Maintenance Phase - Elizabeth Taylor's ＂Elizabeth Takes Off＂

00:00:00.000 god it's been so long i forgot how to do this with you isn't it super fucking weird i don't 0.87

00:00:16.080 like it i don't like it either michael i'm so glad to be able to talk in a sustained way 0.96

00:00:21.800 talking i like it it's good comma actually okay i've had like a month to think about this fucking 0.81

00:00:28.540 tagline and all I could come up with is still bad welcome to maintenance phase the podcast that has 0.86

00:00:34.120 been married nine times but continues to hope is that a thing that I know about her am I think of

00:00:40.860 someone else eight times you were so close eight times to seven dudes oh really one of them was a

00:00:47.400 repeat offender I didn't know that yeah Richard Burton it's the big one for her you know it's the

00:00:52.760 big one uh I am Michael Hobbs I am Aubrey Gordon if you would like to support the show you can do

00:00:57.720 that at patreon.com slash maintenance phase you can also buy t-shirts mugs tote bags all manner

00:01:02.940 of things at t public both of those are linked for you in the show notes you can also subscribe

00:01:08.720 on apple podcast you'll get the same audio content as you get on patreon same stuff and michael and

00:01:15.040 aubrey today we're talking about a diet book written by none other than elizabeth taylor

00:01:21.740 we're doing it we're doing all the hollywood royalty we've done gwyneth paltrow we've done

00:01:26.400 elizabeth taylor we've done ed mcmahon um michael tell me what you know about elizabeth taylor it

00:01:34.620 sounds like you know generally that she was married a lot what else you know about elizabeth taylor

00:01:39.300 literally an actress who was married a lot great we've reached the limits of my knowledge i should

00:01:44.880 also say before we sort of dig in all the way that this uh episode includes some really gnarly 0.93

00:01:50.840 abuse stuff and some extra gnarly anti-fatness in it. So like really, really take care.

00:01:56.340 It's an extra gnarly one. 1.00

00:01:57.360 It's worth noting that Elizabeth Taylor is like an incredibly complicated person. She received 0.94

00:02:04.340 incredible scrutiny for her appearance in the press from her loved ones across the board.

00:02:10.480 And she was also repeatedly referred to as the most beautiful woman in the world.

00:02:15.340 So in other words, a famous woman.

00:02:17.540 She was famous and had the audacity not to be a man. 0.99

00:02:21.340 This is what I wanted and a living nightmare. 0.83

00:02:23.940 She's also a white person who played Cleopatra in one of the most famous and foundational cases of whitewashing African history, right? 0.77

00:02:32.520 Like, off the charts. 0.77

00:02:34.520 She's a Democrat, a lifelong Democrat who married a Republican elected official and started hosting fundraisers for Republicans on the eve of Reaganism.

00:02:45.320 she was disabled she had scoliosis and was scapegoated in the press constantly for these

00:02:54.400 sort of costly production shutdowns some of which are the result of her being sort of a frivolous

00:03:00.600 rich lady and being like i wanted to go to greece this weekend or whatever yeah and some of which

00:03:05.280 are like i'm in the hospital for complications from my disability or i'm really sick and that

00:03:10.420 all got read through the lens of like, she's wasting everybody's time. Right. This is the

00:03:15.340 beginning of like the difficult woman industrial complex. There is a lot of difficult woman sort 1.00

00:03:20.900 of foundational material showing up here for sure. Right. But it's also worth noting that she was 1.00

00:03:26.800 well ahead of most other folks, an outspoken advocate for people with HIV and AIDS in the

00:03:33.300 1980s. Oh, interesting. When the CDC and the Reagan administration were still sort of studiously

00:03:39.320 ignoring the AIDS epidemic. And she established her own foundation to reduce stigma around HIV

00:03:46.400 and AIDS. This is back when it was controversial to be like, wow, this, this lady's sticking up

00:03:50.440 for people who are dying. What a weird thing for someone to do. Courageous, radical, dangerous 0.99

00:03:58.380 question mark. Yeah. Should we dig in on some, like a little touch of 101 Elizabeth Taylor bio

00:04:05.400 stuff. I like that you've you've made me feel weird about this person already. We got to know

00:04:09.780 what the weird tension is, because the tension, Michael, I don't want to spoil it, except I'm

00:04:13.860 going to spoil it. The tension is only going to get tenser and weirder. Oh, good. OK. So Elizabeth

00:04:19.300 Taylor was born in February 1932 to American parents in London. Her father owned and operated

00:04:29.720 an art gallery and her mother had acted on Broadway when she was younger and really felt

00:04:35.980 like she sort of missed an opportunity for herself to continue her career path in acting. 0.93

00:04:41.180 So we've got a Nepo baby on our hands. 0.88

00:04:43.040 We've got a Nepo baby.

00:04:45.300 Part of the current discourse.

00:04:47.240 Elizabeth Taylor moved with her family straight to California at age seven.

00:04:51.880 and her mother immediately started preparing her for what she saw as sort of Elizabeth's

00:05:00.160 inevitable child stardom. She was just like, Oh wow. I have this kid. She is unbelievably

00:05:05.280 strikingly beautiful, even as a child, I'm going to make the most of it. So Elizabeth was expected

00:05:12.340 to be immaculately dressed all the time in case they ran into any power players when they were

00:05:18.980 out and about in LA. Oh God. But also because, and her mom was very explicit with her about this,

00:05:23.960 that when she was a star, this would be expected of her. You have to look impeccable all the time.

00:05:28.380 Holy shit. So this was like preordained? Yes. Age seven is when these conversations are happening. 1.00

00:05:34.960 She and her mom spent hours every day working on her look, her manners, her posing. In grade school,

00:05:43.840 her mom talked about elizabeth having a job and her job was to become a star oh my god this is

00:05:50.500 like bumming me out so much oh michael it's gonna get bleaker before it gets better i just consider

00:05:57.120 fame to be like a form of abuse it's awful prepping somebody for this like you're gonna

00:06:02.380 be scrutinized for your looks your whole life it's just like oh you and i talk about being

00:06:06.560 uncomfortable with our level of whatever i have never been an elizabeth taylor i will never be

00:06:11.620 and elizabeth taylor this is like all we talk about aubrey and we're like here's here's what

00:06:18.700 i'm feeling weird about this week here's everything i'm saying no to because it makes me uncomfortable

00:06:23.240 yeah totally weird yeah so her mother spoke about elizabeth's quote-unquote responsibility to the

00:06:31.400 family as a breadwinner before she turned 10 oh my god she is very young and is being sort of

00:06:40.920 piled on with all of these adult responsibilities. She's taught specific responses to how to receive

00:06:48.700 a compliment. She's supposed to curtsy, look down and demurely thank the person while she's not

00:06:54.860 making eye contact with them. Oh, a lot to unpack there. How much time do we have?

