I hate peas.
They're the only food I've ever gagged on, they're the one food that Grown-Up Heather has yet to decide are edible in ANY way, they still creep me out with their fleshy little skin and their mushy, squishy, grainy insides.
I hate 'em.
That's nice, Heather. What's that have to do with the price of -- (shoot - I can't remember how that idiom goes...the price of milk? of barbie dolls? of tater tots? beats me). Nice, Heather; what's that got to do with the price of Sour Patch Kids?
Er, not much, but I'm gonna try to make some sort of parallel anyway, I guess. Fair warning.
See, for the most part, foods that were banished from my grade school repertoire and declared unilaterally "GROSS" have been, albeit slowly, allowed to infiltrate the present diet. I discover that things I assumed I hated for YEARS are actually, mostly, pretty tasty.
Tomatoes. Zucchini. Cheddar cheese (in moderation). Green beans. Even more recently - red wine, Chinese food, pork. Acorn squash. Eggplant. Marshmallows. Yogurt. Some chocolate. For the most part (with the exception of peas and....ooh, sour cream - yuck) I've realized that these gastronomic bad guys weren't really all that bad. I mean, I'm not going to race out and blow cash on Panda Express in this lifetime or sit down with a plate of nothing but pork, but I'll eat it and not make my "bourbon face." Bourbon face. The face (and entire body shudder, actually) that happens if I take a sip. The smell, the taste, the way a perfectly good maraschino cherry can suck up all of that icky, creepy bourbon and catch me by surprise when I THINK I'm just going to sink my teeth into red food coloring and some artificial flavor. Oh no. Bourbon cherries. Anyway.
So it goes with celebrities.
I'm a catty, judgmental, nit-picky sort of girl. Famous people can do something as simple as date the wrong person and I'll be all kinds of turned against them. Or I can love them with a startlingly unhealthy devotion for no reason at all. Natalie Portman, for instance. I love her. She can do no wrong. Why? We have the same birthday. Same year, same day. We're soul mates or something.
BUT, I've been feeling a little generous lately with my "Ugh, you're an obnoxious twit, I can't stand you" list.
Giving people a free pass to leap off the list. Cut them a little slack. Actually admit that I don't hate them. No, Taylor Swift gets no mercy, sorry.
Who does? For starters, Blake Lively gets a free pass this week. The "peas and sour cream" of Hollywood are sliding onto my "some chocolate and the occasional slice of melted cheddar" list. Which is not to say she's made it to the "champagne and cheeseburgers" list, just that I don't necessarily want her to be hit by a bus this week. Ooh, by the way, speaking of cheeseburgers, I just discovered that Jack in the Box has a Jr Bacon Cheeseburger that's only a DOLLAR and 400-and some calories and, while a little limp and lacking a certain amount of burger panache, is actually QUITE good when a girl is on a cash and calorie budget and also has a compulsive Friday "Treat Myself to Junk Food at Lunch" habit. Just so you know.
We'll start with Blake. I'm not sure why I immediately couldn't stand this girl - maybe because I'm female, and much like our aversion to Jessica Alba, we're generally averse to women about whom men are wont to say things like, "Dude - I'd tear that sh*t up" or other such nonsense that's particularly encouraging to us normal, "Not Blake or Jessica" types.
Also: she's an actress who can't act. But she keeps getting roles. And keeps dating high-profile men. And keeps being called an "actress," when clearly, as any of us who have seen her in either of the Traveling Pants travesties would know: this is simply not the case. She's a head of hair with the world's most enviable legs. Who also gets attention for being a "fashionista" when the only evidence I've seen that warrants such a label is her inexcusable proclivity toward ankle booties. And harem pants. And being seen frequently alongside Karl Lagerfeld and Anna Wintour.
So what changed?
The delightful movie "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee," In which she "non-acted" in the role of a younger version of Robin Wright's grown-up character who's married to octogenarian Alan Arkin. She got to play this sort of affected, bohemian, orphan of sorts who eventually flees the nest because of her drug-addicted mother, played to the hilt by a very fantastic Maria Bello who has really nailed Acting Like a Junkie. Basically it was an excuse for the movie to dress her in awesome retro clothing and have her walk listlessly down a beach looking lost and hungry and hungover.
After watching this (absolutely delightful) movie, something about my opinion of her changed. I sort of took her for what she is: a girl who can't act, particularly, but can really decorate the hell out of a movie screen if the role calls for someone to stand around and look pretty - maybe sort of cry from time to time, and generally look fantastic in clothes.
So, I was expecting too much and hating her for expecting her to be something that even the studios don't seem to expect her to be. They know she's glorified set dressing, but she's appealing that way. In a beachy, all-American, Barbie-doll sort of way that made me want to slap on some messy eyeliner and a blonde wig and go wander the beach in a mini-skirt. Cuz it had this cool sort of "sexy-trashy-orphan" cache that I liked.
Blake gets a pass. I no longer loathe her. And, in fact, she's done well not to mess with her face, surgically speaking, which I admire, too. She's got her natural lips and her natural nose and they're sort of girl-next-door-esque and I like that. She seems benign. And it's hard to hate pretty and benign, even when she's trying to convince us that she's an edgy, high-fashion actress. She's not peas, she's marshmallows.
Oh - and about that "Pippa Lee" movie? See it! It's surprisingly delightful - tackles a rather heavy subject with some lightheartedness and charm. And Robin Wright is aging BEAUTIFULLY. She was luminous in this film in a completely natural way that I adored.
Plus, with cameos and bit parts by everyone from Winona Ryder to Keanu Reeves I'm surprised I hadn't heard more about it when it came out a few years ago.
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