Rewriting US Weekly's Terrible, Sexist Bachelor Article

Hey US Weekly!! Could you try writing a less sexist article about The Bachelor? Like I know the program isn't exactly a bastion of feminist ideals but that doesn't mean you need to pile on.  Please review my edits below - pay attention to the part where I made things into attributes about Vanessa that you spun as flaws. 

Bachelor Nick Viall and Fiancee Vanessa Grimaldi Are in Love, But Have a ‘Volatile’ Relationship Face the Normal Challenges That Any Two Adults Who Are Essentially Strangers Living Apart Would Face.

With The Bachelor, happily ever after is the exception not the rule because two strangers, under unrealistic circumstances pledge to marry each other and/or gain short-term fame. See: Chris Soules and Whitney Bischoff, Juan Pablo Galavis and Nikki Ferrell, or any of the other 15 pairs fools who split once the helicopters landed and the hot tubs cooled. Season 21’s Nick Viall – who proposed to Vanessa Grimaldi in a Finnish winter wonderland on the Monday, March 13, finale is determined to avoid that fate get famous with or without Vanessa, whichever is easier.  “Nick and Vanessa,” a Bachelor source ABC Producer reveals in the new issue of US Weekly, “want to be in it for the long run. see how much they can make of this”

Easier said than done. Sources ABC producers say since the show wrapped in November, the LA entrepreneur unemployed software salesman from Wisconsin, 36, and the Montreal special-needs teacher, 29, have grappled with everything from her jealousy reasonable dislike for his man-whore nature to their future zip code.  “We love each other are attracted to each other and are just kind of riding this thing to see where it goes.”  Grimalidi said on After the Final Rose The 60 Minute garbage post show that allows ABC to maximize its ad revenue, “but there have been days that have been difficult where I wonder what the hell I’ve gotten myself into.” US breaks down the couple’s challenges.

They’re too Similar

“I’m a big personality self-focused, loudmouth” Viall told US recently, “and I push back really want to be famous.” Ditto (yeah, they used ‘ditto’ in an article SMH) Grimaldi, who chided Viall called Nick on his total douchery after Corinne Olympios transfixed him with her not-so-secret weapons (hint: there are two – THEY MEAN BOOBS Y’ALL – She showed him her boobs and let him touch them in front of everyone) “Vanessa is no pushover a grown ass woman. She’s not going to just do whatever he wants Who is acting like a grown ass woman!” says the insider ABC Producer. “He’s attracted to that but it makes their relationship volatile a two way street which is less fun that having a girl who is like a puppy with boobs.”

Neither Wants to Move

No U-Haul then, eh? (Nod to Canada because they all say ‘Eh’ there. See how international we are? We get it US, wink emoji) Multiple sources Multiple ABC Producers confirm Grimaldi will temporarily relocate to L.A. while Viall shoots Dancing With the Stars People You May Have Seen on TV Before 24 this spring, but after that is anyone’s guess  she’ll go back to Canada if he doesn’t get a job.  Viall said on ATFR that they’re “leaning toward the US he doesn’t want to move to Canada” but the second source says , “They still don’t know Vanessa has no intention of just giving up the job she loves and free health care for some 3 time Bachelor failure who cries more than John Boehner”

She’s Jealous  She is Understandably Not Cool Being Eskimo Sisters with Raven and Rachel

Viall licked whipped cream off Olympios’ chest. He called his chemistry with new Bachelorette Rachel Lindsay “explosive.” (Eeewww) And he made out with runner-up Raven Gates in the mud. Grimaldi has been among the 6 million or so viewers watching Viall get physical each week, and “she’s having a hard time seeing Nick romancing all these other women. As a smart, independent woman this logically makes her question his sincerity and his motives.” Says the show source  ABC producer (It was so tough, she skipped watching the fantasy suite dates!  nasty that she gave herself the full Silkwood and one of those Guwynneth Paltrow vagina steam cleans after watching the fantasy date episodes.)

