Curl Up and Diet

On days when I'm feeling not so little and need an emotional pick-me-up this poem, Curl Up and Diet, by Ogden Nash always makes me chuckle and see reality (and not just my giant behind).


Curl Up and Diet

Some ladies smoke too much and some ladies drink too much and some ladies pray too much,
But all ladies think that they weigh too much.
They may be slender as a sylph or a dryad,
But just let them on the scales and they embark on a doleful jerremiad;
No matter how low the figure needle happens to touch,
They always claim it is at least five pounds too much;
No matter how underfed to you a lady's anatomy seemeth;
She describes herself as Leviathan or Behemoth;
To the world she may appear slinky and feline,
But she inspects herself in the mirror and cries Oh, I look like a sea lion;
Yes, she tells you she is growing into the shape of a sea cow or manatee,
And if you say No, my dear, she says you are just lying to make her feel better, and if you say Yes, my dear, you injure her vanity.
And in any case her eyes flow like faucets,
And she goes out and buys some new caucets.
Once upon a time there was a girl more beautiful and witty and charming than tongue can tell,
And she is now a dangerous raving maniac in a padded cell,
And the first indication her friends and relatives had that she was mentally overwrought
Was one day when she said I weigh a hundred and twenty-seven, which is exactly what I ought.
Oh, often I am haunted
By the thought that somebody might some day discover a diet that would let ladies reduce just as much as they wanted,
Because I wonder if there is a woman in the world strong-minded enough to shed ten pounds or twenty,
And say There now, That's plenty;
And I fear me one ten-pound loss would only arouse the craving for another,
So it wouldn't do any good for ladies to get their ambition and look like somebody's fourteen-year-old brother,
Because, having accomplished this with ease,
They would next want to look like somebody's fourteen-year-old brother in the final stages of some obscure disease,
And the more success you have the more you want to get of it,
So then their goal would be to look like somebody's fourteen-year-old brother's ghost, or rather not the ghost itself, which is fairly solid, but a silhouette of it,
So I think it is very nice to be lithe and lissome,
But not so much so that you cut yourself if you happen to embrace or kissome

- Ogden Nash (1935)



**I'm still in Honduras! This post made possible by the marvels of technology.