick. And that all got read
3:11
through the lens of, like,
3:12
she's wasting every buddy's time. Right?
3:14
This is the beginning of like the difficult woman
3:17
industrial complex. There is a
3:19
lot of difficult woman sort of
3:21
foundational material showing up here
3:23
for sure. Right. But it's also worth
3:25
noting that she was well ahead
3:27
of most other folks an outspoken
3:30
advocate for people with HIV
3:32
and AIDS in the nineteen eighties. Oh,
3:34
interesting. When the CDC and
3:36
the Reagan administration were still sort of
3:38
dudiously ignoring the aids epidemic
3:41
and --
3:41
Right. -- she established her own foundation
3:44
to reduce stigma around HIV
3:46
and AIDS this is back when it was controversial to
3:48
be like, wow, this this lady's sticking up for
3:50
people who are dying. Yeah. Tell me what a
3:52
what a weird thing for someone to
3:55
do.
3:55
Courageous radical, dangerous
3:58
question mark? Yeah. Should we dig in
4:00
on
4:00
some, like, a little touch
4:03
of 101 Elizabeth Taylor
4:05
bio stuff?
4:06
I like that you've you've made me feel weird about
4:08
this person already. We gotta know what the
4:10
weird tension is because the tension, Michael,
4:12
I don't wanna spoil it. Except I'm gonna
4:14
spoil
4:14
it. The tension is only gonna get tenser
4:16
and weirder.
4:17
Oh, good. Okay. So Elizabeth Taylor
4:19
was born in February nineteen
4:22
thirty two. To American
4:24
parents in London. Her
4:28
father owned and operated an art gallery
4:30
and her mother had it on Broadway
4:33
when she was younger and really
4:35
felt like she sort of missed an opportunity for
4:38
herself to continue her career path
4:40
enacting. So
4:41
we've got a Nepo baby on our hands. We've
4:44
Nepo baby.
4:45
Out of the current discourse, Elizabeth
4:47
Taylor moved with her family straight to
4:49
California at age seven.
4:53
And her mother immediately started
4:55
preparing her for what she saw
4:58
as sort of Elizabeth's inevitable
5:00
child start up. She was just like -- Oh, wow.
5:03
-- I have this kid. She is unbelievably,
5:05
strikingly beautiful even as a child.
5:08
I'm gonna make the most of it. So
5:11
Elizabeth was expected to be immaculately
5:13
dressed all the time In
5:16
case they ran into any power players
5:18
when they were out and about in LA -- Oh, god.
5:20
-- but also because that her mom was very
5:22
explicit with her about this that when she was a
5:24
star, this would be expected of her. You have to look
5:27
impeccable all the time. Holy shit.
5:29
So this was like preordained? Yes.
5:31
Age seven is when these conversations
5:33
are. She and her mom spent
5:36
hours every day working on
5:38
her look, her manners, her
5:40
posing. In
5:42
grade school, her mom talked
5:45
about Elizabeth having a job and her
5:47
job was to become a
5:48
star.
5:49
Oh my god. This is like bumming
5:51
me out so much. Oh, Michael,
5:54
it's
5:54
gonna get bleaker before it gets better.
5:56
I just
5:56
consider fame to be like form of abuse.
5:59
It's like upping
6:00
somebody for this. Like, you're gonna be scrutinized
6:03
for your looks, your whole life. It's just like,
6:05
oh, You
6:05
and I talk about being uncomfortable with our
6:07
level of whatever. I have never been
6:09
an Elizabeth Taylor. I will never be an Elizabeth
6:12
Taylor. This is like all we talk about.
6:14
Aubrey. Yeah. Got it on this
6:16
recording. And we're like, here's here's what
6:18
I'm feeling weird about this week. Here's everything
6:20
I'm saying no to because it makes me
6:22
uncomfortable Yeah. Totally weird.
6:25
Yeah. So her mother
6:27
spoke about Elizabeth's, quote
6:29
unquote, responsibility to the family
6:32
Uh-huh. As a breadwinner
6:34
before she turned ten. Oh
6:36
my god. She is
6:39
very young and is being sort of
6:41
piled on with all
6:42
of these adult responsibilities. She's
6:44
taught specific responses
6:47
to how to receive a compliment. She's
6:49
supposed to curtsy look down
6:52
and demurly thank the person
6:54
while she's not making eye contact with
6:56
them. Oh, a lot
6:58
to unpack there? How much time do we have?
7:02
What do we eat? How long is the episode gonna
7:04
be? Not only that, but her mother expected
7:07
her to practice her facial
7:09
expressions for that process
7:11
and responses to compliments in front
7:14
of a mirror. Oh
7:14
my god. So Elizabeth
7:16
did that every day.
7:17
Was she even acting at this point? Like,
7:19
what were people complimenting her on? Or was
7:21
this just prep? I think this was mostly prep
7:24
and also there is look in
7:26
a lot of Elizabeth Taylor
7:28
biographies, there are a bunch
7:30
of deeply fucking uncomfortable
7:32
descriptions where they're like she was a strikingly
7:35
beautiful eight year old and you're like, nope.
7:37
No. No. No. No. No. Yeah.
7:40
This is maybe not the time to mention this, but can
7:42
I can I look up a photo of her? When
7:44
she was a child? Yeah. Sure.
7:47
Go for
7:47
it. Elizabeth Taylor child.
7:50
Oh, you know what? The earliest one you can definitely
7:52
find is age twelve, she was in
7:54
National Velvet.
7:56
That's her first name. National. Fill
8:00
fit. She just looks
8:02
like a nice girl. She's got a dog
8:05
with in one of the photos, like a little tiny,
8:07
like, Wizard of Oz dog. It is
8:08
a really cute dog.
8:09
She looks so much older than twelve. Yeah.
8:12
So this is also sort of part of
8:14
her story a little bit. In
8:17
nineteen forty four at age twelve
8:20
is when she starred in National Velvet,
8:23
which was sort of the film that kick started
8:25
her career. It was a huge hit,
8:28
and it earned her a seven year
8:30
contract with MGM, which was one of
8:32
the most powerful studios at the
8:34
time. Oh, and this
8:35
part of the studio system where it's like you just have
8:37
to do what they tell you to do, basically. Yeah.
8:39
You sign on and then your career
8:41
is in their hands. Period. Right?
8:44
She at age twelve
8:46
starts earning a weekly salary
8:49
of seven hundred and fifty Taylor's. In
8:52
today's dollars, that's twelve
8:55
thousand seven hundred dollars ish
8:57
-- A week. -- a week. So she's
9:00
earning six hundred and sixty thousand
9:02
dollars a year just about --
9:04
Wow. -- and this is the point at which she
9:06
becomes the family bread or sort of officially.
9:08
That's
9:08
a lot of bread. That's a lot of bread. And she is a
9:10
middle schooler. Yeah. Jesus Christ. So she
9:12
never really has a childhood to
9:15
speak of. And by
9:17
the time she turns
9:20
fourteen, her mother
9:22
starts dressing her in much
9:24
tighter and much more revealing clothes.
9:28
And starts setting up photoshoots with
9:31
a brief to the photographer to shoot.
9:34
This fourteen year old seductively
9:37
and in a bathing
9:38
suit.
9:39
So it's like as soon as she has like boobs
9:41
and hips, they're like already being like
9:43
weaponized basically.
9:44
As soon as puberty hits, she
9:47
is being portrayed by her mother
9:49
--
9:49
Yeah. -- as like a teenage seductress.
9:53
It is then unsurprising that her first marriage
9:55
is at eighteen. As we mentioned, she
9:57
was married eight times to
9:59
seven different dudes. Mhmm. As
10:01
I sort of read about these relationships, many
10:04
of them were profoundly
10:07
and like explicitly abusive. God.