He Prioritizes His Career  “Fame”

Viall said on the special that Grimaldi is “incredibly knows she needs to appear supportive “ of his choice to compete on DWTS. But now that he’s ready to rumba starting March 20, “that’s his main focus. He hopes this will give him a shot at lasting fame  a guest spot on Access Hollywood.”  Says the insider, who adds that the candid Grimaldi won’t tolerate being a wallflower forever wait forever for this Access Hollywood gig since software sales hasn’t been a real job description since 2002. “She’s not just going to be in his shadow. Support this nonsense forever.”

Beyonce let me down. She let me down hard.

So by now, pretty much everyone has heard the news that Beyoncé is expecting and has seen the Instagram photo announcing the big news. If you missed it, here is it is:

I bet many of you are asking the same questions I am:

First, is this for real or just her entry for Awkward Family Photos?

What’s with the netting?  Is she some kind of pregnant fish or mermaid that Jay Z picked up in the nets off his yacht OR…. is it an existential statement on the Zika virus and her fear of it?

Are those real flowers? I’d expect Bey to have real flowers but if I’m honest, they look fake AND kind of like an arrangement one might see at a mafia funeral. I mean just add “JOEY GUMS” in carnations and you are good to go.

Why is she sitting like that? That looks like it hurts. No one over 12 sits like that. Related question – how many people had to help her get up?

Why the blue ruffled panties and the burgundy bra? A matching set would have been nicer. I mean blue and burgundy don’t even go together. Though maybe the blue panties are a subliminal message that one is a boy and the other is whatever gender burgundy stands for?

Is she holding the babies in with her hands? Why do women do that – like pretend that they are holding their babies while they a doing just fine being held by her uterus?

Is she planning to tell her babies: “When we announced your birth, we thought the best thing to do was for me to get into a mismatched set of underwear and sit in front of a huge flower arrangement under a net to let people know how excited we were!”?

I bet her uterus hurts already and she can’t sleep more than 3 hours without having to pee. Pregnancy is a great equalizer. You can buy fancy cream for stretch marks but everybody has the same bladder.

Who took the picture? Did she get this done at the Glamour Shots at the Short Hills Mall or is it just a really hard working Sears Portrait artist?

I guess I’m glad for them. I mean as glad as one can be when a stranger posts a picture of themselves under a net, ostensibly in a forest to tell you they are having babies but really -- YOU. ARE. Beyoncé!  BEYONCÉ!! There’s nothing worse than when super rich people do crappy shit I could do myself.  You are supposed to represent the unattainable.  I want to see a picture of you and think to myself "Must be nice to have that much money. I bet I could look that good if I had that kind of cash." Now every girl from Weehawken to Little Rock is going to do something like this. I DON'T WANT BEYONCÉ TO LOOK LIKE EVERYONE ELSE! I can see everyone else anytime I want at the 7-11 on a Friday night! I expect Beyoncé too look like Beyoncé.  I expected something with flair, something with flash, something with class. I expected more Beyoncé. I expected more.

DELUXE LADY PACKAGE

So I recently went to get my mammogram because, where else can you feel the warm, tender hands of a middle-aged woman upon your breasts and avoid dying of cancer at the same time? It’s quite a combo! It was quick and easy AND I got my letter saying that I had an amazing, cancer free rack – ok I added the “amazing” but no cancer which is a great feeling and really offsets the squish of the machine - so everyone of appropriate age and risk should not delay, but go and have the experience yourself! 

I also had a pelvic ultrasound. For those of who are wondering, this is classified as the “Deluxe Lady Package Option”. Now if you haven’t had this done before, let me warn you. You will walk in the room and see this device:

This may look a little familiar and welcoming to some of you - AND you might think “a twenty dollar co-pay seems like a pretty good deal for a ‘happy ending.” DO NOT be fooled! They call it a 'wand' but it has NO magical qualities! NONE. It is basically a vibrator with no batteries – but it CAN take lovely pictures of your innards.  When you are having this done you will feel a bit like the base of a joystick but it doesn’t hurt as they are pretty free with the lube. Anyway, I’m on the table talking to the tech and she took this lovely photo which I call “Ovary in Blue”.

