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.