“If I had as many love affairs as you give me credit for, I would be speaking to you from a jar at the Harvard Medical School.”
~ Frank Sinatra ~

Ahh, Frank. Everybody loves the Frank. Or at least he was convinced of that.

Is anything as suave & steeped in romance as Frank crooning to you as you eat spaghetti? Maybe… But at least you like pasta, right? Or at least eating…? No? Well, you can’t please everybody.

So even if Mr. Sinatra had as many women as rumored, he wouldn’t have pleased all of them either. And he likely wouldn’t have cared.

But women care. We can please 4,566,782 people, and we worry about the one we didn’t please. Why is that?

Thinking about all that just makes me want some pasta. Or Frank, crooning in my ear as I swirl around a dance floor…

…I hope I dance well enough… that guy over there is looking at me funny…

See? Even in my fantasies, someone isn’t thrilled with me.

That’s why, I guess, we see women’s magazines & television talk shows pander to and exploit female insecurities. Even while they profess to be helping women get over their self-loathing, they sensationalize — ridiculing the person, mocking the appearance of the body part they already are insecure about. Sometimes they even make fun of the women who are proud of the way they or their body part appears. Just look at these casting calls from the past two days:

• EMMY AWARD WINNING TV SHOW IS CASTING FOR WOMEN WHO HAVE A SPECIFIC BODY PART THEY HATE
• Casting Women who wear long, fake, crazy nails!
• Casting Do you hate your own hair? Or do you hate other people’s hair?
• CASTING CALL: HAVE YOU GAINED WEIGHT SINCE YOUR WEDDING DAY?
• DOES YOUR SPOUSE WEAR A SNUGGIE? DO YOU HATE IT? Casting Now
• Casting Outspoken women of all sizes to talk about weight issues

Can a Snuggie or long nails or body fat really be such a relationship problem? I argue that whoever thinks these things are (or can be) relationship problems is the one with a real problem. And I don’t say that glibly.

Whoever gives the status of the Snuggie so much importance that it not only becomes a “constant source of arguing in your home” but you’d be willing to go on television and argue it some more clearly has a carnival-fun-house-mirror view of reality.

If this is how you see yourself, you have a toxic relationship with yourself.

If this is how you see and treat your spouse, you have a toxic relationship with them.

And clearly the media that exploits these people for (they hope!) the money in our pockets has a toxic relationship with their guests and their audiences.

And if you can see just how distorted that is (and I pray that you do!), then you ought to be able to replace the word “Snuggie” with “hair,” “weight,” “fingernails,” or whatever silly appearance-obsessed insecurity-driven show topics show up in casting calls later this week.

I refuse to watch these shows, to prey on the insecurities of others as entertainment. And whenever someone in my fantasies starts to look at me funny, I give them the boot.

I may not be as full of myself as Sinatra was; but I sure as hell won’t be so insecure with myself (or my spouse, for that matter) that I’d consider myself freakish enough to participate in one of these shows — or be in a jar at the Harvard Medical School.