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Yeah, No. Not Happening.: How I Found Happiness Swearing Off Self-Improvement and Saying F**k It All—and How You Can Too
By
Published: May 21, 2020
Category:
Memoir
Karen Karbo must be one of my favorite writers, because I review all of her books. For a very good reason. She writes well-researched biographies with an original point-of-view. And they’re short; for readers like me, that’s a service. Even better is why she writes these books: she knows service is also selfish. She wants to learn from the masters, so their knowledge rubs off — on her, as well as you.
I have devoured The Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons from the World’s Most Elegant Woman. (“She looked like the girl at school who conned you into breaking the rules with her, then let you take all the blame.”)
I have devoured Julia Child Rules: Lessons on Savoring Life. (Julia, at 89: “If we could just have the kitchen and the bedroom, that would be all we need.” )
I have devoured How Georgia Became O’Keeffe: Lessons on the Art of Living. (“The greatest aphrodisiac is vitality.”)
And, most recently, In Praise of Difficult Women: Life Lessons From 29 Heroines Who Dared to Break the Rules.
Now — with remarkable prescience — she’s unleashed “Yeah, No. Not Happening: How I Found Happiness Swearing Off Self-Improvement and Saying F*ck It All — and How You Can Too.” Here’s a synopsis, from the opening: On March 3, 1979, I began a diet in which I lost twenty pounds. On April 19, 1988, I began a diet in which I lost twenty-three pounds. On June 13, 1998, I began a diet in which I lost thirty-seven pounds… I swore off self-improvement on April 8, 2017… To lunging after the ever-receding mirage of the perfect me, I would say yeah, no, not happening. [To read an excerpt, click here. To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
And now, exclusive to Head Butler… Karen Karbo.
KAREN KARBO: Self-Improvement in the Time of Self-Isolation
On February 2, a mere fifteen weeks ago, Jennifer Lopez and Shakira performed at the Super Bowl LIV half time show. Commentators, meaning everyone with internet, spent the following week squabbling about whether the show was outrageous, empowering, or good clean booty-shaking fun. Jennifer Weiner, writing in the New York Times, pointed out that the performance aside, everyone agreed on one thing: for fifty, J Lo looked fantastic. “’I can’t believe she’s 50 and looks so good!’ women said. Which quickly became, “I can’t believe I’m 50 and I look so bad!”
Harper’s Bazaar capitalized on our yearning and published J. Lo’s Exact Diet and Exercise routine, with the subhead “How she makes 50 looks like 30.” Ignoring the reality of genetics, and that looking like J. Lo is J. Lo’s full-time job, by mid-February women across the land jumpstarted clean eating regimes and arose in the dark to knock out a work-out that included fifty hanging ab raises. Or tried to.
Then, in March, came CoVid-19, and just like that the world changed. Gyms were shuttered, yoga studios went dark. All the establishments devoted to making sure our bodies were acceptably smooth, glistening, and toned, with the correct amount of hair where there was supposed to be hair, and no hair where there was supposed to be no hair: closed until further notice.
At first there was a bit of panic. Who would bark at us to sink lower into our squats? Who would administer our Botox and glue on our eyelash extensions? Left unattended, would our finger and toe nails become the curved talons of a bird of prey? And gulp — what about our grey roots?
But adjusting life during a pandemic distracted us from these concerns. Life was suddenly the week between Christmas and New Year during an ice storm. We were forced to find ways to amuse ourselves indoors that had little to do with our pre-CoVid-19 obsession with self-improvement. There was a run on 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles. Bread baking was now a thing, with a lot of spirited exchanges about sour dough starter. There were a lot of unfortunate livestreamed living room hootenannies.
A clarification: Grocery store clerks, postal workers, delivery people, bus drivers, janitors, utility maintenance people, police officers, and the heroic nurses and doctors who work double shifts weren’t tetchy with boredom, casting about for an activity to pass the time. Likewise, mothers of young children working remotely, who looked back wistfully on the good old days when they clocked ten hours at the office, then rushed home to shoulder the domestic burden. Now they’re also home schoolers living amid the hellscape of unfinished craft projects, cleaning up after breakfast only to have to start thinking about lunch, while waiting to join the next online meeting. When I say “we,” I mean privileged people who possess the luxury of time and ability to fend off panic attacks.
Now, well into May, we are weary of sheltering-in-place. Still, it has offered us a chance to be creative and acquire skills that have nothing to do with how we might look in a sequined body suit. Multiple media outlets have put the kibosh on the need to be productive, singing the praises of old-fashioned crafts. In a spirit of generosity, anyone who knows how to do anything is offering free online classes. If our social media posts are to be believed, a lot of us are drawing, painting, writing, planting gardens, perfecting souffles, mastering complicated hip hop moves in our living rooms. A friend who wants to get back at the neighbors is taking a Masterclass on learning to play the electric guitar.
These weeks in self-isolation have given us a chance to reflect on how we then shall live. In a time when high schoolers, their school year suspended, spend their days sewing much-needed masks for health care workers on the front lines, does anything seem more insipid than celebrity influencers and self-improvement gurus hawking their pricy supplements, programs and regimens?
This epoch is singular and in retrospect will seem brief. Even now, states are opening back up. The multi-billion-dollar self-improvement industry, eager to make up for lost revenue, will engage in a full court press to draw us back into the self-doubt and self-loathing that makes us feel we’re not good enough the way we are. We’ll be pressured to lose our self-isolation weight, and get back to trying to shave twenty years off our age with the help of some new workout or elixir. Advertisements for various “challenges” will rain down upon our heads. Messing around with watercolors may have been good enough for quarantine, but now it’s time to become the best version of YOU!
The impulse to feel like our old selves will be powerful. Hair salons will see a stampede of customers. (I will be first in line; these grey roots really are alarming). Spin classes will have waiting lists, and Weight Watchers will need to add extra meetings. It will feel good to be out in the world, buying new lipstick, springing for a wheatgrass shot, powering walking with friends, but let’s not lose sight of the knowledge we’ve gained, that when life gets real the best version of you is the one you are right now. See you at the gym.