10:09
Some of those husbands were physically
10:11
abusive, most were verbally abusive,
10:15
almost all of them picked at
10:17
her body Oh. Richard Burton's
10:19
nickname for her was
10:20
tubby. Fuck off.
10:21
Another one of her husband's, there's this sort
10:23
of anecdote in the book. She talks about where
10:26
another one of her husband thought it would be funny
10:28
to introduce her to his friends
10:30
for the first time under a different name.
10:32
And one of the friends says to her face,
10:35
oh my gosh, you look like a heavier Elizabeth
10:37
Taylor. Jesus
10:38
Christ. And then her husband starts
10:40
laughing and says, I told
10:43
you you were getting fat and smacks
10:45
her ass. Bad news
10:47
all the way down. And on top of all that, she's like a working
10:49
actor. Right? So agents and casting
10:52
directors and everybody ever is
10:53
just, like, openly giving her notes on her
10:55
body and her face and how she should look different
10:57
and all that kind of stuff.
10:58
Right. I wanted to talk a little bit about her marriage to
11:00
her first husband who is Conrad
11:02
Hilton junior, the heir
11:05
to the Hilton
11:05
fortune. Oh,
11:06
he's like a Hilton Hilton. This was sort of seen
11:08
as a mutually beneficial relationship
11:11
at the time for sort of social climbing
11:13
purposes. Okay. Elizabeth Taylor was
11:15
a young promising actor who didn't really
11:17
have a foot in the door with high
11:19
society. The Hilton family at
11:21
this point is frustrated with being seen as sort of
11:23
quote unquote new money and they think a Hollywood
11:25
marriage will help them
11:27
be seen as more established. They promised
11:29
we're rich, but people think we're the wrong kind
11:31
of rich.
11:31
Yeah. Totally. What a shame.
11:34
What
11:34
you must have been through? At the time that they get
11:36
married, Elizabeth's mom is
11:38
aware that Nikki Hilton was
11:40
very big into drinking and gambling --
11:42
Mhmm. -- and
11:43
it was much more important to her that
11:45
the Hilton's had sort of the wealth and
11:48
cache that she was
11:49
after. I love that this is the time in Hollywood
11:51
where it was like, Yeah. The fact that he's like a
11:53
huge piece of shit, it's like, is that really that big of
11:55
a
11:55
deal, but she gained
11:57
two pounds. Look at the car just did it
11:59
last year. It's like the moral standards
12:02
to men and women are just completely upside
12:05
down. So over time,
12:07
and not even over that much time, like, in a
12:09
matter of months, Nicki
12:11
Hilton's, like, extremely dark
12:14
side sort of starts to come out in
12:16
their relationship. He
12:18
becomes increasingly just
12:21
furious that he is being
12:23
overshadowed by his young
12:25
wife. Oh god. That theory
12:28
starts to manifest more and more
12:30
as, like, extraordinarily brutal
12:32
physical abuse. I'm not gonna tell the details
12:35
of this
12:35
one, but at one point,
12:37
she becomes pregnant and he
12:39
becomes so abusive that he causes
12:41
a miscarriage for
12:43
her. Oh, fuck. Yeah.
12:45
She leaves immediately. She
12:47
calls her mom and is like, I'm
12:49
out of
12:50
there. I can't do it.
12:51
And her mom tells her that she should have
12:54
tried harder to stay together. Jesus
12:57
Christ.
12:57
It's grotesque. As soon
13:00
as they break up, Nikki
13:02
Hilton starts going to the press and
13:04
talking like horrific shit about
13:06
her. Oh, of course, this piece
13:09
of shit move, where you're like trying to
13:11
preempt any of the rumors and you're
13:13
like, well, it's difficult and crazy. She's
13:15
gonna say stuff I used a hitter.
13:17
It's not even that, Mike. Horst. At one
13:19
point, she's photographed at different points
13:21
with different men, including,
13:23
like, she a number of, like, good friends throughout
13:25
her life who are, like, gay men
13:27
who are sort of famously closeted gay
13:29
men. Right? Oh,
13:30
Rock Hudson. That's, like, the only other I know about
13:32
her. Brock Hudson is a good friend of hers. Montgomery
13:34
Cliff is a good friend of hers. Like, there are a number
13:37
of these. Right? So she's, like, photographed
13:39
with men from time to time. And
13:42
Nikki Hilton goes to the press and says,
13:44
quote, every man should have
13:46
the chance to sleep with Elizabeth Taylor's.
13:48
And at this rate, every man will.
13:51
Oh, he says that publicly. He says
13:53
it to he calls a reporter
13:55
to tell a reporter
13:57
this, and then that reporter is like, Good
13:59
point and print it. He's like, look,
14:01
I have the most horrifying zinger
14:04
you've ever heard. Let me tell
14:06
you the most fucked up shit. Anyone
14:08
has ever said about their ex wife, please put
14:10
this in the
14:10
newspaper. The other relationship that
14:12
seems worth naming here if we're doing
14:15
like a highlights real is the one man
14:17
that she married twice, Richard Burton
14:19
-- Right. -- whom she met while
14:21
she was filming Anthony and Cleopatra,
14:24
It made big headlines in part because
14:27
both of them were married to other people at
14:29
the
14:29
time, and they were filming a movie about
14:31
a scandalous affair. So
14:33
they were like the OG Brad and Angelina.
14:35
This
14:35
is there mister and missus Smith. Yes. Absolutely.
14:38
I remember when that happened. Mhmm. I was
14:40
like, why is everybody speculating? These people
14:42
are clearly just friends. Everything.
14:45
Michael Hobbs on the right side of history. I
14:47
know. I really was not included
14:49
into this. I was like, you know what I mean? Everybody's
14:52
just stopped talking You're extremely
14:54
attractive people spend their time together.
14:58
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor
15:00
have a famously incredibly chaotic
15:03
relationship. He repeatedly
15:06
told her, quote, you're much too fat
15:08
love, but you do have a pretty little face.
15:10
That's like a neg. He's like nagging
15:12
her. He's mystery, the pickup artist. Just
15:14
gotta top up. The criticism about her
15:16
appearance is not just
15:19
coming from her husband's and her relationships.
15:22
It also shows up in the press a
15:25
lot and much earlier in
15:27
her career than I would have anticipated. Mhmm.
15:29
One critic famously described
15:32
Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra as, quote,
15:34
overweight, overpaid, and under
15:37
talented. That's
15:39
the cultural script. About
15:42
Elizabeth Taylor at this point is like,
15:44
she's unbelievably beautiful and
15:46
also what a piece of
15:47
shit. I'm looking at photos of this. On
15:50
Google now. And, like, she has, like, an hourglass
15:52
figure. She's, like, extremely conventionally
15:54
attractive. Right. Her eye her eye shadow is
15:56
deranged, but don't think that's her that that's
15:58
her. The
15:58
makeup is bananas. The hair
16:01
trying to give a white lady black hair is
16:03
-- Yeah.
16:04
-- venture all its
16:05
own. I have other comments. The showman
16:07
any so many. We're
16:09
gonna talk about her marriage
16:12
to US senator John Warner.
16:15
They got married in nineteen seventy
16:17
six. She was forty five. Mhmm. She
16:19
is getting more and more and more
16:21
scrutiny for her body because she is
16:24
back in the public eye in a new way.
16:26
And she's in her mid forties, and she looks
16:28
like a woman in her mid forties. Right?
16:31
She's like, put on little bit of weight. She looks a little
16:33
bit older. After her
16:36
marriage to the senator, she checks herself
16:38
into Betty Ford for a dependency on
16:40
pain pills. Which is where she
16:42
meets her final husband, Larry Fortinski.
16:45
Mhmm. Later in her life is actually where
16:47
the bulk of her wealth comes from. That's when
16:49
she starts endorsing products including
16:52
first a perfume called
16:54
passion. Okay. And then
16:57
white diamonds. White diamonds.
