In response to the cover, Washington writes: “It felt strange to look at a picture of myself that is so different from what I look like when I look in the mirror. It’s an unfortunate feeling.”
According to the USA Today article: “Adweek‘s editorial director James Cooper tweeted that her hair was the only ‘adjustment’ the magazine made.”
Um… My pasty, dimpled ASS, that’s all you adjusted. Why does she look like Clair Huxtable, then?
I would like this to happen to me in the very near future.
I can’t figure out how to embed it because everything (read: ABC) is dumb, but here: This is a scene from last night’s episode of Scandal, and I am coveting the experience HARD.
I’m just gonna send the guy this video like it’s office training material. Except the office is my body, and “You bettah WORK.” (Ahem. I apologize for that.)
If Scott Foley ever grabbed my hair and put his mouth on that part of my neck, we wouldn’t have even made it into the apartment — I would have just pulled up the dress and ridden him like we were in the Hallway Tour de France. And I’m not ashamed to admit that watching him do…THAT to Olivia, even just for a tragically fleeting moment, produced an actual tingle. Kerry Washington gives great sex face.
Don’t judge me, we all have our deal. Mine just happens to involve being occasionally slapped on the ass with a fashionable leather glove by a trained assassin. Whatevs.
#Scandal #TGIT #TeamJake
WordPress is kind enough to track the search terms that lead people to my page.
Here are a few:
I love you all, you depraved bastards.
Disclosure: I am a Shonda Rhimes fan (duh): Meredith, Addison, Olivia, Annalise. You name, I worship.
So it really should come as no surprise that I loved her first book, Year of Yes. I loved it on spec, really. Shondaland disciples understand. (Juju be with you. And also with you.) But I was still excited that it met and exceeded my expectations. It was great to read about SHONDA, not just to see her peppered into little bits of her characters.
As you may infer from the title, Rhimes dedicated a year to saying “yes” to things outside her introverted writer comfort zone: giving the commencement speech at her alma mater (Dartmouth, NBD); losing more than 100 pounds; making self-care a priority; saying “no” when necessary; accepting praise — as a woman especially — with a “thank you” and no attempt to negate or downplay your achievements. (Have y’all seen that Inside Amy Schumer thing? You should. We all should. And then we should all knock that shit off.)
Really the best thing I can say about the book is: it made me feel better. I hesitate to use the word “inspirational,” because UGH. But it was. It helped me during a tough time (specifically, the week I happened to be reading it, my brain was not being especially kind to me). But the book still made me laugh so hard my lady-belly ached. I had to put it down multiple times to laugh it out. On at least one page, Rhimes had me brimming with weepy tears, then cry-laughing two paragraphs later. It’s one of those comforting books that made me feel like things are actually pretty OK — I am a badass lady and I shall “power pose like Wonder Woman,” and if you don’t like it, you can just step right off.
I actually bought a LivingSocial deal for an audiobook site just so I could have Shonda Storytime. Maybe her “badassery” can infiltrate me via hypnosis osmosis while I sleep.
Her reflections on Mommy Wars were insightful and hilarious, even though I don’t have children. Standing up at a PTA meeting and shouting “Are you fucking kidding me?!” when they demanded homemade desserts instead of store-bought? Hero. But it also made me think about how I speak to my friends who are mothers, and to consider again the way women address and judge each other. (By the end of that chapter, you too will be all, “Whitney Houston. Curling iron. Solidarity.” Just trust me.)
My favorite chapter was the one about her weight loss, how food is amazing and DOES make you feel better, because it’s delicious but also because it’s a lovely, numbing spackle for your internal wounds. Oh, Shonda — you had me at “Cheesecake will always taste like love.”
My new favorite expression — and get ready, because you’ll see me use it in the future — is “veal practice.”
“Did I tell you what veal practice is?” asks Rhimes. “Oh! Veal practice involved me lying very still on the sofa trying as hard as I could to mimic the life of a veal. While eating veal. I wish I were kidding. It. Was. Magic.”
Veal practice, people. It’s gonna be a thing.
2015 was actually my own Year of Yes — a year that brought me Amy Poehler’s Yes Please, Jenny Lawson’s Furiously Happy, Matthew Quick’s Silver Linings Playbook, and finally Year of Yes, the icing on the therapeutic cake (but only metaphorical cake because I try not to use cake as therapy anymore).
Rhimes’ book is, in essence, about deciding to stop living your life being small — meek, numb, detached. Going through the motions, doing only what you have to, not being present, not feeling joy. Sleeping, basically…hardly even living. I struggle every day NOT to live that way, but she’s right — sometimes it really is easier, so I can’t say I always succeed.