00:07:01.960 How long is the episode going to be? Not only that, but her mother expected her to practice

00:07:08.500 her facial expressions for that process and responses to compliments in front of a mirror

00:07:14.680 oh my god so elizabeth did that every day was she even acting at this point like what were people

00:07:20.420 complimenting her on or was this just prep i think this was mostly prep and also there is 0.86

00:07:25.260 look in a lot of elizabeth taylor biographies there are a bunch of deeply fucking uncomfortable

00:07:32.420 descriptions where they're like she was a strikingly beautiful eight-year-old and you're

00:07:36.720 like nope no no no yeah this is maybe not the time to mention this but can i can i look up a photo of

00:07:43.640 her as a child sure go for it elizabeth taylor child oh you know what the earliest one you can

00:07:52.040 definitely find is age 12 she was in national velvet that's her first national velvet oh she

00:08:02.280 just looks like a nice girl. She's got a dog in one of the photos, like a little tiny, like Wizard

00:08:07.480 of Oz dog. It is a really cute dog. She looks so much older than 12. Yeah. So this is also sort of

00:08:13.920 part of her story a little bit. In 1944 at age 12 is when she starred in National Velvet, which was

00:08:23.520 sort of the film that kickstarted her career. It was a huge hit and it earned her a seven year

00:08:30.540 contract with MGM, which was one of the most powerful studios at the time.

00:08:35.320 Oh, this is part of the studio system where it's like you just have to do what they tell

00:08:38.260 you to do, basically.

00:08:39.160 Yeah, you sign on and then your career is in their hands, period, right?

00:08:44.360 She, at age 12, starts earning a weekly salary of $750.

00:08:52.180 In today's dollars, that's $12,700-ish.

00:08:57.960 A week?

00:08:58.400 a week so she's earning six hundred and sixty thousand dollars a year just about wow and this 0.93

00:09:05.460 is the point at which she becomes the family breadwinner sort of officially that's a lot of

00:09:09.200 bread that's a lot of bread and she is a middle schooler yeah jesus christ so she never really

00:09:13.720 has a childhood to speak of and by the time she turns 14 her mother starts dressing her

00:09:23.740 in much tighter and much more revealing clothes and starts setting up photo shoots with a brief

00:09:31.780 to the photographer to shoot this 14 year old seductively and in a bathing suit oh so it's like 1.00

00:09:39.880 as soon as she has like boobs and hips they're like already being like weaponized basically as 1.00

00:09:44.820 soon as puberty hits she is being portrayed by her mother yeah as like a teenage seductress 1.00

00:09:52.580 it is then unsurprising that her first marriage is at 18 as we mentioned she was married eight

00:09:58.400 times to seven different dudes as i sort of read about these relationships many of them

00:10:04.880 were profoundly and like explicitly abusive god some of those husbands were physically abusive

00:10:12.340 most were verbally abusive almost all of them picked at her body oh richard burton's nickname 0.99

00:10:19.500 for her was tubby fuck off another one of her husbands there's this sort of anecdote in the 0.98

00:10:24.780 book that she talks about where another one of her husbands thought it would be funny to introduce her 0.99

00:10:28.880 to his friends for the first time under a different name and one of the friends says

00:10:34.180 to her face oh my gosh you look like a heavier elizabeth taylor jesus christ and then her husband 0.99

00:10:40.100 starts laughing and says i told you you were getting fat and smacks her ass bad news all the 1.00

00:10:47.800 way down. And on top of all that, she's like a working actor, right? So agents and casting 0.99

00:10:51.980 directors and everybody ever is just like openly giving her notes on her body and her face and how

00:10:57.080 she should look different and all that kind of stuff. Right. I wanted to talk a little bit about

00:11:00.080 her marriage to her first husband, who is Conrad Hilton Jr., the heir to the Hilton fortune.

00:11:06.140 Oh, he's like a Hilton Hilton. This was sort of seen as a mutually beneficial

00:11:09.840 relationship at the time for sort of social climbing purposes. Okay. Elizabeth Taylor was

00:11:15.340 a young promising actor who didn't really have a foot in the door with high society.

00:11:20.000 The Hilton family at this point is frustrated with being seen as sort of quote unquote new

00:11:23.820 money and they think a Hollywood marriage will help them be seen as more established.

00:11:28.960 Big problems. We're rich, but people think we're the wrong kind of rich.

00:11:31.940 Yeah, totally. What a shame.

00:11:34.220 What you must have been through.

00:11:35.280 At the time that they get married, Elizabeth's mom is aware that Nikki Hilton was very big 0.99

00:11:40.900 into drinking and gambling. And it was much more important to her that the Hiltons had sort of the 1.00

00:11:47.440 wealth and cachet that she was after. I love that this is the time in Hollywood where it was like,

00:11:52.540 yeah, the fact that he's like a huge piece of shit, it's like, eh, is that really that big of 1.00

00:11:55.560 a deal? But she gained two pounds over the course of the last year. It's like the moral standards 1.00

00:12:02.100 applied to men and women are just completely upside down. So over time, and not even over

00:12:08.660 that much time like in a matter of months nikki hilton's like extremely dark side sort of starts

00:12:15.420 to come out in their relationship he becomes increasingly just furious that he is being

00:12:22.940 overshadowed by his young wife oh god that fury starts to manifest more and more as like

00:12:30.900 extraordinarily brutal physical abuse i'm not gonna tell the details of this one but at one

00:12:37.320 point she becomes pregnant and he becomes so abusive that he causes a miscarriage for her 0.98

00:12:43.340 oh fuck and she leaves immediately she calls her mom and is like i'm out of there i can't do it 0.98

00:12:51.180 and her mom tells her that she should have tried harder to stay together jesus christ it's 0.99

00:12:58.200 grotesque as soon as they break up nikki hilton starts going to the press and talking like 1.00

00:13:05.360 horrific shit about her oh of course this piece of shit move where you're like trying to preempt 1.00

00:13:11.620 any of the rumors and you're like she was difficult and crazy she's gonna say stuff like i used to hit 1.00

00:13:16.760 her it's not even that mike horrible at one point she's photographed at different points with

00:13:21.420 different men um including like she has a number of like good friends throughout her life who are

00:13:26.240 like gay men who are sort of famously closeted gay men right oh rock hudson that's like the only

00:13:31.880 other thing i know about her rock hudson is a good friend of hers montgomery clift is a good

00:13:35.580 friend of hers like there are a number of these right so she's like photographed with men from

00:13:40.240 time to time and uh nikki hilton goes to the press and says quote every man should have the chance to

00:13:47.440 sleep with elizabeth taylor and at this rate every man will oh he says that publicly he says it he

00:13:53.820 calls a reporter to tell a reporter this and then that reporter is like good point and prints it

00:14:00.880 He's like, look, I have the most horrifying zinger you've ever heard. 1.00

00:14:05.540 Let me tell you the most fucked up shit anyone has ever said about their ex-wife. 1.00

00:14:10.200 Please put this in the newspaper. 1.00

00:14:11.780 The other relationship that seems worth naming here, if we're doing like a highlights reel,

00:14:16.280 is the one man that she married twice, Richard Burton.

00:14:19.520 Right.

00:14:20.140 Whom she met while she was filming Antony and Cleopatra.

00:14:24.460 It made big headlines in part because both of them were married to other people at the time

00:14:29.660 and they were filming a movie about a scandalous affair so they were like the og brad and angelina

00:14:35.360 this is their mr and mrs smith yes absolutely i remember when that happened i was like why is

00:14:41.140 everybody speculating these people are clearly just friends michael hobbs on the right side of

00:14:47.080 history i know i really was not clued into this i was like it's so mean everybody should stop

00:14:52.720 talking about these two extremely interactive people spending time together

00:14:56.040 Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor have a famously incredibly chaotic relationship.