17:00
She was just this lady on TV talking
17:03
about
17:03
perfumes. That's like when I was a kid,
17:06
that's like all I knew of her.
17:07
Same here. Yeah. Okay. Are you
17:09
ready to watch White Diamonds? Wait, really?
17:11
I sent you the link. Dude, yes. Yes. Yes.
17:17
Oh, the editing is like MTV cribs.
17:25
What's the point of music? Not
17:32
so bad. Alright. Thanks. You've
17:36
always brought me nuts. Oh, man.
17:39
White diamond including fragrance
17:41
from a Elizabeth Taylor. These
17:43
have always brought me luck. Oh my god.
17:45
I just got what's like the
17:48
good version of a heart attack? I just got
17:50
something that is like so much
17:52
nostalgia. Isn't it wild? I
17:54
have seen this ad like four hundred times
17:56
and have not thought about it
17:57
since. It sort of, like, activated
17:59
the same part of my brain as, like, the
18:01
Vianeta commercial.
18:03
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or they're all getting Vianeta. Yes.
18:06
TBS. I am like,
18:08
watching this ad, I am homesick with,
18:11
like, the chicken pox -- Yep. -- in, like, elementary
18:13
school and I'm watching TV at like eleven
18:16
AM. Yeah. Where they have the weirdest shows
18:18
and the weirdest ads and like this
18:20
is just always on. That is
18:22
my entry point like, sort of
18:24
chronologically in my life to Elizabeth
18:26
Taylor's stuff. Right? Yeah. Is
18:28
seeing her as this, like, sort
18:31
of coded as glamorous lady
18:33
in eighties terms, which means a wild
18:35
look. And also as a young person, you never
18:38
see like quote unquote, glamorous people who
18:40
are older than, like, twenty three. Certainly not
18:42
in the eighties. You're
18:43
like, what is this woman in,
18:45
like, a normal age being on television?
18:47
Yeah. And during this sort
18:49
of cash grab era, during
18:51
this extremely profitable era
18:54
for Elizabeth Taylor is when she
18:56
writes her diet
18:57
book, Elizabeth takes off. We've
18:59
circled back to the title of the show. This is where
19:01
we would put our first ad break. If we were like
19:04
an individual and sell some
19:05
mattresses. So I just sent you the cover
19:07
of Elizabeth takes off, and I would love
19:09
it if you would describe it. Oh.
19:13
This photo is amazing. Tell
19:16
me what you are seeing. Okay.
19:18
This is like a super glamour shot.
19:20
It looks like a marketing image
19:23
for actual for the place
19:25
glamour shots. For the service
19:27
of glamour
19:28
shop. It's the, like, it's the,
19:30
like, target photo studio, like,
19:32
poster that they have outside. Yes.
19:35
And yes, as Elizabeth takes off
19:37
on weight gain, weight loss, self image,
19:40
and self esteem by Elizabeth Taylor.
19:42
And the whole thing is just
19:44
like super, like,
19:46
old money glamour lady. She has, like,
19:49
pearl earrings, the size of, like, golf
19:51
balls. And then her
19:53
makeup, she's like airbrushed, but like
19:55
in the pre Photoshop
19:57
era. Uh-huh. So she just looks like
19:59
sort of blurry and like
20:02
washed out. She really does. She looks
20:04
gorgeous in an extremely eighties
20:06
way. Those giant pearl earrings
20:09
are surrounded by a huge gold
20:12
brain -- Yeah. Yeah. -- that big,
20:14
like, clip on earring kind of
20:16
look from the eighties. She's wearing
20:18
this, like, bubblegum pink
20:20
kind of lipstick. She's
20:22
got this, like, sweetheart neckline
20:25
dress that is white. She looks like resplendant.
20:28
And then the background looks like a driver's
20:31
license background. It's just like flat
20:33
blue in a way that it's really funny
20:35
to me. So so she looks like amazing
20:37
on
20:37
this. And it's totally like, buy
20:39
this book from a movie star. So
20:41
this is like end of career. This is like her
20:44
looking back on her career and her
20:46
legacy. This is not a mid career book.
20:48
This is a retrospective. Right.
20:51
The Author here is Elizabeth
20:54
Taylor, but this is a time when
20:56
her top priorities are, like, making money
20:58
and doing her advocacy work. Right. So
21:00
it is ghostwritten. It was written by a
21:02
writer named Gene Scoville -- Okay.
21:04
-- According to the Washington Post, this is as reported
21:07
by the Washington Post. Scoville also
21:09
ghost route for Ginger
21:11
Rogers, Tim Conway, and
21:13
Kitty Ducocas among others.
21:15
Dude, I I was a kid in dreaming about
21:17
becoming a writer, I dreamed of two things.
21:20
One becoming a ghost writer for celebrity
21:22
memoirs and two, writing novelizations
21:24
of movies. Those were like my those
21:26
were like my peak pinnacle goals
21:29
as a
21:29
writer. My when I was a kid and I dreamed
21:31
of being a writer, I dreamed of being
21:33
a speech writer -- Oh, yeah. -- that I
21:35
realized, that's, like, mostly not
21:38
a job. And when it is, you have
21:40
to be, like, like, on a
21:42
presidential campaign or some, like,
21:44
absolutely hellacious
21:46
scenario that I absolutely don't ever
21:48
wanna be part of. And I was like, I used
21:50
to do, like, speech writing background
21:53
stuff for, like, various UN people. And
21:55
there would be times in, like, they would be having a debate
21:57
where they were, like, fighting each other about something
22:00
and I would be writing both of their speeches.
22:02
They're like, what my colleague
22:04
doesn't understand like they're
22:06
both feeding me
22:07
lines.
22:07
It's like your version of, like, a stuffed animal
22:10
tea party.
22:12
Just like acting out, like, the Lincoln Douglas
22:14
debates. So
22:18
when Elizabeth Taylor releases this
22:20
book, her press, like
22:22
the quotes that she gives to the press around
22:25
this book, are so fucking rough.
22:27
It is a real indication
22:30
of how much shit
22:32
people talked about her body
22:34
throughout her career, and
22:37
also how effectively
22:39
that trained her at talking about
22:41
other people's bodies in those same terms
22:44
too. Right. So
22:46
in the Washington Post piece, they
22:48
say, quote, she doesn't buy the theory
22:50
that as people age, a bit more
22:53
weight fills out their faces attractively. Oh,
22:55
I think that's bunk. I think that's
22:58
a cop out is what she says about
23:00
that. And she talks
23:02
throughout this book almost constantly
23:05
about cop outs. She imagines these
23:08
whole narratives that people
23:10
who are fatter than her have
23:13
about their bodies, and she
23:15
summarily dismisses all
23:17
of them as excuses or
23:19
cop outs.
23:20
It's like a portrait of how
23:23
bias gets reproduced. Right? Because
23:25
it's not only adopted by the majority, it's
23:27
also adopted by minorities themselves.
23:29
So you have her, like, internalizing all this,
23:32
like, anti fat shit. Like, the the
23:34
terrible treatment that she's gotten, she's
23:36
like, yes, you're correct about
23:37
that. Like, you were You are right to
23:39
criticize me for my looks and now she's like criticizing
23:41
other people. It's really bleak. I think it's
23:44
also like to your point in addition to
23:46
sort of showing how bias operates, It also
23:48
shows how abuse operates, which is that we,
23:50
like, experience abuse and take it on,
23:53
and that causes a number of, like, really
23:56
hard and horrific outcomes in our lives.
23:58
Right. And one of those hard and horrific outcomes
24:00
is that it trains us to be abusive toward
24:03
other
24:03
people. Ultimately, it's like, well, if I hadn't been
24:05
so fat, they wouldn't have said those horrible things
24:07
to me. Right. Absolutely. That's just another
24:09
way of defending that treatment, which is totally
24:11
indefensible.
24:12
That is essentially the thesis of
24:14
this book. Oh
24:15
god. Jesus Christ.