Then she says to me: “Looks like you’ve got some follicles on your ovaries there.”

And I say: “WooHoo! Looks like I’ve still got it” (fist pump)

Tech: “You need to remain still”

Me: “Ok, sorry. Just psyched to still be in the game!”

Tech: “Oh would you like more children?”

Me: “Hell no! You’d have to find a maternity straight jacket if I found myself with a womb full! So........... would you say I have the ovaries of a 26 year old woman?”

Tech: “No, I would not say that.”

Me: “Oh, um how about the ovaries of a 36 year old woman? That’s still something.”

Tech: “Yeah, No.”

Me: “Well what would you say then?”

Tech: “I’d say you have the ovaries of a 46 year old woman.”

Me:  

So in my uterus they did not find anything suspicious BUT they did find: a spinning wheel, a photo of me and Moses at his Bar Mitzvah, and a skate key I lost in 1977.  Anyway, in both cases I got wonderful news, a picture and confirmation that I’ve still got it! Take care of your lady business ladies and men, check your plums!

Family Christmas!

So my parents are old. Not like 60 “I’ll retire and open a vineyard” old, but like: keep your teeth in a glass by your bed, “That music just sounds like noise”, “What would I need a cell phone for?” old.  Like old with an ‘e’ old. They are 80 and 86. Lots of things happen when your parents get older but one of the worst is they become impossible to shop for at Christmas. 

My father doesn’t want anything new:  “I like my chair.” And my mother always insists that she doesn’t want anything. We tried skipping a gift for my mom that one Christmas back in ’05. I remember it well - we only speak of it in whispers. It is referred to as: ‘The Christmas of Silence and Tears’. My mother said in a tight voice: “Oh, its ok. I told you not to get me anything.” - and then went to stand silently at the kitchen sink with a single tear running down her cheek like that sad litter Indian from the 70’s commercial and only answered questions with a single word for the rest of the visit. 

After literally Googling “Gifts for an 80 year old woman” and finding my options were: Mugs for the “Year you Were Born”, bathroom safety devices and an abundance of cozy cat sweatshirts - I thought: "there has to be something better." I decided that I will only give my parents things that I ultimately want to have.  I mean, let’s be honest, according to the actuarial tables everything they own should be coming my way within say the next 5-10 years. So, it’s kind of like layaway.  So - This year my mom is getting a silver necklace from Tiffany and a Keurig. She’ll never use the Keurig: “What happens when they stop making those little cups? How will I get my coffee? I’ll stick with my Mr. Coffee thank you very much!” She will store the Keurig in the basement in the box for me. It will be good as new when it comes my way.   Let’s hope they still make those cups when the time comes!

So yes, Christmas there is an exercise in unbridled restraint. Let me explain, I have come to the conclusion that most people can only accept so much change over the course of their life.  At some point they have to stop and draw a line and say: “That’s it. I cannot and will not go any further!” For my parents 1984 was the cut off.  Madonna, answering machines and Miami Vice were as far as they could go - this includes Christmas.  It is also important to note that being Protestant Midwesterners of a certain age, they are also exceedingly thrifty and humble, like Lake Woebegone is an aesthetic to which they aspire.