00:15:04.560 He repeatedly told her, quote, you're much too fat, love, but you do have a pretty little face.

00:15:10.660 That's like a neg. He's like negging her. He's Mystery the Pickup Artist. He's got a top hat. 0.94

00:15:15.600 The criticism about her appearance is not just coming from her husbands and her relationships. 0.99

00:15:21.760 It also shows up in the press a lot and much earlier in her career than I would have anticipated. 0.96

00:15:29.260 One critic famously described Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra as, quote, overweight, overpaid and under talented.

00:15:38.820 That's the cultural script about Elizabeth Taylor at this point is like she's unbelievably beautiful. 1.00

00:15:45.800 And also what a piece of shit. 1.00

00:15:47.860 I'm looking at photos of this on Google now. 1.00

00:15:50.680 And like, she has like an hourglass figure. 0.99

00:15:52.780 She's like extremely conventionally attractive. 0.95

00:15:54.700 Her eye shadow is deranged, but I don't think that that's her fault.

00:15:58.800 The makeup is bananas. 0.98

00:16:00.300 The hair, trying to give a white lady black hair is a venture all its own. 1.00

00:16:05.880 I have other comments. 0.85

00:16:06.960 So many, so many.

00:16:09.540 We're going to talk about her marriage to U.S. Senator John Warner.

00:16:15.160 They got married in 1976. 1.00

00:16:17.380 she was 45 she is getting more and more and more scrutiny for her body because she is 0.61

00:16:23.840 back in the public eye in a new way and she's in her mid-40s and she looks like a woman in her 0.99

00:16:29.420 mid-40s right yeah she's like put on a little bit of weight she looks a little bit older 1.00

00:16:33.940 after her marriage to the senator she checks herself into betty ford for a dependency on 0.50

00:16:40.380 pain pills which is where she meets her final husband larry fortensky later in her life is 0.97

00:16:46.660 actually where the bulk of her wealth comes from that's when she starts endorsing products

00:16:51.240 including first a perfume called passion okay and then white diamonds white diamonds

00:16:59.240 she was just this lady on tv talking about perfumes that's like when i was a kid that's

00:17:06.240 like all i knew of her same here yeah okay are you ready to watch white diamonds wait really

00:17:11.540 i sent you the link dude yes yes yes

00:17:13.780 oh the editing it's like mtv cribs 0.56

00:17:19.660 it's like porno music

00:17:26.280 not so fast on ryan

00:17:33.520 these have always brought me love

00:17:37.660 white diamonds the intriguing fragrance from elizabeth taylor

00:17:43.000 these have always brought me luck oh my god i just got what's like the good version of a heart

00:17:49.020 attack i just got something that is like so much nostalgia isn't it wild i have seen this ad like

00:17:55.580 400 times and have not thought about it since it sort of like activated the same part of my brain

00:18:01.080 as like the vionetta commercial yeah yeah oh they're all eating vionetta yes yes i am like

00:18:08.760 Watching this ad, I am homesick with, like, the chicken pox in, like, elementary school, and I'm watching TV at, like, 11 a.m.

00:18:16.700 Yeah, that's right.

00:18:17.040 Where they have the weirdest shows and the weirdest ads, and, like, this is just always on.

00:18:21.820 That is my entry point, like, sort of chronologically in my life to Elizabeth Taylor stuff, right?

00:18:28.220 Yeah.

00:18:28.640 Is seeing her as this, like, sort of coded as glamorous lady in 80s terms, which means a wild look.

00:18:36.160 And also as a young person, you never see like, quote unquote, glamorous people who

00:18:40.180 are older than like 23.

00:18:41.740 Certainly not in the 80s. 0.99

00:18:42.860 You're like, what is this woman in like a normal age being on television? 0.96

00:18:47.640 Yeah. 0.98

00:18:47.940 And during this sort of cash grab era, during this extremely profitable era for Elizabeth

00:18:54.740 Taylor is when she writes her diet book, Elizabeth Takes Off.

00:18:59.320 We've circled back to the title of the show.

00:19:01.200 This is where we would put our first ad break if we were like an individual.

00:19:04.560 show and sell some mattresses so i just sent you the cover of elizabeth takes off and i would love

00:19:09.880 it if you would describe it oh wow this photo is amazing tell me what you are seeing okay this is

00:19:19.080 like a super glamour shot it looks like a marketing image for actual for the place glamour shots for

00:19:27.100 the service of glamour shots it's the like it's the like target photo studio like poster that

00:19:33.520 they have outside yes and yeah it says elizabeth takes off on weight gain weight loss self image

00:19:39.980 and self-esteem by elizabeth taylor and the whole thing is just like super like old money glamour 1.00

00:19:48.000 lady she has like pearl earrings the size of like golf balls and then her makeup she's like air 1.00

00:19:55.020 brushed but like in the pre-photoshop era so she just looks like sort of blurry and like washed 0.99

00:20:02.380 out she really does she looks um gorgeous in an extremely 80s way those giant pearl earrings

00:20:08.940 are surrounded by a huge gold braid yeah that big like clip-on earring kind of look from the 80s 0.99

00:20:17.440 she's wearing this like bubblegum pink kind of lipstick she's got this like sweetheart neckline 0.91

00:20:25.160 dress that is white she looks like resplendent and then the background looks like a driver's 0.99

00:20:31.040 background it's just like flat blue in a way that it's really funny to me so she looks like

00:20:36.740 amazing on this and it's totally like buy this book from a movie star so this is like end of

00:20:42.840 career this is like her looking back on her career and her legacy this is not a mid-career book this

00:20:48.660 is a retrospective right the author here is listed as elizabeth taylor but this is a time when her

00:20:56.560 top priorities are like making money and doing her advocacy work. So it is ghostwritten. It was

00:21:01.860 written by a writer named Jane Scovel. According to the Washington Post, this is as reported by

00:21:07.260 the Washington Post. Scovel also ghostwrote for Ginger Rogers, Tim Conway, and Kitty Dukakis,

00:21:14.660 among others. Dude, I, when I was a kid and dreaming about becoming a writer, I dreamed of

00:21:19.240 two things. One, becoming a ghostwriter for celebrity memoirs, and two, writing novelizations

00:21:24.820 of movies those were like my those were like my peak pinnacle goals as a writer my when i was a

00:21:30.800 kid and i dreamed of being a writer i dreamed of being a speech writer oh yeah and then i realized

00:21:36.460 that's like mostly not a job and when it is you have to be like like on a presidential campaign

00:21:43.180 or some like absolutely hellacious scenario that i absolutely don't ever want to be part of and i

00:21:49.700 I was like, I used to do like speech writing background stuff for like various UN people.

00:21:55.160 And there would be times when like they would be having a debate where they were like fighting each other about something.

00:22:00.180 And I would be writing both of their speeches.

00:22:03.420 What my colleague doesn't understand.

00:22:06.140 They're both feeding me lines.

00:22:08.020 It's like your version of like a stuffed animal tea party.

00:22:12.300 Just like acting out like the Lincoln Douglas debates.

