March 15, 2015
There’s a line in the movie “Forrest Gump” in which Forrest, in Washington, D.C. to meet President Johnson following his meritorious service in Viet Nam, runs into childhood friend and love Jenny, who’s also in the nation’s capital, but for a different reason – she’s there to protest the war that Forrest has just been fighting. After spending some time together, Forrest meets Jenny’s boyfriend du jour, an abusive jerk who smacks her around, causing Forrest to get up in his grille as he tells Jenny that heading to California with this idiot is a bad idea. Rising to his full height, fists clenched, he tells her, “I think you should go back to GREENBOW, ALABAMA!” Which is where they both grew up, and which is where he’s headed, after he finishes playing ping pong and all.
Even though Forrest is talking to Jenny expressing his wish that she return with him to their hometown, we in the O’Connor Household have decided, for no other reason than that it’s fun to say, that when someone is being an asshole, they should go back to GREENBOW, ALABAMA. If we had our way, Greenbow would be the current home of the 2013 – 2014 Seattle Seahawks, proponents of fundamentalist religions that don’t think women should be educated, and most Republican members of Congress.
Now, that’s a lot of exposition and back story for one little blog, but I think you’re going to agree it was worth it, because we here at the WRSO713 Blogspot (that’s me) are introducing a new recurring feature, and it’s called, “Go Back to Greenbow, Alabama, ___ (fill in the blank).” It’s sort of like how Mike and Mike on ESPN used to have “Just Shut Up,” or Keith Olberman’s “Worst Person Alive.” Not that I am half the journalist that either Mike Greenberg or Keith Olberman are (I may be half the journalist Mike Golic is, but he’s about 17,000 times the football player I am). So, it’s a little thing we’re going to be doing from time to time, and when you see me telling someone to go back to Greenbow, Alabama, you will know that I think said person is an asshole.
It goes without saying, of course, that all of this is terribly unfair to Greenbow, Alabama (if in fact such a place even exists), which should not be forced to serve as the default destination for the world’s assholes. But I’ve got one coming for you who, even though she is in fact an asshole, is very pretty:
I’m talking about Giselle Bundchen. God, what an asshole. Why, you may ask, is Giselle Bundchen an asshole? It’s not because I am a Denver Broncos fan and her husband plays for the Patriots and Bill Belichek (perhaps the most dishonest coach in NFL history, but we’ll let that go), or that said husband is currently embroiled in Deflategate (although that might make him an asshole, too – pity the couple’s children)? No, Giselle Bundchen should go back to Greenbow Alabama on her own merit entirely. Let’s explore why:
Giselle is a staggeringly beautiful woman, probably one of the most beautiful women in the world (not why she’s an asshole). She’s made millions of dollars as a lingerie model (also not the reason we don’t like her, although she is partially culpable for contributing to the objectification of women and the ridiculous standards of feminine beauty that persist even today), and she probably wouldn’t be married to fabulously handsome and talented quarterback who also makes millions of dollars if she weren’t a staggeringly beautiful lingerie model (againm not the reason she should be packing her bags and buying a plane ticket to the Deep South).
Here’s the reason why Giselle Bundchen is an asshole: Every bit of her great good fortune is exclusively attributable to the magnificent stroke of luck of good genes—a fact that should be impossible for her not to appreciate given the fact that she has a TWIN SISTER who, though pretty, is nowhere near the goddess that Giselle is. Giselle’s success and wealth and privilege are the sole result of being beautiful – something she had absolutely ZERO TO DO WITH. Sure, she has to hold still while some photographer takes her picture, she has to know how to turn her head to just the right angle, and she has to be able to walk on really high heels while wearing a diamond-encrusted bra and panties and angel wings, and I am sure that’s just as hard as, like, working in the Pacific Northwest in January building a pipeline or laboring as a roofer in Miami in July. But let’s face it – she’s lead a charmed life for no other reason—none—than that she’s gorgeous. AND THAT’S OKAY.