24:17
The hard thing is, like, I hear what you're saying about,
24:19
like, part of how bias operates
24:21
is that people on the downside of power take it
24:23
in too. Elizabeth Taylor
24:26
is not at any point in this book someone
24:28
that I would consider to be a fat person. But
24:30
all of the photos that I have seen of her and all of
24:32
the everything, Yeah. Yeah. She is not
24:34
on the downside of power, but she is
24:36
in an industry where
24:38
her body and sort of scrutiny of
24:40
her body is gonna happen at a
24:42
fever pitch and that will make her feel
24:44
like she is on the downside of power.
24:47
Right. Even though she remains this like
24:49
famously beautiful, famously wealthy,
24:51
famously
24:51
everything, woman. Right? It is kind of fascinating.
24:54
Right? Because by Hollywood standards, I
24:56
guess, she, like, is fat, but
24:58
by literally any other
25:00
standard. Yeah. She isn't. It's really fucking
25:02
weird, and it mirrors I've had, at this
25:04
point, a number of conversations with
25:06
people who are also who are like actors
25:08
now, who will sort
25:10
of toe a really careful line
25:13
in their conversations with me and be like,
25:15
I understand that I'm not a fat
25:17
person. And I also
25:20
understand that I'm in an industry where
25:22
I'm being treated like a fat
25:24
person. It is kind of fascinating to
25:26
me that, like, you've become a
25:28
person whose celebrities come to when
25:30
they feel weird about their
25:31
bodies. Not that men's, but, like,
25:33
there have been a there have been a handful and
25:36
I'm like, this is a part of this work
25:38
that I did not
25:38
anticipate. I'm a famous person with feelings.
25:41
Let me let me call Aubrey. Yeah. Totally agree.
25:43
To tell me. Totally.
25:45
So the book is
25:47
divided into sections, and
25:49
we're just gonna take it section by section.
25:52
Section one is titled How
25:55
It Happened A Personal View.
25:58
The It Happened Here is
26:00
how she gained weight. This
26:02
entire section that is roughly
26:05
a hundred pages of this book is
26:07
just a little bit of her
26:09
life story mostly focused on her adult
26:12
life
26:13
through the lens of, here's
26:15
how I allowed it to happen that at
26:17
one point, I
26:18
was sadder
26:19
than at another point. This is what we were talking
26:21
about last episode about how, like, fat people
26:23
are called upon to explain the
26:25
origin stories of their
26:26
bodies.
26:27
Yeah. Explain it. Right. Write a book.
26:29
I was
26:29
like, you're calling me fat, and I'm gonna tell you
26:31
how I got this way. Yeah. Totally. And you're
26:33
right. Yeah. You're right, but you shouldn't have
26:35
said it is sort of -- Right. -- the
26:37
vibe. Right? The narrative
26:40
that she offers of her own body feels
26:42
really to me like an encapsulation of
26:44
like very eighties sort of thinking
26:46
about bodies and diets, which
26:49
is that for her
26:51
her weight gain is both a reflection of
26:54
her own low self worth and
26:56
a cause of that low self
26:58
worth. Okay. She
26:59
says at one point, quote, in my late forties,
27:01
weight gain became a primary factor
27:03
in my feelings of self worth. And
27:05
when I finally had the courage to do something
27:08
about those added pounds, I was forced to acknowledge
27:10
that loss of pride played
27:12
a large role in the reasons I put on weight
27:14
in the first place. So she's sort
27:16
of describing this, like, symbiotic relationship
27:19
that again
27:20
feels not dissimilar from, like, what you
27:22
would have heard at Weight Watchers meetings at
27:25
this time. It's like basically everyone
27:27
was terrible to me and I started to
27:29
internalize that criticism
27:31
where it became part of my self worth and
27:33
the solution to that is I should have lost weight.
27:36
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. He
27:39
also talks at this point about how this
27:41
wasn't just happening in the press. It
27:43
was also happening in her personal relationships.
27:45
Mhmm. And she brings
27:47
this up in sort of a sunny chirpy way
27:50
as part of the narrative. And
27:52
I don't find it sunny or chirpy.
27:54
I'm sending you a quote about
27:56
her
27:56
friends. She says, recently, some
27:59
of my friends have told me how flabbergasted they
28:01
were by the amount of food I could pack away.
28:03
The awful part is, I wasn't even aware of
28:05
some of my gastronomic feats. It
28:08
makes me wonder if it might motivate fatties
28:10
to diet if someone filmed
28:12
every meal and snack they ate in
28:14
a day. The subject could then
28:16
watch the movie and see firsthand just
28:19
how much she was consuming. So
28:22
what we're learning here is that Brian
28:24
Wonsink plagiarized this by
28:27
trying to install cameras and have
28:29
tears and show them how badly to come.
28:32
I forgot about that. Particular wrinkle
28:34
in the Brian Wansink Legacy. Thank you
28:36
for that reminder. Too
28:37
bad this is published before Ted Talk. She could
28:39
have given one with that little microphone. But, like,
28:41
again, this has like one of sort of countless
28:43
quotes in this book where you're like, oh my god,
28:45
your friends are horrific. Yeah. Why
28:48
are your friends telling you as soon as you
28:50
become thin again that
28:52
they're
28:52
like, a man, you were really packing it in.
28:54
It was gross. Right? Is essentially
28:56
Yeah. What this quote is.
28:58
Does she use the term fatties
29:01
throughout the book? A lot. She uses
29:03
it a lot. She also sort
29:05
of talks about how this behavior shows
29:07
up in the entertainment industry. Mhmm.
29:10
There are a couple of longer quotes in this episode.
29:12
This is one of them I think it's worth I'm
29:14
like, I don't actually want to paraphrase it
29:17
because the way she writes it is so
29:20
It would sound like I was
29:21
exaggerating. Okay. So I just
29:23
sent it to you. She says, not so long
29:25
ago, I was at a benefit with Joan Rivers
29:27
who had been foremost among the entertainers who
29:29
made my weight the butt of their jokes. When
29:31
I was ready to leave, she took my hand
29:33
saying, Elizabeth, you look wonderful. I
29:36
just want you to think about why I said
29:38
those things when you were heavy. Okay,
29:40
I'll certainly do that. I answered and tried to
29:42
get away. She held onto my hand and repeated,
29:44
no, no, I mean it. I want you to
29:47
really think about why I did it. I didn't
29:49
have to think about it. I knew what she was implying.
29:51
She was taking credit for my losing weight.
29:53
But don't think you can justify cruelty
29:55
and turn it around into a
29:57
benediction. Jokes were made about my
29:59
weight because they got laughs, period. Jones
30:01
Rivers, in this particular anecdote,
30:03
popping out of a fucking trash can to be
30:05
like, you're welcome for making fun
30:07
of you because now you're
30:08
thin. Yeah. Like making fun of you to a bunch of other
30:11
people, like making fun of you publicly to like
30:13
humiliate you. Yeah. You're
30:14
welcome, bestie. That's
30:16
terrible. There is also a
30:18
moment at the time
30:20
that she is at her fattest. She
30:23
gets a chicken bone stuck in her throat
30:26
and has to be rushed to the hospital to
30:28
have it surgically
30:29
removed. Wow. This story
30:31
starts to make the rounds --
30:32
Right. -- and it makes an appearance on Saturday
30:35
night live. Of course. And we're gonna
30:37
watch a little clip at all. Fucking
30:40
hell you're gonna make me watch fucking soon.
30:42
Can I tell you this episode musical
30:45
guest, the Grateful Dead?
30:48
What That's how seventy's it is.
30:50
They're playing Casey
30:51
Jones. I didn't
30:52
even know that was like a thing. didn't know they were ever
30:54
famous enough to be on SNL.
30:55
Oh, for sure. For sure. For sure.
30:57
Buck Henry was the fucking host.
