Even if it does seem completely unbelievable!
According to the article, women with bigger butts have lower cholesterol levels because their—correction, our—hormones process sugar faster. And we also have less of a risk of developing cardiovascular conditions or diabetes.
I know that sounds totally wrong, but I read it on the Internet, so you know it’s 100 percent correct.
When it comes to medical information, the Internet is always dead-on.
But if you rely on it, you end up dead.
Just kidding.
I absolutely do rely on the Internet for medical advice. In fact, I don’t even know why we have doctors anymore.
Oh, right, we don’t.
Because if your deductible is $6500, like mine, you basically don’t have a doctor. Or you better hope that if something bad happens to you, it ends up being really catastrophic so you get your money’s worth.
Fingers crossed?
To return to point, the article said that women with big butts have a surplus of omega-3 fatty acids.
Or fatty assets.
Or a fatty ass.
Anyway, I believe that. Because I’m a woman with a big butt and I have a surplus of everything.
Including goodwill and happiness!
And in even better news, omega-3 fatty acids are related to improved brain function.
How great is that?
Aren’t you glad you came?
You can thank me anytime!
In fact, I hope you’re sitting on your nice big butt as you read this column, and now you know that you’re comprehending it at warp speed because of your superior brain function.
Who knew that your brain was connected to your butt?
Unless you’re one of those people who have their head up their ass.
The article even said that the fatty tissue in our butts “traps harmful fatty particles and prevents cardiovascular disease.”
Wait, what?
That’s basically saying that fat traps fat—but maybe it does!
After all, birds of a feather flock together.
Who are we to question Dr. Internet?
More excellent medical advice!
So from now on, just look at your big fat butt and visualize it as some extremely fleshy Venus fly-trap, trapping all the fat in the tristate area, strengthening your heart and increasing your IQ.
Fat is genius!
Now, if the medical advice in this article is true, that would mean that the Kardashians are the smartest people ever.
Laugh away, but the joke’s on you.
They made zillions of dollars selling pictures of their butts.
And we bought them.
In other words, they made asses out of us.
With their asses.
GENIUS!
I must say that I have never weighed in, again no pun, on the whole big-butt phenomenon. My butt is big and always has been, but I never viewed it as positive. When I was growing up, the cool thing was to have a flat, skinny, or nonexistent butt. Happily, those days are over.
Or behind us.
Nowadays, people pay to have butt implants, and since this article, I finally understand why.
So people will think they’re smart.
High Note
Francesca
Think back to yourself at fifteen.
What was your greatest desire?
What was your greatest fear?
Do you still want what you wanted then? Do you still fear what you feared?
That would be silly, right? But some of these old wishes and old dragons stick around.
When I was fifteen, what I wanted more than anything was the lead role in the spring musical, Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado.
I’ve written before about my long-standing, deeply nerdy love of all things Gilbert & Sullivan, and I was the only one in our drama guild who was familiar with the show when they announced it. The older girls only wanted to be the lead for the lead’s sake.
I wanted to sing Yum-Yum because I loved her.
Even with this head start, it would’ve been quite a coup for a sophomore to nab the principal female role. So I practiced endlessly for the audition. I didn’t need the sheet music that trembled in my hand.
But it was a near miss. I was cast as the understudy. And as any understudy knows, a meteor would have to strike the lead for me to get to perform.
I never did.
Which wasn’t entirely bad, because my greatest fear?
Performing the lead role of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado.
See, there’s this high note in the soprano’s signature aria, “The Sun Whose Rays” that scared the hell out of me. It’s a B flat, not the highest note in my range, but it comes up twice, sung very slowly, and falls on the words “worth” and “a-wake,” which are very hard words to sing so high.
When I was alone in the barn (it had the best privacy and acoustics), I could hit it most but not all of the time. But as soon as I got in front of someone, nerves clutched me around the throat, and it came out in a squeak.
The thought of missing the note in front of everyone was a recurring nightmare.
So I didn’t really think I deserved the role, in spite of how much I wanted it.
Flash forward fifteen years, and the spring musical is no longer the apex of my year. Singing didn’t turn out to be my truest and deepest passion simply by virtue of being the most far-fetched.
I am pursuing that passion, writing, this very minute, and I’m grateful to you readers who afford me the opportunity.
Prioritizing our pursuits is part of adult life, and not everything makes the cut. Certain interests get demoted to hobby or shelved forever. I never lose sleep over not pursuing a career in musical-theater performance.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss it from time to time.
Which is part of the reason I joined the New York Gilbert & Sullivan Society. The group isn’t a performance troupe, there are other organizations that put on real productions within the communities. But that’s part of why I like it—low commitment, low pressure.
I joked about it all week. How silly it was that I was doing it, how bad I was going to be with no rehearsal and being so rusty, how this was hardly some arch revenge on my high-school doubters—I ironically texted my friends:
I SHOWED THEM! LOOK WHO’S SINGING IN A CHURCH BASEMENT, BETCHES!
It was true, but it also helped me calm myself down. I couldn’t admit to myself that I still cared about how this performance went.
A lot.
The night before, I allowed my thirty-year-old self one moment to take my fifteen-year-old self seriously, and I texted my friend’s wife who is a voice coach to see if she had any tips on how to hit the note, downplaying it even then:
“It’s a super casual concert, not prestigious. It’s just that a-WAKE is such a weird sound. I have to just say, ah-WAHH.”
She replied: “Minimize the W too, all you need to do is move your lips slightly to suggest the W but just stay open.”
Hmm. In all my years practicing it in the shower, I had never thought of that.
When I arrived the night of the concert to see it wasn’t being held in our usual church basement but in the nave of the church itself, I felt all those old nerves tightening around my throat again.