So - long, long ago, every Christmas we would trudge en famille, out to the woods to cut down our own tree. My father would never let us get a really big one because: “They charge by the foot and anything over 5 feet it just too ‘showy’” (here he would make fluttering hand gestures to demonstrate just how ‘showy’ he felt it was) but around 1984 they switched to a fake table top tree that my mother found by the side of road one year: “…and I was just driving by and I saw it and I said:  ‘Why would anyone throw out a perfectly good tree like that?’” So yeah, we have a ‘trash tree’ in the corner of the family room about which my Dad says: “Its new to me”, except that it is 20 years old. No new ornaments have been added.  The playdough snowman ornament I made is still there minus his nose and hat along with the macaroni Jesus glued to construction paper. There is a heavy overall Charlie Brown Christmas tree vibe going on.  AND my mother saves….wait for it….. the tinsel. Yes every year she methodically collects the tinsel from the tree and carefully, strand by strand, places it back into the container from whence it came.  We only got one box of tinsel (see above regarding being ‘showy’) and it was only on the top half of the tree so the cats wouldn’t eat it and slice their intestines up.

My mother also bought several giant rolls of wrapping paper from a department store that was going out of business in the 80’s and…… we are STILL using that very paper today. Same paper every year.  When we get together with the cousins we don’t have to do tags because everyone knows that paper.  You would think that with such an abundance of paper we could tear at the gifts when we get them, but no! Each gift should be opened with surgical precision so we can: “…save the paper! It is such good paper you know.” This will cue my father to produce his pocketknife, which he literally carries in his pocket all the time.  He will use said knife to carefully cut the tape on the paper, which he will hand to my mother for careful folding.  Each of the children has been given a pocketknife and EVERY year my father will say: “Where’s your pocket knife? Why am I the only one who has one?” as if carrying a pocketknife daily is a totally normal practice. 

So, there is literally no room for excess, but they like to pretend that they are indulgent which leads my mother to wrap virtually every item that is given. Now as a kid this was problematic because I would come downstairs and see just like a million gifts with my name on it and feel pretty jazzed, but… not so fast!  My mother would buy a 6 pack of socks and then wrap each pair separately.  She would give me a roll of quarters, carefully wrapped or a single candy bar with a bow. When you are 10 this gets disappointing really quickly. She believed that 10 pennies was worth more than a dime. So instead of the $50 boom box, I would get 5 things, each worth 10 dollars but all I really wanted was the Toshiba boom box!  Then of course she would rub her back and carry on about all the hours she spent wrapping things.  Last year I gave them an 8x10 framed picture of my family for Christmas and I felt like I was giving them the most garish gift! I think I would have felt more comfortable giving them the Kama Sutra – because at least that can be tucked away!  I cannot overstate the level of understatedness here.  At no point should one draw attention to oneself unless you are singing loudly and clearly in the church choir.  For their 50^th anniversary we gave them an 8x10 canvas image of them on their wedding day. It is currently displayed in my mother’s bedroom at waist level on the far side of her dresser:  “Wouldn’t want people thinking we are full of ourselves now would we?”

Now the dark side of my parents is the Christmas card list. I know no one sends them anymore but it used to be a very big deal and it still is to them.  My parents have an extensive list of people to whom they send cards. When we were younger there was a family picture, but not too showy so just like us in a barren field looking tired. So people could see what we looked like but also know that we weren’t too full of ourselves - and then each year my father writes a letter to accompany the photo card.  His letter is the antithesis of the letters you see today. I mean he hardly mentions any of us and plays down everything that happened: “Carol is busy with church, the kids are going to school and Chuck is still employed.” In describing our vacations it would read: “Well, we took a trip to Yellowstone. It was nice but we had a flat tire a broken axel and there were roaches in the Motel 6. Good family time.”  But the list -  I mean she has a file with hundreds of addresses, and on each card for each family or friend there is a little chart with the years all listed in columns so she can keep track of who sent HER a card.  If you have a letter ‘N’ in two consecutive columns you are cut from the family Christmas card list. She is heartless and swift.  At the back of the card box is a whole section devoted to the fallen.  I think she keeps them so in case someone suddenly sends one they can be placed back in the rotation but - I also think she derives a little satisfaction from looking at the pile of people she successfully excised from the gift of our dreary photo and humble missive, and thinks to herself: “Serves them right.” 

Coming soon: A Very Sober Bacchanal.