What’s not okay – at least as far as I am concerned – is the shocking level of arrogance and insensitivity this woman exhibits just about every time she opens her mouth. One of the things she said that drew some fire not too long ago was this:
“I did kung fu up until two weeks before Benjamin was born, and yoga three days a week. I think a lot of people get pregnant and decide they can turn into garbage disposals. I was mindful about what I ate, and I gained only 30 pounds.”
Now, any OB/GYN will tell you that pregnancy is not a license to eat everything in sight and that you should strive to eat in a healthy manner, and sure, we should all do that, along with drinking 64 ounces of water a day, walking five miles, and eliminating from our diet anything that isn’t whole wheat or made of kale. But here are a few things I’d like to point out to Ms. Bundchen: First of all, if your job depends upon you looking fuckable three days after you give birth, if your marketability is entirely contingent upon being able to bounce a quarter off your butt, then making sure you don’t gain excess weight during pregnancy may be slightly more important than those of us who make our living the old-fashioned way (you know…doing anything other than being a model). For the rest of us trolls, it’s not quite so simple, especially since GB probably had (and has) a personal chef who made sure the food she ate while pregnant was low-calorie and delicious. Maybe I’m going out on a limb here, but I sort of think that anyone with the resources Miss Bundchen had available to her during her pregnancy is more likely to have access to the kind of pregnancy diet that puts no more than 30 pounds on your Victoria’s Secret body.
But Giselle was doing kung fu and yoga, and I guess I have to hand it to her that she made time for exercise. When I was pregnant, I was wasting my time working a full-time job and taking care of other children, but yeah, kung fu would have been a good way to keep off those nasty pregnancy pounds. Since Giselle’s an active girl, moreover, her childbirth “wasn’t even painful, not even a little bit.” Because we all know that as long as you do kung fu and yoga during pregnancy, and as long as you eat right, you’ll have a painless delivery.
Giselle has also been very vocal about the importance of breastfeeding, and while I, too, am a huge advocate of this form of infant nutrition, I don’t think I would say something as insensitive as the following:
”Some people here (in the US) think they don’t have to breastfeed, and I think ‘Are you going to give chemical food to your child when they are so little?’”
I haven’t read the ingredients list on a can of formula recently, and again, I’m a proponent of nursing, but what Giselle apparently doesn’t realize is that some women can’t breastfeed, including women who didn’t give birth to their children, or that sometimes, formula is the only option. But Giselle thinks it’s important to breastfeed, so much so that she had a photo taken of her getting her nails done while someone combed out her hair and someone else applied her makeup, and all the while…she was breastfeeding! So, you know, if you can breastfeed while four people are teasing your hair and doing your eyeliner, there is absolutely NO REASON AT ALL why all the rest of us lazy moms can’t get off our fat, non-kung-fu’d asses to nurse our babies. What’s that, you say – you have to empty the dishwasher and fold the laundry and drive your oldest to preschool? No excuses. Burn those fucking yoga pants and stained t-shirt, put on your goddamned lingerie, blow out your hair, and look beatific while your gorgeous infant sweetly suckles at your breast. We don’t care if you don’t have live-in staff to make you a lunch of boiled chicken and quinoa – suck it up!
If Giselle Bundchen had been born ugly, no one outside of her family would have ever heard of her, and she would have no platform for her hopelessly out-of-touch nonsense. Since she’s sort of an idiot, I will say this in small words that her atrophied brain can comprehend:
When you have managed to attain such a stratospheric level of privilege based upon nothing more than having won a genetic lottery, you don’t get to sit in judgment of the rest of us mere mortals. You don’t.
If, however, you want to continue to level your ridiculously out-of-touch opinions at the rest of us, here’s what you have to do first: Fire your chef, maids, nannies, housekeepers, drivers, dressers, stylists, and personal assistants, move into a split level, do your own grocery shopping and scrub your own toilets, and then – maybe – you can tell the rest of us about how we should be exercising on our way in to the delivery room for our pain-free labor. Until then, maybe you can limit yourself to criticizing your husband’s incompetent teammates, or maybe, maybe…you could GO BACK TO GREENBOW, ALABAMA!
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