Worse than being a farmer
Quote of the Week
Went out last night and spent it in a way known to most single women: in the good company of female friends, with an open bar and rather charming bartenders, and much later in the night, with a plateful of Australian meat pies. (You Aussies are onto something with these baked goods for a late-night snack.) An experience which inspires my quote for this week, culled from the always lovable Bridget Jones:
Sunday, January 15
126 lbs. (excellent), alcohol units 0, cigarettes 29 (v.v. bad, esp. in 2 hours), calories 3879 (repulsive), negative thoughts 942 (approx. based on av. per minute), minutes spent counting negative thoughts 127 (approx.)
6pm. Completely exhausted by entire day of date-preparation. Being a woman is worse than being a farmer--there is so much harvesting and crop spraying to be done: legs to be waxed, underarms shaved, eyebrows plucked, feet pumiced, skin exfoliated and moisturized, spots cleansed, roots dyed, eyelashes tinted, nails filed, cellulite massaged, stomach muscles exercised. The whole performance is so highly tuned you only need to neglect it for a few days for the whole thing to go to seed. Sometimes I wonder what I would be like if left to revert to nature--with a full beard and handlebar on each shin, Dennis Healey eyebrows, face a graveyard of dead skin cells, spots erupting, long curly fingernails like Struwwelpeter, blind as bat and stupid runt of species as no contact lenses, flabby body flobbering around. Ugh, ugh. Is it any wonder girls have no confidence?
7pm. [...] Cannot believe it. Am stood up. Entire waste of a whole day's bloody effort and hydroelectric body-generated power. However, one must not live one's life through men but must be complete in oneself as a woman of substance.
--Bridget Jones's Diary, pp. 27