00:22:15.120 so when elizabeth taylor releases this book her press like the quotes that she gives to the press 0.98

00:22:24.720 around this book are so fucking rough it is a real indication of how much shit people talked 0.98

00:22:33.480 about her body throughout her career and also how effectively that trained her at talking about 0.99

00:22:41.940 other people's bodies in those same terms too right so in the washington post piece they say

00:22:48.740 quote she doesn't buy the theory that as people age a bit more weight fills out their faces

00:22:54.460 attractively oh i think that's bunk i think that's a cop-out is what she says about that and she

00:23:01.020 talks throughout this book almost constantly about cop-outs she imagines these whole narratives that

00:23:10.160 people who are fatter than her have about their bodies and she summarily dismisses all of them

00:23:18.140 as excuses or cop-outs it's like a portrait of how bias gets reproduced right because it's not

00:23:25.780 only adopted by the majority it's also adopted by minorities themselves so you have her like 0.99

00:23:30.780 internalizing all this like anti-fat shit like the the terrible treatment that she's gotten 0.99

00:23:35.600 she's like yes you're correct about that like you were you were right to criticize me for my looks 0.99

00:23:40.680 and now she's like criticizing other people it's really bleak i think it's also like to your point

00:23:45.400 in addition to sort of showing how bias operates it also shows how abuse operates which is that we

00:23:50.380 like experience abuse and take it on uh and that causes a number of like really hard and horrific

00:23:57.440 outcomes in our lives right and one of those hard and horrific outcomes is that it trains us to be

00:24:02.300 abusive toward other people. Ultimately, it's like, well, if I hadn't been so fat,

00:24:06.000 they wouldn't have said those horrible things to me. Right? Absolutely. That's just another way

00:24:09.580 of defending that treatment, which is totally indefensible. That is essentially the thesis

00:24:13.780 of this book. Oh, God, Jesus Christ. The hard thing is like, I hear what you're saying about

00:24:19.380 like, part of how bias operates is that people on the downside of power take it in to Elizabeth

00:24:25.460 Taylor is not at any point in this book, someone that I would consider to be a fat person,

00:24:29.920 and all of the photos that I have seen of her and all of the everything.

00:24:33.040 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:24:33.620 She is not on the downside of power, but she is in an industry 1.00

00:24:37.440 where her body and sort of scrutiny of her body 0.98

00:24:40.940 is going to happen at a fever pitch,

00:24:43.280 and that will make her feel like she is on the downside of power. 0.97

00:24:47.060 Right. 0.99

00:24:47.760 Even though she remains this famously beautiful, famously wealthy, 0.95

00:24:51.540 famously everything woman, right?

00:24:53.360 It is kind of fascinating, right? 1.00

00:24:54.580 Because by Hollywood standards, I guess, she is fat. 0.92

00:24:58.480 by literally any other standard yeah she isn't it's really fucking weird and it mirrors i've had 0.85

00:25:04.040 at this point a number of conversations with people who are also who are like actors now

00:25:09.100 who will sort of toe a really careful line in their conversations with me and be like

00:25:15.060 i understand that i'm not a fat person and i also understand that i'm in an industry where i'm being

00:25:22.600 treated like a fat person it is kind of fascinating to me that like you've become

00:25:28.080 a person who celebrities come to when they feel weird about their bodies not that many but like

00:25:33.900 there have been a there have been a handful and i'm like this is a part of this work that i did

00:25:38.640 not anticipate i'm a famous person with feelings let me let me call aubrey yeah totally gonna tell

00:25:43.540 me totally so the book is divided into sections and we're just going to take it section by section

00:25:51.500 section one is titled how it happened a personal view the it happened here is how she gained weight

00:26:01.800 this entire section that is roughly a hundred pages of this book is just a little bit of her

00:26:09.780 life story mostly focused on her adult life through the lens of here's how i allowed it

00:26:16.640 to happen that at one point i was fatter than at another point this is what we were talking

00:26:21.240 about last episode about how like fat people are called upon to explain the origin stories of their

00:26:26.420 bodies yeah explain it right write a book of like you're calling me fat and i'm gonna tell you how i

00:26:31.860 got this way yeah totally and you're right yeah you're right but you shouldn't have said it is

00:26:36.500 sort of right the vibe right the narrative that she offers of her own body feels really to me

00:26:43.400 like an encapsulation of like very 80s sort of thinking about bodies and diets which is that

00:26:50.040 for her, her weight gain is both a reflection of her own low self-worth and a cause of that 0.94

00:26:57.900 low self-worth. She says at one point, quote, in my late forties, weight gain became a primary

00:27:03.120 factor in my feelings of self-worth. And when I finally had the courage to do something about

00:27:08.280 those added pounds, I was forced to acknowledge that loss of pride played a large role in the

00:27:13.840 reasons I put on weight in the first place. So she's sort of describing this like symbiotic

00:27:18.840 relationship that, again, feels not dissimilar from like what you would have heard at Weight

00:27:23.960 Watchers meetings at this time. So it's like basically everyone was terrible to me. And I

00:27:29.280 started to internalize that criticism where it became part of my self-worth. And the solution

00:27:34.380 to that is I should have lost weight. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. She also talks at this

00:27:40.540 point about how this wasn't just happening in the press. It was also happening in her personal

00:27:44.880 relationships. And she brings this up in sort of a sunny, chirpy way as part of the narrative.

00:27:51.640 And I don't find it sunny or chirpy. I'm sending you a quote about her friends.

00:27:57.460 She says, recently, some of my friends have told me how flabbergasted they were by the amount of

00:28:02.320 food I could pack away. The awful part is I wasn't even aware of some of my gastronomic feats.

00:28:07.980 It makes me wonder if it might motivate fatties to diet if someone filmed every meal and snack

00:28:13.680 they ate in a day the subject could then watch the movie and see firsthand just how much she was

00:28:20.800 consuming ah so what we're learning here is that brian wansink plagiarized this by trying to install

00:28:28.600 cameras in cafeterias and show you how fat you've become i forgot about that particular wrinkle in

00:28:34.440 the brian wansink legacy thank you for that reminder too bad this was published before ted

00:28:38.680 talks she could have given one with that little microphone but like again this is like one of

00:28:42.860 sort of countless quotes in this book where you're like, oh my God, your friends are horrific.

00:28:47.580 Why are your friends telling you as soon as you become thin again, that they're like, man,

00:28:53.000 you were really packing it in. It was gross, right? Is essentially what this quote is.

00:28:59.120 Does she use the term fatties throughout the book? 0.99

00:29:02.500 A lot. She uses it a lot. She also sort of talks about how this behavior shows up in the 1.00

00:29:08.400 entertainment industry. There are a couple of longer quotes in this episode. This is one of

00:29:13.080 them. But I think it's worth I'm like, I don't actually want to paraphrase it. Because the way

00:29:18.120 she writes it is so it would sound like I was exaggerating. Okay, so I just sent it to you.

