An Advice Columnist Whose Name Doesn't Rhyme With Blan Travage
I think this letter and response speaks for itself. Maybe I’ll throw in a little bolding…
Dear Prudence,
I’m 24, and I’ve been with my boyfriend for about 18 months. We were friends in high school, then met again after college, and started living together almost immediately. We have been talking about marriage lately, which I am beyond excited about; however, my boyfriend has informed me that I need to lose 20 pounds before he will propose. He claims that’s the only reason he hasn’t asked me yet. In his words, he wants “a hot wife.” Am I crazy to think that unconditional and true love still exists? Everything else in our relationship is great. I don’t want to walk away from something so wonderful, but this just seems a little ridiculous. Help!—In Love With Mr. Vain
Dear In Love,
I have a plan that will make both of you happy. It begins with you starting on a new exercise program. Get a comfortable outfit and a pair of excellent workout shoes. Then put all your worldly possession in a suitcase, pick it up, walk out the door, and keep on walking.—Prudie
Oh, and here’s the link!
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Feel Good Friday, Tidbit
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FREAKING AWESOME!!!
That is the best answer. No let’s look at the guys’ perspective. It was all about what is best for this woman and the best thing is TO LEAVE!
That’s the best advice I’ve ever read. Hell yeah.
This is WICKED! Go Prudie!
Prudie is my new hero!
Where did Prudence come from and when do we erect a monument to her?
I’m in the same boat as “In love with Mr. Vain”.
I think I might take Prudence’s advice, only I’ll make HIM take his worldly possessions and walk out the door.
I didn’t get it right away, but good for her for writing that.
When I first saw “exercise plan” my heard dropped…but that is awesome.
Go Prudie, go Prudie! Damn, that just made my day.
Wow, New-Prudie is hit or miss these days, but that really was freaking awesome. She’s always been more blunt that previous Prudie, and this time it totally works to her advantage.
(For those that don’t know, Prudence was the pseudonym for Slate.com’s advice columnist, and when the previous one stepped down, a new woman took on the title. I forget their actual names off the top of my head, however.)
AWESOME!!!
Wow! My faith in advice columnists has been somewhat restored!
I would say that the only weight the letter-writer needs to lose is that shallow, hypocritical creep of a boyfriend.
AAAAAAhahahahahahahaha.
HA!!!
I’m not that impressed. She got one right out of all the others, it just means she had to pull her head out of her ass long enough to come up for air. Stopped clocks and all that.
Ha! I left a reply for this somewhere in The Slate’s Messageboard Land yesterday. You should read some of the comments in there, they’re brutal, ranging from ‘just lose the weight, girl’ to ‘but he just wants her to be healthy!’
I think the whole thing is a really sad slice of how men view women and how women view marriage. Anyway, here’s what I wrote:
Am I the only one who thinks that this girl’s weight is an excuse that the guy is using because he just doesn’t want to get married? And that not only is it a crappy excuse, but by putting the focus on her weight he’s essentially placing the blame on her (i.e. we’d be married/engaged by now if it weren’t for your extra weight) instead of copping to the fact that he doesn’t want to get married.
I think this also sheds some light on a few things about this relationship. For one thing, being married is important to this girl, so much so that she even entertained the idea of losing weight simply to please her guy, and that she didn’t just flat-out leave him after he said such a hurtful thing. It also seems to indicate that she has self-esteem issues, because no matter how much I weighed, if I had a boyfriend who put such a huge condition on our relationship based on my weight he’d be picking up his teeth off the floor about five seconds after he said ‘I’d do fill in the blank if you’d lose 20 pounds.” I’m guessing he knew that he could say something like that and she’d still be around.
I’m going to take a bunch of flack for this, but it feels like the situation here and the Savage one are different: here, the dude refuses to marry/accept her until her natural weight changes. In the previous, the dude had married her and THEN her natural weight changed, to his detriment. Not that I was happy with how it was handled by Savage, but I don’t know. There’s a difference between refusing to commit to someone because you want them to fit an ideal they don’t naturally fit, and committing to someone and then finding they’ve changed.