It was as if this year the book gods had bestowed upon me the exact books I needed to get my shy ass off the couch and out to an aerial yoga with a Creative Ladies’ Club full of women I didn’t know, to an oral sex class or a burlesque workshop, and to really deal with my family issues and these romantic ensnarements I can’t escape — Olivia Pope ahoy, y’all. (I suspect I won’t get past them until I find my own Jake Ballard, though, so I think I just have to wait that out. Plus, Liv totally screwed up that Jake thing. I mean, honestly — Jake taught you how to shoot, danced to Stevie Wonder with you, fingered you on a tropical beach, and brought you Gettysburger. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT, OLIVIA? You want “Olitz,” seriously? Fitz is a giant bitch-baby with an overly emotive forehead. Vermont is cold, and jam sucks — Jake shakes like jelly. For the love of God, Liv, go STAND IN THE SUN!!!!!!)
*pant* *pant* *pant*
I sense I have too many feelings about this.
So. You go get yourself a copy of Year of Yes.
And I? I will go enjoy some veal practice.
#YearOfYes
*At my request (pleading, really), the lovely people at Simon & Schuster send me a copy of Year of Yes for my review.
I am a terrible feminist and probably an awful human being.
Everyone on board?
OK.
I definitely have my moments where I’m like, “Man, I’d kill to be built like Kerry Washington” or whoever.
But last night I watched Chicago again (for burlesque research!), and I realized, “Goddamn, I would much rather be built like me than like Super Thin Renée Zellweger any day.”
I sincerely hope the most prominent feature of my chest is never the bones in it. (I can’t even see those bones, I forgot there WERE bones there.)
I could floss with that woman.
I know, I KNOW. I shouldn’t judge another woman. There’s room for all of us (ahem — especially her, she’s basically vapor), and we’re all snowflakes, blah blah, bliddy blah, sisterhood, traveling pants, etc. FINE. I’m an asshole. We’ve established that.
Also, while she’s tiny, I’m sure she does crazy yogalates-ninja-reformer class or something and could kill me with her pinky finger. Plus, she’s a floppity-bajillionaire mega-star who can sing AND dance AND act (I’m told), and I live in a studio apartment and have 45 Facebook followers, so who the hell am I? She gives no fucks what I think, and rightly so.
Now, don’t get it twisted — if you offered a trade of INCOME, I’d be on that shit like white on rice. (Not that she knows what rice is, but you get the idea.) But body-wise? I’m glad I’m me, is the point. Flat ass and all. I’m not a hater — this was a self-esteem epiphany. So there.
And last, from last night’s Scandal, Kerry Washington is my hero. I’m in the process of creating a “vision board” as one of the hippie-dippy elements of therapy (*eye roll*), and goddammit, I’m getting rid of everything I have and just building an altar to Kerry Washington, and obviously also to Shonda Rhimes. There will obviously be Scandles. (See what I did there?)
#TBT #TGIT #TBTGIT
UNF.
Carry on.
I read Self magazine because I applaud the bold, innovative way they’ve cleverly shortened the title from Self-Loathing.
But also, the latest cover model is Kerry Washington, who is my personal Jesus. And in the interview, she says she begins her day by drinking a liter of water with lemon and doing pilates. (Or, after a liter of water, pee-lates, I can only assume.)
Today I was thinking about how I started my morning:
“Well, Self, I swore out loud at the alarm clock and hit ‘snooze’ 86 times. I hoisted myself out of bed angrily and fumbled around naked looking for an outfit, anything that fits because I’m never sure anymore. And then I shoved Lexapro and two types of OTC drugs into my sinus-infection-addled face with a Dixie cup of tap water from the bathroom sink, followed by an enormous vat of coffee, and now I am finally, but still barely, able to face humanity.”
This is why they don’t let me talk to the media. And why Kerry Washington never returns my calls.
I almost feel bad about how quickly my panties STILL melt when he says this. Almost.
#TeamJake #FuckFitz #EwButNotThatWayGross #BitchBaby #Scandal
Bwah ha ha… Added to my reading list! 
God help me if it’s a bad narrator. Is there any way we could get Stephen Colbert to read this one to me? Maybe Chris Noth? Scott Foley? My vagina is oddly particular about voices — this isn’t gonna work for me if the narrator says “supposably.”
(If it has to be a woman, maybe Kerry Washington? My orgasm would get HANDLED.)
Smug Singleton 