00:29:23.920 She says, not so long ago, I was at a benefit with Joan Rivers, who had been foremost among

00:29:28.540 the entertainers who made my weight the butt of their jokes. When I was ready to leave,

00:29:32.940 she took my hand saying, Elizabeth, you look wonderful. I just want you to think about why

00:29:37.800 I said those things when you were heavy. Okay, I'll certainly do that, I answered and tried to

00:29:42.360 get away. She held onto my hand and repeated, no, no, I mean it. I want you to really think about

00:29:47.760 why I did it. I didn't have to think about it. I knew what she was implying. She was taking credit

00:29:52.600 for my losing weight. But I don't think you can justify cruelty and turn it around into a

00:29:57.180 benediction. Jokes were made about my weight because they got laughs, period. Joan Rivers,

00:30:01.940 in this particular anecdote, popping out of a fucking trash can to be like, you're welcome 0.99

00:30:07.160 for making fun of you because now you're thin yeah like making fun of you to a bunch of other 0.99

00:30:11.060 people like making fun of you publicly to like humiliate you yeah you're welcome bestie yeah

00:30:16.400 it's terrible there is also a moment at the time that she is at her fattest she gets a chicken

00:30:24.480 bone stuck in her throat and has to be rushed to the hospital to have it surgically removed

00:30:30.060 wow this story starts to make the rounds and it makes an appearance on saturday night live 0.97

00:30:35.860 of course and we're gonna watch a little clip of that oh fucking hell you're gonna make me watch 0.98

00:30:41.580 fucking can i tell you this episode musical guest the grateful dead what that's how 70s it is they're 0.98

00:30:50.380 playing casey jones i didn't even know that was like a thing i didn't know they were ever famous 0.99

00:30:54.500 enough to be on snl wow for sure for sure for sure buck henry was the fucking host it's wild 1.00

00:31:01.820 This cheap politician, John Warner's wife, is none other than perhaps the greatest actress that's ever lived 1.00

00:31:08.000 and whose face has set the standard for screen beauty for so many years.

00:31:11.580 Of course, I'm talking about Elizabeth Taylor.

00:31:13.920 Oh, God.

00:31:14.620 Liz, welcome to Celebrity Corner.

00:31:21.660 It's John Belushi.

00:31:24.220 Thanks, Bill. It's so nice to be here.

00:31:27.220 Liz, how does it feel to be Mrs. Almost-too-soon-to-tell-Senator-elect-Warner, anyway?

00:31:33.760 It's very exciting, Bill, but I'm looking forward to becoming a Washington hostess.

00:31:38.860 Liz, tell me this.

00:31:39.920 We heard that you promised, if John won the election,

00:31:43.460 that you would go on a diet from your present weight of 167 pounds

00:31:46.540 down to your Butterfield 8 weight of 120.

00:31:49.520 Is that true?

00:31:51.180 That's right.

00:31:52.340 I'm going to start on a strict diet.

00:31:54.080 Nothing but chicken. 0.99

00:31:54.720 that sounds great liz but to me i don't care how much you weigh just so your cheeks don't 1.00

00:31:59.720 puff up over those beautiful violet eyes that i've been in love with since national velvet 0.92

00:32:04.160 yeah yeah 12

00:32:06.180 can we be done now we're done oh that was excruciating right it's not there's not

00:32:24.500 even really a joke no there's not a joke that's what my notes say she's being played by a man

00:32:29.540 yep and he's fat yep like the joke is that she chokes on a chicken bone i guess but like that's

00:32:34.320 not even like that's not even a joke it's just a thing that happened yeah you're just acting out

00:32:38.860 like a factual thing but you're like laughing at it it's not funny there's not a setup there's not

00:32:43.420 a punch line there's nothing that is recognizable as a joke structure that's really bad there's not 0.88

00:32:48.040 even enough plot to recognize it as any kind of sketch structure right it's also fucked up because 0.81

00:32:53.580 you know she must have known when she was choking on the chicken bone that like this would be a joke 0.93

00:33:00.140 i'm sure she did right there's like this whole circular thing of like anything humiliating that

00:33:04.920 happens to you you're like oh great this is going to be a story and like because there's been decades

00:33:10.040 of speculation about my weight and like i now have a sort of injury that is like in some way

00:33:15.640 adjacent to food yeah like oh good months of discourse yep about this like really awful thing

00:33:21.360 that's happening to me. So in the book, she writes, quote, naturally, I've been asked if I

00:33:27.300 saw the Saturday Night Live television skit that featured a coal eyed John Belushi dressed in drag

00:33:34.320 doing a takeoff on the accident. Yes, I saw it. And I laughed. Oh, he was very funny. Oh, 0.85

00:33:41.340 how ironic and sad that that gifted young man satirized my excesses and then died of his own. 0.99

00:33:49.360 oh my god she's just like reproducing the worst parts of that fucking sketch she's writing this 0.98

00:33:56.200 after being in treatment for her own addictions and then it's like i'm a dunk on this guy for 0.97

00:34:01.300 doing the same like it's just like wow you really had the upper hand there and you just like happily

00:34:07.600 threw it away you keep showing me media and then i feel bad for her and then you read me

00:34:12.280 quotes from the book and then i stop feeling bad for her it's a real roller coaster the whole book

00:34:17.520 is a real roller coaster like these terrible things happen but it also made you like kind

00:34:22.920 of a terrible person like i don't know what to do with that she is all over the place and like i say

00:34:28.780 like a really complicated character heading in a bunch of different directions she in this section

00:34:35.780 often describes sort of her own body in the same breath that she describes her theory of fat people's

00:34:43.780 failings. Okay. So I'm going to send you a little quote. It says, for a long time, I closed my eyes

00:34:51.440 and saw what I wanted to see. I fooled myself by looking at my body with what I call obese eyes.

00:34:57.560 I truly think that some fat people perceive themselves with the same distorted image as

00:35:03.420 anorexics. No matter how skeletal the latter see themselves as fat, I admit I could never

00:35:09.820 totally deceive myself oh so wait she's saying like i thought i was thin but i was actually fat

00:35:17.720 and that's bad is that what she's saying right and then she's comparing that to her own definition

00:35:23.940 of anorexia which i think she's just talking about body dysmorphia which is different than

00:35:27.500 anorexia right but like yeah she's essentially just like i thought i was thin even though i was

00:35:33.860 so fat that's how fat people think about themselves and i'm like no that was you

00:35:38.660 yeah you're literally not fat that's why you didn't think of yourself as fat but also like

00:35:44.940 this whole god this whole thing is so dark totally how dare i felt okay about my body and also like

00:35:52.160 she is then seamlessly segwaying into a proposal of like a worldview that's just like right here's

00:35:59.980 what i did and that's the real problem with fat people and you're like wait a minute wait a minute 0.90

00:36:04.080 you made like seven leaps go back she's generalizing to other fat people from her own

00:36:08.440 experience which is that of like a movie star yes totally like kind of by definition there's only

00:36:14.140 like 20 of those in the country at this time so like most people are not being brutally scrutinized

00:36:20.600 by the media because most people are not movie stars just like you i am no longer haunted by my

00:36:26.480 images in national tabloids like the time i was on the cover of a magazine elizabeth yeah so that's

00:36:32.980 section one is essentially like she is both sort of like defending her body and telling all of

00:36:38.920 these absolute horror stories about how she's been treated and then again in the same breath

00:36:44.500 is turning it around and going and here's how you should think about fat people god we're only a

00:36:49.900 quarter of the way through this book jesus christ this is abysmal it's so rough this is like so

00:36:55.760 bleak dude this goes into the same category as many episodes that you and i have tried where i

00:37:00.320 was like we'll just do a diet book and it'll be elizabeth taylor's diet book and it'll be fun and