31:00
It's wild. This
31:03
cheap politician John Warner's wife is
31:05
none other than perhaps the greatest actress that's
31:07
ever lived, and whose face has set the standard
31:09
for screen beauty for so many
31:11
years. Of course, I'm talking about Elizabeth
31:13
Taylor.
31:13
Oh, god. Liz. Yeah.
31:15
Welcome
31:15
to celebrity porn. It's
31:22
John Pelosi. Thanks,
31:24
Bill. It's It's so nice to be here.
31:27
Liz, how does it feel to be? Miss is almost
31:29
too soon to tell senator elect Warner
31:32
anyway. Very
31:34
exciting, Bill. I'm looking forward to becoming
31:36
a Washington hostess. Let's
31:39
tell me this. We heard that You
31:41
promised if John won the election that you would
31:43
go on a diet from your present weight of a hundred and
31:45
sixty seven pounds down to your Butterfield
31:48
eight weight of a hundred and twenty. Is that true?
31:51
That's right. I'm gonna start in a
31:53
strict diet, nothing but chicken. That
31:56
sounds great, Liz. But to me, I don't care how much,
31:58
Lloyd, just so you're cheeks don't pop up over
32:00
those beautiful violet eyes that I've
32:02
been in the woods since National velvet. Yeah.
32:05
Mhmm. Twelve. Thank
32:12
you. Thank
32:16
you.
32:18
Could we be done now? We're done. That
32:22
was excruciating. Right. It's
32:23
not there's not even really a joke. No.
32:25
There's not a joke. That's what my notes say.
32:28
She's being played by a man -- Yep. --
32:30
and he's fat. Yep. Like the joke is that
32:32
she chokes on a chicken bone, I guess, but like that's
32:34
not even like not even a joke. It's just a thing
32:36
that happened. Yeah. You're just acting
32:38
out like a factual
32:39
thing, but you're like laughing at it. It's
32:41
not funny. There's not a set up there's not a punchline.
32:44
There's nothing that is recognizable as a joke
32:46
structure.
32:46
That's really bad.
32:47
There's not even enough plot to
32:49
recognize it as any kind of sketch structure.
32:52
Right? It's also fucked up because you know
32:54
she must have known when
32:56
she was choking on the chicken bone
32:58
that like this would be a a joke. I'm
33:00
sure she did. Right? There's like this whole
33:02
circular thing of like anything humiliating that
33:04
happens to you. You're like, oh, great. This
33:07
is gonna be a story and like because
33:09
there's been decades of speculation
33:11
about my weight. And, like, I now have a
33:13
sort of injury that is, like, in some way
33:15
adjacent to food.
33:16
Yeah. Like, oh, good. Months of discourse.
33:19
Yep. About this, like, really awful thing that's
33:21
happening to me. So in the
33:23
book, she writes, quote, naturally,
33:26
I've been asked if I saw the Saturday Night
33:28
Live television skit that featured
33:30
a coal eyed John Bellucci
33:33
dressed in drag doing a takeoff
33:35
on the accident. Yes, I
33:37
saw it and I laughed. Oh. He was
33:39
very funny. Oh. How
33:41
ironic and sad that that gifted
33:44
young man satisfied my
33:46
excesses and then died of
33:48
his
33:49
own. Oh my god. She's
33:51
just like reproducing it
33:53
works parts of that fucking
33:54
sketch. She's writing this after
33:57
being in treatment for her own addictions,
33:59
and then it's like, I'm a dunk on this guy for
34:01
doing the same
34:01
thing. Like, it's just like Wow.
34:04
You really had the upper hand there
34:06
and
34:06
you just, like,
34:07
happily threw it away. You keep showing
34:09
me media and I feel bad for her, and then
34:11
you read me quotes from the book, and then I stop
34:13
feeling bad for
34:14
her. It's a real roller coaster.
34:16
The whole book is a real roller
34:19
coaster. Like,
34:20
these terrible things happened, but it also made you
34:22
like kind of a terrible person. Like, I don't
34:24
know what to do with
34:25
that. She is all over
34:27
the place, and like I say, like a really
34:30
complicated character heading in a bunch
34:32
of different directions. She
34:35
in this section often describes sort
34:37
of her own body in
34:39
the same breath that she describes
34:41
her theory of fat people's
34:43
failing's.
34:44
Okay. So I'm gonna send you
34:47
a little quote. It says,
34:49
for a long time, I closed my eyes and
34:51
saw what I wanted to see. I fooled
34:53
myself by looking at my body with what
34:55
I call obese eyes. I
34:58
truly think that some fat people
35:00
perceive themselves with the same storted
35:02
image as anorexics. No
35:05
matter how skeletal the latter see
35:07
themselves as fat, I admit
35:09
I could never totally deceive myself.
35:11
Oh, so wait,
35:14
she's saying, like, I thought I
35:16
was thin but I was actually fat and that's
35:18
bad. Is that what she's saying? Right. And then
35:20
she's comparing that to
35:22
her own definition of Anorexia, which I think
35:25
she's just talking about body dysmorpia, which is different
35:27
than Anorexia. Right. But, like, Yeah.
35:29
She's essentially just like, I
35:31
thought I was thin even though I was
35:34
so fat. That's how fat
35:36
people think about themselves. And I'm like, no, that
35:38
was you. Yeah. Sure. You're literally
35:40
not fat.
35:41
That's why you didn't think of yourself as fat.
35:44
But also like this whole God. This
35:46
whole thing is so dark. Totally.
35:48
How dare I felt okay about my
35:50
body? And also like She is
35:52
then seamlessly segueing into
35:55
a proposal of, like, a world view
35:58
that's just like -- Right. Here's what I did,
36:00
and that's the real problem with fat
36:02
people. And you're like, wait a minute. Wait a minute. You made like
36:04
seven leaves. Go back. She's generalizing
36:07
to other fat people from her own experience, which
36:09
is that of like a movie star. Yes.
36:11
Totally. Like, kind of by definition,
36:13
there's only like twenty of those in the
36:15
country at this time. So like most
36:17
people are not being brutally
36:20
scrutinized by the media because most people
36:22
are not movie
36:22
stars.
36:23
Just like you, I am no long longer
36:25
haunted by my images in
36:27
national town.
36:28
Yeah. It's like when I was on the cover of
36:30
a magazine. Elizabeth -- Yeah.
36:32
-- so that's Section one is essentially
36:34
like she is both sort of like defending
36:37
her body and telling all of these absolute
36:39
horror stories about how she's been treated.
36:42
And then again in the same breath
36:44
is turning it around and going. And
36:46
here's how you should think about fat
36:48
people.
36:49
God, we're only a quarter of the way through this
36:51
book Jesus Christ. This is a bizmo.
36:53
It's so
36:54
busy. So bleak,
36:56
dude. This goes into the same category as
36:58
many episodes that you and I have tried where I was, like, just
37:00
do a diet book and it'll be Elizabeth Taylor's diet
37:02
book and it'll be fun and frivolous and busy
37:05
and fluffy and it's not.
37:06
Remember how I was gonna do Minnesota starvation
37:08
experiment? And then I was like, Aubrey, I hand.
37:10
Yeah. Because this is worse.
37:13
This is so bad. Okay.
37:15
We're now heading into section
37:17
two, which is called gearing
37:20
up for taking off some
37:22
favorite tips. Okay. Now we're
37:24
into weight loss stuff. Okay. Now -- Yep. -- this feels
37:26
like it could be slightly happier. Have
37:29
you listened to our show? Okay. Fair.
37:31
This is where she talks less about
37:33
herself and more about other people and
37:35
more about like the mechanics of like
37:37
how it's done. Right? Okay. One
37:39
of her diet tips is that you should make
37:41
bribes. What? Incentivizing weight
37:44
loss. This is a thing that comes up for a lot of dieters,
37:46
I will say, as a kid, I
37:48
heard from a number of adults that I should, like,
37:51
get myself closed, that I really wanted,
37:53
that were, like, a size too small and
37:55
that would be like my motivation.
