The basic difference between men and women isn`t hormones. It`s calories. To men, calories are what you get if you don`t brush your teeth. Or, at the very most, they`re something that concerns weight lifters and pregnant women. Not ordinary men.
To women, calories are Life.
They are to be worshipped and abhorred, objects of respect and contempt. They are the intangible bane of our existential plight, essential to our physical sustenance, instrumental in our spiritual demise.
Ask a man how many calories are in a small bag of potato chips and he`ll look at you like you`re crazy. Who cares?
Then ask a woman.
Casting her gaze to the horizon, eyes sadly reminiscent of a lost innocence, her voice will be barely audible as she replies: ”150.”
Whereas a man may not remember the date, or even the year, of his wedding, his wife can recall exactly what she was wearing on the day he proposed, what she ate, the caloric content and the percentage of fat grams.
With the exception of those women who will write to challenge the necessary premise of stereotyping for purposes of this column, most women place the highest priority on food, followed by fashion.
One obsession drives another.
If a woman eats a small bag of potato chips, she inflates like a helium balloon. Whereupon her clothes don`t fit. Whereupon she`s unhappy. Whereupon she eats. Whereupon she gains weight. And her clothes don`t fit. Etc.
You get the picture.
This is why one frequently sees four women in oversized jackets sharing a dessert. The oversized jacket conceals the oversized midriff.
The shared dessert conceals, at least psychologically, the fact that one is eating a disgustingly fattening dessert with enough calories, even divided into fourths, to provide for a small herd of nursing buffalo.
I have never seen four men share a dessert.
I have met few men who can recall what they`ve eaten for lunch, or even whether they`ve eaten lunch.
My husband came home from work last night, exhausted and hungry.
”What`s for supper?” he asked as though Julia Child and I had spent the afternoon sifting through recipes. ”I`m starved. I didn`t have lunch today.” Or did he? Oh, yeah, wait a minute; he did have lunch.
Not only had he eaten but also he had attended a huge ceremonial feast in honor of a friend receiving an award. Speeches were given, backs were patted, accomplishments were feted and lunch consisted of no fewer than four courses plus dessert.
Contrarily, in my day, lunch is the objective. I approach lunch as an athlete approaches a championship match. It begins with breakfast, which is normally cereal or dry toast, sans butter. (Fewer than 100 calories.) At 10 a.m. I pop my first Diet Coke (less than 1 calorie). By noon I am weak with hunger and swooning with anticipation.
The ritual of lunch is like the ritual of prayer. It is an exercise in consumptive self-denial. My friends and I read the menu as though it were a mail-order catalog, full of wonderful things that we neither need nor can afford.
We scan the appetizers, entrees, salads and desserts, calculating calories and percentages of fat grams with a precision that would startle our high school math teachers. We linger over each one, especially the pasta in basil cream sauce, then order a salad.
And, yes, we`ll just have ONE slice of that chocolate-peanut butter ice cream pie. With four forks, please.
