Do you remember back in 1988, Oprah came on stage in her talk show in a pair of size 10 Calvin Klein jeans. It was amazing because she had lost 67 pounds in 4 months on a liquid diet over her show's summer break. The best part of this story, for this blog's perspective, was that those jeans she was wearing was a pair of jeans she used to wear back in her media days in Baltimore. Her goal was to get back into those jeans, and she succeeded. In that show, she wheeled out a red kid's wagon filled with the equivalent of 67 pounds of animal fat. The fat was a way to add dramatic visual effect to the magnitude of her weight loss. I remember just looking at that wagon full of fat, and thinking how gross it was. I was just trying to imagine 20 pounds of that fat stuck to my body.
Oprah looked smashing, and boy did she have that glare in her eye. You know that glimmer that says,"Look people, I am now a skinny ass bitch in my Calvins just like the rest of yous TV bitches. Step off." I was real happy for her for losing all that weight. I mean if you think about it, 67 pounds is about the weight of a 2nd grade child. But, I was worried because she didn't lose that weight the healthy way. All she did was take in liquids and no food. In essence, she starved herself to get skinny.
Recently, Oprah released a DVD collection that celebrates the last 20 years of her show. What an amazing accomplishment. In promoting the DVD collection Oprah talks about that 67 pound loss on the liquid diet, and calls it her "biggest, fattest" mistake. She started eating real food after that episode and a year later she gained back 17 of the 67 pounds. Oprah's example shows us that no matter how successful you may be the dream to be in skinny jeans can be all consuming. Making tons of money, having power, and having fame still cannot curb that powerful dream. As we get older, and make mistakes, the means to get into the skinny jeans may become wiser and more realistic, but the dream still lingers.
Even though, she said it was a bug, fat mistake, I would bet cash that Oprah still has that pair of jeans she wore on that particular show in her closet. It's probably buried deep somewhere in a warehouse she calls her closet, but I bet it's in there somewhere. If you are in the know, please share with the rest of us.
Photo from Oprah.com Top 20 Moments