00:37:03.920 frivolous and fizzy and fluffy and it's not remember how i was gonna do the minnesota starvation

00:37:08.800 experiment and then i was like aubrey i can't yeah this is worse this is so bad okay we're now

00:37:16.280 heading into section two which is called gearing up for taking off some favorite tips oh okay now

00:37:24.680 we're into weight loss stuff okay now this feels like it could be slightly happier have you listened

00:37:29.720 to our show okay fair this is where she talks less about herself and more about other people

00:37:35.240 and more about like the mechanics of like how it's done right okay one of her diet tips is that 0.71

00:37:40.680 you should make bribes what incentivizing weight loss this is a thing that comes up for a lot of

00:37:46.180 dieters i will say as a kid i heard from a number of adults that i should like get myself clothes

00:37:52.220 that i really wanted that were like a size too small and that would be like my motivation oh

00:37:57.480 where like you put a photo of yourself on the fridge being thinner and then you like won't

00:38:02.020 eat the yogurt or whatever well that is also one of her tips she actually suggests at one point

00:38:06.440 she's like i did that for me i put my photo of my fattest self up on the fridge and then she's like

00:38:11.420 for you i'd suggest using a photo of yourself and not me and i'm like elizabeth who's gonna use a

00:38:16.680 photo of you that would be so weird to have a photo of elizabeth taylor on your fridge so she

00:38:21.720 talks about the importance of quote unquote making bribes and then she tells this horrifically

00:38:28.960 gremlin anecdote that she frames up as like i did a good deed let me tell you about a young woman i 0.85

00:38:35.320 met a couple years ago she was one of the most appealing girls i've ever known with fair hair

00:38:39.680 blue-eyed good looks she was bright vibrant and intelligent she was also obese she told me she 0.89

00:38:45.380 was getting married in six months and was trying to lose weight although i normally don't go around

00:38:49.540 poking my nose into other people's business, there are, as you know by now, occasions where

00:38:53.820 I can't keep from interfering. On impulse, I handed this girl a mimeographed copy of my diet

00:38:59.240 and said, follow this, and if you lose 50 pounds, I'll buy your wedding dress. You should have seen 0.97

00:39:04.540 the expression on her face. She took the diet home with her, and for a few weeks, she was afraid to

00:39:09.300 begin. She had been trying to slim down since she was a child. Her parents had taken her to

00:39:13.520 nutritionists and clinics and special summer camps until she just couldn't bear to even hear the word

00:39:18.300 diet. She might never have started mine had her fiance not stepped in. He told her at least to

00:39:24.380 give it a try. She did. Later, she told me it was the first time in her life she had actually enjoyed

00:39:30.000 eating while on a weight reduction plan. By the time her wedding day rolled around, she'd lost

00:39:34.300 45 pounds. I still bought the dress. I can't say that the promise of the dress alone did the trick,

00:39:39.640 but rewards do help. Oh, so it's somebody who's like tried losing weight her whole life and like

00:39:46.200 nothing has worked but here's my dumb celebrity plan and also like thank god her husband told her 1.00

00:39:53.460 to lose weight before the wedding right and also trash elizabeth taylor carrying around copies of 1.00

00:40:02.000 her diet for just such a moment on the off chance a fat person says anything in my presence like 1.00

00:40:11.400 have you tried this piece of paper right and that is like i took care of a major wedding expense

00:40:16.060 for this person by essentially like coercing them into dieting the other version of this story is

00:40:23.260 like i either gave somebody an eating disorder or made their existing eating disorder worse

00:40:28.100 you're welcome the best thing about being rich is lording money over people and making them do

00:40:32.940 things for you like a train seal it's wild to me that this is presented as like totally unbidden

00:40:39.260 good feedback where she was like she really liked the diet we're like what did you think she would

00:40:43.320 say to you yeah wedding dresses are expensive are you ready for another diet tip no but okay okay

00:40:49.460 well you're right not to be ready because the next diet tip is use threats and shame oh god of course

00:40:56.000 of course she talks about how you also need to use negative incentives like a husband who said

00:41:02.840 this to his wife hold please for quote i always play the terrible husband on this show uh darling

00:41:10.260 i know i can't keep nagging you about your eating habits so i've decided this will be my last word

00:41:16.100 the day your weight goes higher than your iq i'm leaving dude the average iq by definition 0.99

00:41:25.800 is 100 yep so unless your wife is like hella super genius this is a fucked up thing just i 0.99

00:41:32.480 mean it's a fucked up thing to say regardless it's a fucked up thing to say regardless but 1.00

00:41:35.220 You're comparing two famously fraught garbage measures, IQ and weight. 1.00

00:41:41.600 Right. 0.95

00:41:41.840 I want to do a eugenics twice in this conversation. 1.00

00:41:44.480 I want a wife that's thinner than she is smart. 1.00

00:41:47.660 What? 1.00

00:41:50.540 Usually that trade-off is not this explicit.

00:41:54.760 She also talks about sort of another dieting tip of hers being that you should write down

00:42:00.180 everything you eat, but that you shouldn't be weird about it socially. So you should be like

00:42:06.560 obsessive about writing it down, but quote, when you're dieting, be discreet. You don't have to

00:42:12.600 report to your acquaintances as though they were the commanding officers of your great war against

00:42:17.600 fat. Even your most supportive friends can become bored. Look, I don't disagree, right? Like talking

00:42:23.980 about diets is profoundly boring most of the time yes people who are on diets and also she's fully

00:42:31.840 like be neurotic but don't let other people know that you're being totally neurotic it's like the

00:42:36.340 french women don't get fat thing where it's like have a secret eating disorder yeah like don't 1.00

00:42:40.760 tell people how much you are fixating on your physical appearance and your diet she talks about 1.00

00:42:47.260 this whole thing of being like don't let on and like you know your friends might get bored and

00:42:54.000 then she immediately turns around and writes this eventually i learned to take an ornery kind of

00:43:00.820 pleasure in denying myself in the midst of plenty if you're on a diet and doing well rub it in be

00:43:07.760 outrageously virtuous and let your exaggerated behavior act as a shield pass up the wrong foods

00:43:14.940 as if they were stepping stones to hell and let the no thank yous fall like rain oh so like

00:43:22.180 ostentatiously be like no i'm not having a brownie yes this could have been a quote that 0.57

00:43:28.680 we could have used in our last episode where we talked about sort of like i don't like gaining

00:43:32.760 weight but i don't treat fat people differently this feels like a great example of like be

00:43:37.280 discreet about your diet but also make sure everyone else hurts because you're doing so well

00:43:41.960 another hallmark of these like self-help books is just totally contradictory advice

00:43:46.000 just like back to back her next diet tip is don't count calories reasonable stuff which sounds queen

00:43:53.380 like a really good idea but then she explains her reasons why i sent you a quote oh no i hate it

00:44:00.000 when i see little dots in the chat i'm really glad that i've given you some pavlovian conditioning 0.87

00:44:06.020 to be afraid of when i text or dm you like here comes something fucked up uh she says it's too 0.95

00:44:14.100 easy to become fixated on calories too tempting to say to yourself i can have 20 potato chips for 0.97

00:44:19.920 230 calories or six ounces of chicken for 310 calories and then go for the potato chips that's

00:44:26.300 no way to lose weight if you must know the number of calories you'll be getting on my diet it's

00:44:30.460 Somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 a day. 0.99

00:44:33.320 God, she's playing the hits, huh? 0.94

00:44:35.600 Don't count calories because you're not going to go low enough.

