“THE MEDITERRANEAN TOURIST”: MARILYN PENN
It became clear to me on a recent trip that I was declining many offers to participate in various activities because of the inordinate demands of my hair. I either had to wash it, set it, fix it, or re-do it – so much so, that a friend suggested it was like travelling with an extra person. That revelation struck home: my hair was behaving like a moody adolescent and I not only had to tolerate it but accommodate it and give in to its bi-polar attitudes. On warm, sunny days, it simply sat down and refused to cooperate. On humid, windy days, it chose to give me that petulant frizz – the kind of spiteful behavior that mocks you with its arbitrariness. It said: I know there’s no reason for me to do this except to show that I can and you can’t do anything to stop me. And then sometimes, especially indoors in the evening, it was totally compliant and as easy to be with as an affectionate puppy who wants desperately to please. Of course I could choose to ignore it and often I did, only to come back to my hotel later to see it sitting on top of my head like a smashed slice of hair pie – with lumps and bumps where none had been noticed earlier. “Ignore me at your peril,” it said and laughed out loud.
It was on a day that I was determined to be the adult in this relationship that I arrived in Malta and chose to spend an hour sitting in the center of Valetta watching the local Malteds go about their quotidian tasks. It was some sort of school holiday and a constant stream of young mothers pushing strollers ambled by, sometimes accompanied by an older replica of the young woman – her mother. It soon became apparent that there was a prevailing body type on this island and that was a short legged, wide-midriffed endomorph with enormous pendulous breasts. They all seemed confident and comfortable in their skin. But wait a minute, I thought – What about the Mediterranean diet ? Here I was, smack in the middle of that geographic concept and nobody on this island looked any fitter than NY women on a subway headed for an outer borough at rush hour. Where was the evidence that olive oil, nuts and eggplant held rewards for the consumer? And if those rewards were strictly heart-healthy and you still had to live your life looking blousy and out of shape – was that a sufficient payoff for giving up cheeseburgers and salted caramel ice cream?
At that moment I had an epiphany. Everything in our culture has been subjected to branding and once that’s been done, people consider it a fait accompli and accept it. So you follow some families with good longevity and write down what they eat at home and call it The Mediterranean Diet. You get a Brazilian model who’s got tall, long-legged, high-breasted German genes and she becomes the stand-in for the shtumpik Malteds and their cousins, the southern Italians. People start munching nuts for breakfast, hoping they’ll soon resemble the Brazilian beauty but all that happens is they live two years longer than the rest of us with bodies that are as tough to manage as my hair. The good part is that the Malteds and Sicilians have that Rhett Butler ‘I don’t give a damn” je ne sais quoi. When I came back to the hotel after my great awakening, I looked in the mirror and saw an average sized woman with longish legs and good enough proportions. On her head she wore a disdainful sample of bed-head which she instantly labelled “The Mediterranean Tourist.” She was certain this would catch on back in the New World
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