37:57
Oh, we're like you put a photo of yourself
37:59
on the fridge being thinner and then
38:01
you like, whoa. Eat the yogurt or
38:02
whatever. Well, that is also one of her tips.
38:04
She actually suggests at what point she's like,
38:06
I did that for me. I put my the photo of my
38:09
fat itself up on the fridge. And then
38:11
she's like, for you, I'd suggest using a
38:13
photo of yourself and not me. And I'm like, Elizabeth,
38:15
who was gonna use a photo of
38:17
you? That'd be so weird to have a photo
38:19
of Elizabeth
38:20
Taylor on your fridge. So she talks about
38:22
the importance of quote unquote making bribes.
38:25
And then she tells this
38:28
horrificly gremlin anecdote
38:30
that she frames up as like I did
38:32
a good
38:33
deed. Let me tell you about a young woman
38:35
I met couple years ago. She was one of the most
38:37
appealing girls I've ever known with fair
38:39
hair, blue eyed good looks. She was
38:41
bright, vibrant, and intelligent. She was
38:43
also obese. She told me she was getting
38:45
married in six months and was trying to lose weight.
38:48
Although I normally don't go around poking
38:50
my nose into other people's business, There are,
38:52
as you know by now, occasions where I can't
38:54
keep from interfering. On impulse,
38:56
I handed this girl a mimeographed copy
38:58
of my diet and said, follow this.
39:00
And if you lose fifty pounds, I'll buy
39:02
your wedding dress. You should have seen the expression
39:05
on her face. She took diet home
39:07
with her and for few weeks she was afraid to
39:09
begin. She had been trying to slim down since
39:11
she was a child. Her parents had taken her to
39:13
nutritionists and clinics and special summer camps
39:15
until she just couldn't bear to even hear
39:17
the word diet. She might never have started
39:20
mine had her fiance not stepped
39:22
in. He told her at least
39:24
to give it a try. She did. Later,
39:26
she told me it was the first time in her life
39:28
she had actually enjoyed eating well on a
39:30
weight reduction plan. By the time her wedding
39:33
day rolled around, she'd lost forty five
39:35
pounds. I still bought the dress. I
39:37
can't say that the promise of the dress alone
39:39
did the trick, but rewards do
39:41
help. It's somebody
39:43
who's like tried losing weight her whole life
39:45
and like nothing has worked, but here's my
39:47
dumb celebrity plan. And
39:50
also, like, thank god her husband told
39:53
her to lose weight before the
39:55
wedding. Right. And also, trap.
39:57
Elizabeth
39:58
Taylor carrying around
40:01
copies of her diet for
40:05
just such a moment. On the
40:07
off chance a fat person says anything
40:10
in my
40:10
presence. But can't you try this piece
40:12
of paper? Right. And that is like I took care
40:14
of a major wedding expense for this
40:16
person By essentially, like,
40:19
coercing them into
40:20
dieting.
40:21
Yeah. The other version of this story
40:23
is, like, I either gave somebody
40:25
an eating disorder made their existing eating
40:27
disorder
40:27
worse, you're welcome. The best
40:29
thing about being rich is loarding money
40:31
over people and making them do things for you.
40:33
Like a train seal. It's wild to me
40:35
that this is presented as, like, entirely
40:38
unbidding good feedback where she was
40:40
like, she really liked the night. We're like, what
40:42
did you think she
40:43
was eighty? Yeah. What in dresses
40:45
are expensive? Are you ready for another diet tip?
40:47
No. But okay. Okay.
40:49
Well, you're right not to be ready because the
40:51
next diet tip is use threat and
40:53
shame. Oh god. Of course.
40:56
Of course. She talks about how
40:58
you also need to use negative incentives
41:01
like a husband who said this
41:03
to his wife who only is for,
41:05
quote, I always play the terrible husband on
41:07
this show. Darling,
41:10
I know I can't keep nagging you about
41:12
your eating habits. So I've decided this
41:14
will be my last word. The
41:17
day your weight goes higher than your
41:19
IQ, I'm leaving.
41:21
Dude, the average IQ
41:25
by definition is one hundred.
41:27
Yep. So unless your wife is like,
41:29
hella super
41:30
genius, this is a fucked up thing just
41:32
I mean, it's
41:33
fucked up thing to say regardless. It's a fucked up thing to say regardless still. You're
41:35
comparing two famously
41:38
fraught garbage measures IQ
41:40
and
41:40
weight. Right.
41:41
I wanna do a Eugenics twice in this
41:43
conversation. I want a wife that's thinner
41:46
than she is smart. Usually,
41:51
that trade off is not this explicit. She
41:55
also talks about sort of another
41:57
dieting tip of hers being that you should
41:59
write down everything you
42:01
eat, but that you shouldn't
42:04
be weird about it. Socially, so you
42:06
should drive obsessive about writing it down.
42:08
But, quote, when you're dieting, be
42:10
discreet. You don't have to report
42:12
to your acquaintances as though they were the commanding
42:15
officers of your great war against
42:17
fat, even your most supportive
42:19
friends can become bored look,
42:22
I don't disagree.
42:23
Right? Like, talking about diets is profoundly
42:25
boring most of the time -- Yes. --
42:27
with people who are on diets. And
42:30
also, she's fully like
42:32
being neurotic, but don't let other people know that
42:34
you're being totally
42:35
neurotic. It's like the French woman don't get fat
42:37
thing where it's like, have a secret eating disorder.
42:39
Yeah. Like, don't tell people how
42:41
much you are fixating
42:43
on your physical appearance and your diet.
42:46
She talks about this whole thing of
42:48
being like, don't let on.
42:51
And like, you know, your friends might get bored.
42:53
And then she immediately turns
42:56
around and writes this.
42:58
Eventually, I learned to take an ornery
43:00
kind of pleasure in denying myself
43:02
in the midst of plenty. If you're
43:04
on a diet and doing well, rub it
43:06
in. Be outrageously virtuous
43:09
and let your exaggerated behavior
43:11
act as a Shield. Pass
43:13
up the wrong foods as if they were
43:15
stepping stones to hell and
43:17
let the no thank yous fall
43:20
like rain. So, like,
43:22
ostentatiously. Be like,
43:24
no, I'm not having a brownie. Yes.
43:27
This could have been a quote that we could have used
43:29
in our last episode where we talked about sort
43:31
of like, I don't like gaming weight, but don't treat fat
43:33
people differently. This feels like
43:36
a great example of, like, be discreet about your
43:38
diet, but also make sure everyone else hurts
43:40
because you're doing so well.
43:42
Another hallmark of these, like, self help books is
43:44
just totally contradictory advice. Yeah.
43:46
Just like back to back. Her next diet tip
43:48
is don't count calories,
43:51
reasonable stuff, which sounds Queen,
43:53
like a really good idea, but
43:55
then she explains her reasons
43:57
why. I sent you a quote.
43:58
Oh, no. I hate it when I see little dots that
44:00
go out.
44:02
I'm really glad that I've given you some
44:04
Pavlovian conditioning to be
44:06
afraid of what I text. Or
44:08
DMU.
44:10
Like, you're absolutely fucked up. She
44:13
says, it's too easy to become
44:15
fixated on calories Too tempting
44:17
to say to yourself, I can have twenty potato
44:19
chips for two hundred and thirty calories or
44:21
six ounces of chicken for three hundred and ten
44:23
calories, and then go for the potato chips.
44:25
That's no way to lose weight. If you must know
44:28
the number of calories you'll be getting on my
44:29
diet, it's somewhere in the neighborhood of a
44:32
thousand a day. Gosh, she's playing
44:34
the hits.