00:44:38.940 Because you're going to be hungry and grumpy all day.

00:44:41.900 On the maintenance plan, oh, she was so close.

00:44:44.420 The calories vary between 1,200 and 1,500 daily.

00:44:48.760 So starvation diet and then the quote-unquote maintenance phase in which you regain all the weight.

00:44:57.000 You're actually going to get fatter if you count your calories.

00:44:58.960 right because you're gonna go for the potato chips rather than the chicken roast this felt

00:45:03.580 to me like a really good example of why sort of anti-diet work is necessary but not sufficient

00:45:10.780 right if your analysis stops at diets are bad you can end up in weird places like this

00:45:17.900 right diets are bad because you actually don't diet well enough when you're on them right right

00:45:23.180 it feels to me related to sort of like how folks are currently invoking the phrase diet culture

00:45:28.940 to describe kind of everything. Diet culture is a term that allows thin folks to recenter

00:45:36.220 themselves in conversations that are often about anti-fatness or maybe about classism or maybe

00:45:41.700 about racism or might be about like a bunch of different things. But we call it diet culture

00:45:46.380 so that it provides a softer entry point for folks. But also when you call it diet culture,

00:45:51.580 it doesn't require any further analysis of folks. So again, in this case, right,

00:45:55.560 you've got elizabeth taylor ostensibly saying a good thing like don't count calories and then

00:46:00.420 being like the reason is this it's because you won't be like right essentially restrictive enough

00:46:06.140 with yourself right i'm glad this book allowed you to say something on the show that you've said

00:46:10.780 to me off the show numerous times yeah there we go the show doing what it's supposed to do

00:46:16.220 so there are more diet tips than that those are some of the sort of high points but it's worth

00:46:22.980 noting that this entire section is powered by this explicit disdain and distrust for fat people

00:46:32.160 she is constantly sort of batting off these sort of imagined excuses quote unquote that her readers

00:46:40.100 might have for not losing weight she has a whole section where she sort of repeatedly brings up

00:46:45.460 like unless you're one of those rare people with a bona fide medical condition please refrain from

00:46:51.820 using your thyroid as an excuse yeah there's always a little section where it's like oh well

00:46:57.540 there's some people that have an excuse but then they never like lean into that well maybe it's 0.96

00:47:02.320 just none of my fucking business how how big other people are right it's essentially paying lip service 0.96

00:47:07.580 too yeah some people might have a reason that i approve of for being fat and i'm still going to 0.99

00:47:12.680 assume when i'm out and about that every single fat person i see doesn't have an excuse right

00:47:17.320 despite knowing nothing about them absolutely but like yeah i'm just gonna treat everybody like 0.97

00:47:21.080 shit anyway just in case i wanted to close out this section with another like absolute gremlin 0.98

00:47:26.920 anecdote oh god some fat people will only pick at their food in public whenever i went out with a 0.98

00:47:34.000 certain friend of mine she would never touch the bread or rolls would order sensible entrees and 1.00

00:47:38.740 would never ask for any dessert except fruit meanwhile she weighed over 200 pounds for a long 1.00

00:47:44.460 time i bought the story that her metabolism was so screwed up she couldn't lose weight no matter 1.00

00:47:48.320 what. Maybe not, but one night after a dinner party at her house, I saw what she really ate.

00:47:53.280 She had cleared the dishes into the kitchen, and after she'd been absent for a while,

00:47:56.920 I decided to go and see if I could help with anything. I found her standing over the sink

00:48:01.020 scraping plates. But before she threw away the scraps, she was shoving the choice pieces into 0.64

00:48:06.100 her mouth. I felt so sorry for her. All the time she was blaming her metabolism, she had to live

00:48:11.700 with this monumental lust. I ducked away before she saw me, but I have never forgotten the sight

00:48:16.640 of her putting garbage into her mouth this is like a super fucked up thing to put in your book 0.98

00:48:21.000 because that person must know right who they're talking about that's the unwritten part of this 0.99

00:48:25.680 story is like she never saw me and i never said anything about it to her i just wrote about it in

00:48:31.580 my giant book that i did a full court press about put it in my best-selling book the function of

00:48:38.560 this anecdote is if you mistrust fat people and their narratives of their own bodies you're right

00:48:43.840 there's probably something else going on.

00:48:46.120 Yeah.

00:48:46.600 Bad people are liars is the moral of this story.

00:48:49.340 And like anyone who says like, I have a slow metabolism. 0.83

00:48:52.260 They're really just like binge eating every night.

00:48:54.200 Also, like, it is very strange to me that she reconfigures like the meal they just ate as

00:49:01.000 garbage.

00:49:01.960 Right, right, right. 1.00

00:49:02.240 You were just eating that off of a plate. 0.95

00:49:03.740 And then when the plate gets taken into the kitchen, you decide that this is now garbage. 0.89

00:49:07.280 What? 0.99

00:49:07.660 It's also so fucked up to act as if then people don't have occasional binge eating behavior, 0.99

00:49:12.520 right? 1.00

00:49:12.700 Like sometimes I will have like a box of Oreos in the house and I'll eat the whole fucking box. 0.99

00:49:16.960 Right. 0.99

00:49:17.140 And it sort of is a reverse engineered justification for the way that Elizabeth Taylor describes herself treating fat people throughout this book.

00:49:26.260 Right.

00:49:26.740 Is she's like, aha, I was right all along.

00:49:29.740 Right. 0.55

00:49:30.560 Right.

00:49:30.800 Genuinely, maybe this is a one off.

00:49:32.820 Genuinely, maybe this is something most people do when they're clearing plates.

00:49:36.720 Oh, there's still like a little piece of steak that looks pretty good on there.

00:49:40.300 Yoink, chunk.

00:49:41.420 Yeah.

00:49:41.560 the inclusion of this passage is only to be like gotcha to all fat people yeah at the expense of

00:49:50.560 her friend of years and years by her own account also not to like tell you how it feels to read

00:49:57.920 this as a fat person but isn't this also the thing that fat people are afraid of that like 0.87

00:50:02.360 their thin friends are fucking surveilling them all the time i don't think it's something that 0.97

00:50:06.020 i'm afraid of i think it's something that i'm aware of that it's happening all the time that 0.99

00:50:10.660 is like literally happening. It's really interesting to me. There is this sort of whole

00:50:14.260 line of rhetoric around anti-fatness that usually comes from thin people. That's like, no one's

00:50:20.880 paying as much attention as you are. And like, you're probably just imagining their judgment.