I’d take my fat ass and sit on the guy’s head until he ran out of air then I would say ‘buh-bye’.
HAHA! That made my day, I love it.
Best advice columnist ever. I was all set to be like “oh my god, she’s seriously going to tell her to start exercising?” and then my prayer were answered. I heart Prudie now.
Hannah, we don’t know that it was the wife’s “natural” weight in the “Blan Travage” (*love*) post either, really.
I used to feel resentful when I would read “a lot of women feed into this”, but after some thought, I think it might happen when
1) They let men feed them the same crap they eat (no, I’m not saying ALL men eat crap, just stay with me) and/or bigger portions of healthy foods; and the woman’s metabolism just doesn’t handle it in the same way as the man’s, since most men have a muscle mass advantage over most women; and/or
2) The women starve themselves down under their natural weight to fit into the Vera Wang knockoff, so their husbands think they’ve “blown up” after the wedding just because they’ve actually gone back to what their natural weight actually is!
Either could have happened. We don’t know.
Now what does piss me off in the first instance are guys who sulk and pout and say the girl is “no fun” if she doesn’t eat the crap they eat, and then bitch and moan when she gains weight on their diet. Those guys are both controlling and stupid.
Hannah – when people get married, even in secular ceremonies, there does tend to be some mention of our coming decrepitude, possible illness, or poverty. No one ages or gains weight to anyone else’s “detriment” – people are human animals, and they will age and change: fat, veins, wrinkles, gum recession, bald, grey – we all do it in our own unique ways. No one is fat at someone else.
If your major criteria for marriage is that your partner will continue to look the same, then you’re not looking to marry a human.
If a person’s major criteria is that their partner will likely stay thin, I suppose they could take a medical family history and profile. If parents and grandparents were thin, then that increases the odds. Seriously, if this is that big a deal for Savage’s reader, then essentially he’s doing what animal breeders do: trait based mating. Okay, but recessive genes also exist.
What’s love?
Also, just wanting to add that I’m not generally fond of Prudie’s column in general, but was happy with this letter.
And in defense of Dan Savage… Well, just read this first letter and his response from a column last summer:
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=255893
I think that pretty much sums up why I stay behind him even when he says things that come off as insensitive.
I would also have recommended a swift punch to the nards. Since boxing is a great form of exercise and all.
Eh. This is like her first good answer ever — mostly Prudence is an idiot. She does stuff like say it’s okay to put a request for cash in your wedding invitations (she even wrote a stupid little poem), and refer to women who want to keep their own names at marriage and maybe even pass them on to their kids as crazy militant feminists.
I think she’s Ann Lander’s daughter or something? Whoever she is, she’s about the worst advice columnist in the history of advice, and I kind of think this answer is cribbed from one of her mother’s — it sounds a little familiar.
As I was reading this lovely letter, I kept thinking the girl needs to read “He’s Just Not That Into You.” Seriously funny book, but so right on. If he were really interested in marrying her, he wouldn’t be looking for a “hotter” model of her to show up.
Haa! That’s excellent.
I know if my boyfriend told me he required me to lose weight before he’d propose to me, my response would be “I guess we’re just not getting married, then.”
I’ve read and heard about these pro-fat blogs and I’m honestly surprised. I have always felt that I am at my happiest when I am at my thinnest. How did you all come to the conclusion that you prefer to be fat?
Most of us don’t.
But we would like others to not be so disgusted that we are, including yourself. If more people would not be so obsessed about everyone else’s weight, the world would be a a less stressful place.
Remember that many fat people don’t get this way because they can’t put down the cookies and stay away from McDonald’s drive-thrus. Medicine and genetics play into it too.
Good for you that you’re thin, but stop making those that aren’t ashamed of their size.
Right on, Bree.
I don’t “prefer” to be fat, but I’m a lot happier now than I was 10 years and 100 lbs ago. There doesn’t seem to be a correlation; size only makes you miserable if you let it.
It’s also a good filter…I don’t like shallow people and they don’t bother to talk to a fat girl, so the people I *do* meet end up being a much better fit personality-wise. Go figure.
I love you Prudie!!! great advice. This made my day.
Prudie is my new hero!