The Post-Grad Burn Book: 13. Celeb Bodies

Okay, we get it. You’re like beyond rich and don’t have to succumb to a ‘9-5’  meaning you have access to things that us regular people don’t. You are able to afford a really expensive gym that you are excited to enter every day. You might even have a gym in your own home that is nicer than the ones we pay to go to. You have time to work out multiple times a day because looking good is a crucial part of your job. OH, and you can afford a personal trainer aka your own personal support system… and not just any personal trainer – a celebrity personal trainer. And you can go to him or her (or have him or her come to you) every day of the week, whether it’s one, two, or three times a day. In addition to this, you can afford a nutritionist even though you’re already super fit and don’t need one. You just have the money to throw around and can’t afford gaining .3 pounds this week, so you justify the fact you need someone telling you what to eat and when to eat it every single day. You’re a celebrity. And you have it pretty effing good.

Celebrities should not be spokespeople for diets. It’s just… wrong. The spokesperson should be some average busy American who is successful. And not celeb-status successful. Someone who has reached success by waking up at 5am to go running because they are working the rest of the day and night. Someone who has reached success by giving up occasional Friday and Saturday nights to stay in and stay away from alcohol (and the inevitable drunk munchies). Someone who has reached success by saying NO to baked goods at work even though it makes you look like a total ass. Celebs do not get into these sorts of situations. Their job involves working out, eating healthy, and being too busy to have a social life. And that’s, umm, pretty much it.

So when Jennifer Hudson appears on the television with her size 6/4/0/whatever-she-is-now frame, I think ‘bitch looks great‘ and realize that people can transform by eating and working out. I then feel inspired to make myself transform as well… Until of course I remember that I’m a normal person and working out and looking good is not part of my job. I cannot afford a personal trainer on top of my (way-too-expensive) monthly gym cost, and if I did spend the extra cash on it I could maybe see a trainer once or twice a week for a month and that’s it. I know how to eat and how to lose weight but sometimes, if I want any sort of social life at all, I have to indulge in fro-yo or alcohol. Normal people get angry/self-conscious/annoyed when a fellow normal person is eating a salad sans dressing. I mean, they just want to eat a damn cheeseburger without feeling fat… and this diet-freak isn’t helping.

Basically, no normal person wants to be around someone who is obsessing over their food intake and workouts 24/7 – especially if it’s all they talk about. This weekend, my friend told me she would punch me if I got a house salad at a Mexican restaurant since everyone around me was eating tacos and other gross, calorie-filled things. So, unlike a celeb, I didn’t get a house salad. And unlike a celeb, I ate my food and didn’t partake in a four hour workout with a personal trainer to burn it off thereafter. Oh, and I drank too, because no one wants to be the boring one not getting drunk because they want to lose weight.

This is life my fellow normal friends. We can still check out celebs’ bods in the tabloids and on television and use them as inspiration… but we can’t steal their diets that are posted in US Weekly and look like them in a month. We can’t do those 4 leg exercises Jessica Biel does and get her thighs in 6 weeks. We can’t do the same ‘easy’ diet as Kourtney Kardashian and look like her (she was pregnant – she never got ‘fat’). We have to work for our bodies on our very low post-grad budgets in our very busy post-grad lives. And eventually, if we work hard for it with no breaks in between for rage weekends, we can have bangin’ bodies too… It just won’t be as easy for us as it is for celebs. Sorry we’re, like, normal.