44:35
Don't count calories because you're not gonna
44:38
go low enough because you're gonna be
44:40
hungry and grumpy all day. On the
44:42
maintenance plan, awesome was so close.
44:44
The calories vary between twelve hundred
44:46
and fifteen hundred daily. So
44:49
starvation diet and then
44:51
the quote unquote maintenance phase in which you
44:55
regain all the weight.
44:56
You're actually gonna get fatter if you count your calories.
44:58
Right.
44:59
Because you're gonna go for the potato chips rather
45:01
than the chicken roast. This
45:03
felt to me like a really good
45:05
example of why sort of
45:07
anti diet work is necessary but
45:10
not
45:10
efficient. Right? If your analysis stops
45:13
at diets are bad, you
45:15
can end up in weird places like
45:17
this
45:18
Right. And
45:18
diets are bad because you actually don't
45:20
diet well enough when you're on them.
45:22
Right. Right. Right. It feels semi related to sort
45:24
of like how folks are currently invoking
45:27
the phrase diet culture to describe
45:30
kind of everything. Diet
45:32
culture is a term that allows
45:34
thin folks to re center themselves in
45:36
conversations that are often about
45:39
anti fatness or maybe about classism or
45:41
maybe about racism or might be about like a bunch
45:43
of different things. But we call it
45:45
diet cultures that it provides a softer
45:47
entry point for folks. But also,
45:50
when you call it diet culture, doesn't require
45:52
any further analysis of folks. So again,
45:54
in this case, right, you've got Elizabeth Taylor
45:56
ostensibly saying a good thing. Like, don't
45:58
count calories, and then being like
46:01
the reason is
46:02
this. It's because you won't be like
46:04
-- Right. -- essentially restrictive enough
46:06
with yourself. Right? I'm glad this book
46:08
allowed you to say something on the show that
46:10
you've said to me off the show numerous
46:12
times. Yeah. There we go. I
46:14
should go. So doing what it's supposed to do.
46:17
So there are more diet tips
46:19
than that. Those are some of the sort of high
46:21
points, but it's worth noting that this
46:23
entire section is
46:26
powered by this explicit,
46:29
disdain and distrust for
46:31
fat people. She is
46:33
constantly sort of batting off
46:36
these sort of imagined excuses
46:38
quote unquote that her readers might have for
46:40
not losing weight. She has a whole
46:43
section where she sort of repeatedly brings
46:45
up, like, Unless you're one of those
46:47
rare people with a bona fide medical
46:49
condition, please refrain from using
46:52
your thyroid as an excuse. Yeah.
46:54
There's always a little where
46:56
it's like, oh, well, there are some people that
46:58
have an excuse, but then they never like
47:00
lean into that. Well, maybe it's just none of
47:02
my fucking business. How how big other
47:04
people
47:05
are. Right. It's essentially paying lip
47:07
service to --
47:08
Yeah. -- some people might have a reason that I approve
47:10
of for being fat. I'm still going
47:12
to assume when I'm out and about that
47:14
every single fat person I see doesn't have an
47:16
excuse. Right. Despite knowing nothing about that,
47:18
absolute. But like, yeah, I'm just going to treat everybody
47:21
shit anyway, just in
47:22
case. I wanted to close out this section with
47:24
another, like, absolute gremlin
47:27
anecdote.
47:27
Oh, god. Some
47:30
fat people will only pick at their food
47:32
in public. Whenever I went out with a certain
47:34
friend of mine, she would never touch the bread
47:36
or rules. Would order sensible entrees
47:38
and would never ask for any dessert except
47:40
fruit. Meanwhile, she weighed over
47:42
two hundred pounds. For a long time,
47:44
I bought the story that her metabolism was so screwed
47:47
up, she couldn't lose weight no matter what. Maybe
47:49
not. But one night after a dinner party at
47:51
her house, I saw what she really ate. She
47:53
had cleared the dishes into the kitchen, and after
47:55
she'd been absent for a while, I decided to
47:57
go and see if I could help with anything. I found
47:59
her standing over the sink scraping plates.
48:02
But before she threw away the scraps, she was
48:04
shoving the choice pieces into her mouth.
48:06
I felt so sorry for her. All the
48:08
time, she was blaming her metabolism she
48:11
had to live with this monumental lust.
48:13
I ducked away before she saw me, but I have never
48:15
forgotten the sight of her putting garbage into
48:17
her mouth. This is like a super fucked
48:19
up thing to put in your book because that person must know
48:22
-- Right. -- what they're talking
48:23
about. That's the unwritten part
48:25
of the story is like, she never saw
48:27
me and I never said anything about
48:29
it to her. I just wrote about it in
48:31
my giant book that I did
48:33
a full court press
48:35
about. Put it.
48:36
In my best selling book. The function
48:38
of this anecdote is if you mistrust
48:40
fat people and their narratives of their own
48:42
bodies, you're right. There's probably something
48:45
else going on. Yeah. Fat people are
48:47
lying. Is the moral of this
48:48
story? And
48:49
like anyone who says, like, I have a slow metabolism,
48:52
They're really just like binge eating every night. Also,
48:54
like, it is very strange to me
48:56
that she reconfigures, like,
48:58
the meal they just ate as
49:01
garbage. Right. You were just eating that off
49:03
of a plate, and then when the plate gets taken into the
49:05
kitchen, you decide that this is now
49:06
garbage? What? It's also so fucked
49:08
up to act as if then people don't have
49:10
occasional binge eating behavior. Right? Like,
49:13
sometimes I will
49:13
have, like, a a box of Oreos in the house and I'll
49:15
eat the whole fucking box. Right? And it sort of
49:17
is a reverse engineer just verification
49:20
for the way that Elizabeth Taylor describes
49:23
herself treating fat people throughout
49:25
this book -- Right. -- is she's like, uh-huh,
49:28
I was right all alone. Right?
49:30
Right. Genuinely, maybe this is a one off.
49:32
Genuinely, maybe this is something most
49:34
people do when they're clearing places
49:36
go Oh, there's still, like, little piece of steak
49:39
that looks pretty good on there, yank, chunk.
49:41
Yeah. The inclusion of this passage
49:44
is only to be, like, Gotcha
49:47
to all fat people --
49:48
Yeah. -- at the expense of her
49:51
friend of years and years
49:53
by her own account. Also not
49:55
to, like, tell you how it feels
49:57
to read this as a fat person. But isn't
49:59
this also the thing that fat people are afraid
50:01
of that like their thin friends are fucking surveilling
50:04
them all the
50:04
time? I don't think it's something that I'm afraid of.
50:06
I think it's something that I'm aware of
50:08
that it's happening all the time. That is,
50:10
like, literally happening. It's really interesting
50:12
to me. There is this sort of line of rhetoric
50:15
around anti fatness
50:17
that usually comes from thin people
50:19
that's like no one's paying as much attention
50:22
as you are and, like, you're probably just
50:24
imagining their judgment. And I'm, like,
50:26
you need to walk through this world
50:28
as a fat person because it's not imagined
50:30
when people just go I've been noticing
50:33
that you're eating this garbage, and maybe
50:35
if you ate this other garbage that I
50:37
think is good, you would be a thin person
50:39
like
50:39
me. Right. People just, like, say it
50:41
outright to you. This is why
50:44
it feels like, especially in sort of, like, fat,
50:46
activity, spaces, like,
50:48
fat people are oftentimes pretty slow to trust
50:50
thin people -- Yeah.