00:50:25.300 And I'm like, you need to walk through this world as a fat person because it's not imagined when 0.99

00:50:30.980 people just go, I've been noticing that you're eating this garbage. And maybe if you ate this 0.99

00:50:35.880 other garbage that i think is good you would be a thin person like me right people just like say it 0.98

00:50:41.560 outright to you this is why it feels like especially in sort of like fat activisty 0.91

00:50:46.940 spaces like fat people are oftentimes pretty slow to trust thin people yeah which like makes sense

00:50:52.480 to me right like so this is also like an instruction manual to anti-fatness sort of

00:50:57.580 throughout this book she's telling these little parables about like here's how you should treat

00:51:02.520 fat people here's what's really going on with them and they are based on just like aggressively

00:51:09.100 terrible behavior from her that is also learned right come from nowhere it comes from her own

00:51:15.480 trauma and then she is unleashing that trauma on the rest of the world whatever fold i'd love to 0.99

00:51:22.020 read a memoir from her fat friend being like my my messy ass friendship with elizabeth taylor 1.00

00:51:27.760 like i tried to be nice to this lady but like it was rough she made it hard sometimes day 27 of 0.97

00:51:34.060 knowing elizabeth taylor she's told me for the 4 000th time while she stares at me at least i'm

00:51:39.340 not that fat here's how i feel when i hang out with liz so section three is called the taylor

00:51:44.800 made diet which is a cute title okay t-a-y-l-o-r like her last name taylor made fair enough liz

00:51:50.680 we're giving this to you the diet itself is frankly very underwhelming yeah it is straightforwardly

00:51:56.460 a low fat, low calorie diet. She advocates for like aerobic exercise, quote unquote,

00:52:01.020 which she's just like, try stretching. And I'm like, is that aerobic? But okay. Yeah.

00:52:05.200 And her recipes. Oh, no. Oh, my God. Now we come to our favorite thing to do on the show.

00:52:11.400 Talk shit on recipes in diet books. She has a dessert where she's like, 0.99

00:52:15.680 you're gonna love this dessert. And I'm gonna send it to you. It's the most 80s shit.

00:52:19.860 It's gonna have cocaine and shoulder pads. 0.99

00:52:21.840 that would honestly be more interesting than what it is uh it says chocolate fantasy four servings

00:52:30.240 one envelope dietetic chocolate pudding mix half cup evaporated skim milk evaporated skim milk

00:52:37.580 one and one quarter cup black coffee one egg yolk combine pudding mix milk and coffee in a saucepan

00:52:45.280 and cook stirring over moderate heat until thickened remove from heat add egg yolks during

00:52:51.180 constantly return to heat pour into individual what so it's like a pudding it's jello pudding

00:52:58.260 plus black coffee and an egg yolk and she's like check out my amazing diet recipes the only thing

00:53:05.640 that's making this a quote-unquote diet recipe is the quote-unquote dietetic chocolate pudding

00:53:10.720 mix which just means like 80s language for low fat oh yeah this doesn't this is like the opposite

00:53:15.320 of decadent totally it's like air and wishes in the way that so much like 80s diet food is right

00:53:21.040 where you're just like, oh, it's like some kind of powder.

00:53:24.700 Right.

00:53:24.900 There's like a memory of the flavor of chocolate.

00:53:27.320 Right, right, right.

00:53:28.220 So then I'm going to send you also one of her suggested meal plans for the day.

00:53:34.000 Okay, diet day 10.

00:53:35.880 Breakfast, passion fruit, and then one slice of dry toast.

00:53:41.000 Dry toast.

00:53:41.920 Yep.

00:53:42.300 Lunch, cold crab salad.

00:53:44.920 Affordable for the everyman.

00:53:46.940 Snack crudités.

00:53:48.720 Oh, she's eating with Dr. Oz.

00:53:50.320 with dip just dip yep dinner is grilled lamb chops with rayita sauce pureed summer squash

00:53:58.340 and brown rice anytime during the day a half a cup of skim milk that's your like snack that's

00:54:05.940 your treat man that really hit the spot sorry breakfast is passion fruit lunch is crab and

00:54:12.440 dinner is lamb chops yeah she has like multiple recipes for lobster in this book nice and she

00:54:19.760 keeps doing the like if i can do it anyone can do it you're like elizabeth this is like cartoon

00:54:25.600 rich people food yeah and also someone else is making this for her too i mean she's not making

00:54:30.880 her own grilled lamb chops i presume she's not putting tweezers with gold leaf on top of her

00:54:36.640 lamb chops there was a piece in the cut where someone talked about trying the elizabeth taylor

00:54:44.300 diet okay at one point this person tries out one of the recipes in the diet and says quote

00:54:51.200 for dinner this evening i am supposed to cook a piece of steak then sandwich it in peanut butter

00:54:57.700 and bread oh what despite being so hungry i could eat my hand i cannot handle this concoction

00:55:04.800 i have three bites then throw the rest out but at least i've also declared bankruptcy

00:55:10.840 from buying all the lobster i bought a 40

00:55:14.540 ribeye and then slathered it with jiff

00:55:17.580 but then she goes on to say some really good things in the conclusion

00:55:26.900 one of her pieces of advice is she says that you should give of yourself where

00:55:31.120 she's just like i just was sitting around one day

00:55:33.860 going you know people really need to ease up on

00:55:36.140 people with hiv and aids and people are just being awful to them and somebody

00:55:39.100 ought to do something and then she was like and then i realized i have the time and resources to

00:55:43.500 do something oh yeah i'm a famous lady i'm a famous lady with a lot of money what if i spent 0.97

00:55:48.080 some of that money on doing the thing that seems like a problem to me yeah but also at the same

00:55:52.800 time in the back of my head i'm like bray but you were also raising funds for republicans during the 0.78

00:55:57.380 era where they were shutting the shit down i don't know man yeah and then in the conclusion she has 0.72

00:56:02.320 one quote that i found much more useful than almost the entire rest of the book she says 0.86

00:56:08.980 In overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles, I learned that my oversized body wasn't the

00:56:14.840 biggest barrier to my self-esteem. To regain a healthy sense of self-worth, I first had to break

00:56:20.080 down old fears and doubts and anxieties. Only then was I able to reshape my image successfully.

00:56:26.480 It's funny how these diet books include like some fairly prudent and nice advice,

00:56:31.720 but you just have to ignore the like 97% of the book that just totally negates them.

00:56:36.600 Right. Where she's like, it turns out that in order to fix my self-esteem, I had to work on

00:56:42.340 myself and fix my self-esteem, not lose weight. And I'm like, Elizabeth, why didn't you write

00:56:47.460 that book? And she also could have pushed some of this anger outward too and been like, you know

00:56:51.460 what? It's really fucked up for the National Enquirer to put another photo of me in the 0.96

00:56:55.260 magazine. He'd be like, how dare this lady be fat? Fuck you. I look great. Right. There's no point 1.00

00:56:59.980 in this book where she's like, you know what a good answer would be here is the same kind of

00:57:05.840 approach that I'm taking to my work around like HIV and AIDS, which is like, we need to reduce

00:57:09.960 stigma. We need to like lay off of people who were like all too eager to pile on to, right? Like

00:57:16.340 there are places where she's taking that note in her life. And there are places where she is not

00:57:22.820 and her politics around like fatness and body size and weight loss are a place where she is 1.00

00:57:27.820 not taking that note. I don't know if she would be able to given the upbringing that she had. 0.64

00:57:32.420 But I do think she could, like, let this opportunity to just, like, write a book about how craven fat people are.

00:57:40.060 She could just, like, let that opportunity pass her by. 0.85

00:57:42.580 What you're saying is why couldn't Liz be Lizzo?

00:57:45.260 I think that's a fair question.

00:58:02.420 Thank you.

Maintenance Phase - February 14, 2023

Elizabeth Taylor's ＂Elizabeth Takes Off＂

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