50:51
-- which, like, makes sense to me. Right? Like,
50:53
so this is also, like, an instruction manual
50:56
to anti fatness sort of throughout this
50:58
book. She's telling these little
51:00
parables about like, here's how you should treat
51:02
fat people. Here's what's really going
51:04
on with
51:05
them. And they are based on
51:07
just like aggressively terrible
51:10
behavior from her that is also
51:12
learned Right. It comes from nowhere. It
51:14
comes from her own trauma. And then she
51:16
is unleashing that trauma on
51:19
the rest of the
51:19
world, whatever fold. Love
51:21
to read a memoir from her fat friend
51:23
being, like, my my messy
51:25
ass friendship with Elizabeth
51:27
Taylor. Like, I tried to be nice to this
51:29
lady, but, like, It was rough. She made
51:31
it hard sometimes. Day twenty seven
51:33
is knowing Elizabeth Taylor's. She has told me
51:35
for the four thousandth time while she
51:38
stares at me at least I'm not that
51:39
fat.
51:40
How I feel when I hang out with Liz. So
51:42
section three is called The Taylor
51:44
Made Diet, which is a cute title. Okay.
51:47
TAYLL0R, like her last name
51:49
Taylor's
51:49
Made. Fair enough, Liz. We're giving this to you.
51:51
The diet itself is frankly very underwhelming. Yeah.
51:54
It is straightforwardly a
51:56
low fat, low calorie diet. She advocates
51:58
for, like, aerobic exercise, quote unquote,
52:00
which she's just, like, try stretching. And I'm, like, is
52:03
that
52:03
aerobic? But okay. Yeah. And
52:05
her recipes. Oh, no. Oh
52:08
my god. Now we come to our favorite
52:10
The Daily Show. shit
52:12
on recipes. In diet
52:13
books. She has a dessert where she's like,
52:15
you're gonna love this dessert, and I'm gonna send
52:17
it to you. It's the most eighty's shit.
52:19
It's gonna have cocaine and shoulder pads.
52:23
That would honestly be more interesting than
52:25
what it is. It says chocolate
52:28
fantasy, four servings. One
52:30
enveloped dietetic chocolate
52:33
pudding mix, half cup evaporated
52:35
skim milk, evaporated skim milk,
52:38
one and one quarter cup black coffee,
52:40
one egg yolk, combine
52:42
pudding mix, milk, and coffee in a saucepan,
52:45
and cook, stirring over moderate
52:47
heat until thickened, remove from
52:49
heat, add egg yolks during
52:51
constantly, return to heat, pour
52:53
into individual books. What? So
52:55
it's like a pudding. It's Jello
52:57
pudding plus black coffee and an
52:59
egg yolk and she's like a check out my amazing
53:02
diet recipes. The
53:05
only thing that's making this a quote diet
53:07
recipe is the quote unquote dietetic
53:10
chocolate pudding mix, which just means, like, eighties
53:12
language for low fat. Oh, yeah. This doesn't this
53:14
this is, like, the opposite of decadent.
53:16
Totally. It's, like, air and wishes in
53:18
the way that so
53:18
much like Haiti's
53:19
diet food is.
53:20
Right where you're just Yeah.
53:22
Oh, it's like some kind of powder.
53:24
Right. There's
53:25
like a memory of the flavor of chocolate.
53:27
Right. Right. So then I'm gonna
53:29
send you all So one of her
53:31
suggested meal plans for the
53:33
day. Okay. Diet day ten.
53:35
Breakfast, passion fruit,
53:38
And then one slice of dry toast.
53:41
Dry toast. Yep. Lunch, cold
53:43
crab salad, affordable for
53:45
the every man. Snack croutetes.
53:48
Oh, she's she's eating with doctor Oz -- Uh-huh.
53:50
-- with dip. Just dip. Yep.
53:53
Dinner is grilled lamb chops with
53:55
taeyita sauce. Pureed
53:57
summer squash and brown rice. Anytime
54:00
during the day, a half a cup
54:02
of skim milk, That's
54:04
your, like, snack. Not your treat. Mhmm. Man,
54:06
I really hit the spot. Sorry. Breakfast
54:09
is passion fruit. Lunch is
54:11
crab and dinner is lamb
54:13
chops. Yeah. She has,
54:15
like, multiple recipes for
54:17
lobster in this book. Nice. And
54:19
she can't do it, but,
54:20
like, if I can do it, anyone can
54:22
do it. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, Elizabeth, this
54:24
is like cartoon rich people food.
54:26
Yeah. And also someone else is making this
54:29
for her. Yeah. I
54:30
mean, she's not making her own girl land chops,
54:32
I presume. She is
54:33
not putting tweezers with
54:35
gold leaf fog top of her land chops.
54:38
That was a piece in
54:40
the cut where someone talked about
54:42
trying the Elizabeth Taylor diet.
54:45
Okay. At one point, this person tries
54:48
out one of the recipes in the diet
54:50
and says, quote, for dinner this evening,
54:52
I am supposed to cook a piece of steak
54:55
then sandwich it in peanut butter
54:57
and bread. Oh, what? Despite
55:00
being so hungry, I could eat my
55:02
hand, I cannot handle this
55:04
concoction. I have three bites
55:06
then throw the rest out.
55:08
But at least, I've also declared
55:10
a bankruptcy from buying
55:12
all the lobster. I bought a forty
55:14
dollar rib eye and then slathered it
55:16
with Jim. But
55:23
then she goes on to say some really
55:25
good things in the conclusion. She
55:27
one of her pieces of advice is she says that you should
55:29
give of your herself, where she's just like,
55:32
I just was sitting around one day going, you know,
55:34
people really need to ease up on people
55:36
with HIV and AIDS and people are just being awful to
55:38
them somebody ought to do
55:39
something, and then she was like, and then I realized
55:41
I have the time and resources to do something.
55:44
Oh,
55:44
yeah. I'm a famous lady. I'm a famous lady
55:46
with a lot of money. What if I spent some
55:48
of that money on doing the thing that seems like
55:50
a problem to me? Yeah. But also at
55:52
the same time in the back of my head, I'm like, maybe
55:54
you were also raising funds for Republicans
55:56
during the era where they were shutting the shit down?
55:59
I don't know, man. Yeah. And then in the
56:01
conclusion, she has one quote
56:03
that I
56:04
found much more useful than almost the
56:06
entire rest of the book. She says,
56:09
in overcoming seemingly insurmountable
56:11
obstacles, I learned that my oversized
56:14
body wasn't the biggest barrier to my self
56:16
esteem. To regain a healthy sense
56:18
of self worth, I first had to break down
56:20
old fears and doubts and anxieties. Only
56:23
then was I able to reshape my image
56:25
successfully? It's funny how these diet
56:27
books include like some
56:29
fairly prudent and nice advice,
56:31
but you just have to ignore the like ninety seven
56:33
percent of the book just totally
56:35
negates
56:36
them. Right? Where she's like, it turns out
56:38
that in order to fix my self esteem,
56:41
I had to work on myself and
56:43
fix my self
56:43
esteem, not lose weight. And I'm like
56:45
-- Right. -- Elizabeth, why didn't you write that book?
56:47
And she also could have pushed some of this anger
56:50
outward too and been like, you know what? It's really fucked
56:52
up the National Enquirer to put another photo
56:54
of me in the
56:55
magazine, he'd be like, How dare this lady be
56:57
fat? Fuck you. I look great. Right. There's
56:59
no point in this book
57:01
where she's like, you know what a good
57:03
answer would be here is the same kind of
57:05
approach that I'm taking to my work around
57:07
like HIV and
57:08
AIDS, which is like we need to reduce Cigna. We
57:11
need to,
57:11
like, lay off of people who were,
57:13
like, all too eager to pile onto.
57:16
Right? Like, there are places where
57:18
she's taking that note in her
57:20
life. And there are places where she
57:22
is not, and her politics around like,
57:24
fatness and body size and weight loss
57:26
are a place where she is not taking that
57:28
note. I don't know if she would be able to
57:30
given the upbringing that she had.
57:32
Yeah. But I do think she could like let
57:35
this opportunity to just like write a book
57:37
about how craving fat people
57:39
are. She could just, like, let that opportunity
57:41
pass her by. What you're saying is, why couldn't Liz
57:44
be Liz though. That's a fair
57:46
question.
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