-- Wednesday, February 23, 2000 --

2:58 a.m. Today's topic comes to you courtesy of the fine folks at On Display, a webring for collaborative writing. And the topic for this month is "influences."

Well, that's a no-brainer for me. I am a no-brainer. The greatest influence in my life has been and always will be: commercials. Print: pernicious print commercials. Radio: rude crude radio commercials. Television: tedious, insidious commercials that make me leap and claw for the mute button, at least.

Commercials rule my life. They have put fear and insecurity into my world view, where formerly there was only native joy and naiveté. They have told me the terrible truth about myself: that I can do nothing right and that I am fatally, hopelessly flawed. Oh -- and you are, too.

I know it had to have started with Seventeen magazine. I'm sure that was the first time I noticed that my nails did not look like almonds or that my eyes were not doe. My hair was neither silky nor manageable, and my legs and my breasts: oh my. Not good.

This will never do. I would never measure up. I did more research. I comparison-flagellated with Glamour magazine, where I found out that I was a huge boldface DON'T and I couldn't even properly pronounce Mademoiselle, let alone buy it and abide by its rules. All those clever little rules.

The Catholic church had perfectly prepared the ground for my unshakable belief in my mortal cupidity. Born with Original Sin. Sinning since the Age of Reason. And not only am I full of sinful tendencies, but I am also full of plaque and my bathroom shower walls have an unsightly soap film all over them.

And guess what? You, too.

If you're foolhardy enough to try to age, you'd better get out your checkbook. Who first thought up the idea of banishing wrinkles? Brilliant. Smoothing rough skin? Bravo. Erasing unsightly lines and telltale signs? Genius.

You would have to be a very, very headstrong and confident person to ignore the helpful exhortations of the omnipotent advertiser. Will that man in the picture still love his headstrong wife if her head has some gray hairs on it?

Would you take the chance? And if you persisted in your headstrong ways and his head were turned, who would you blame?

Ever since the pork industry hired a public relations man, we've been eating bacon and eggs for breakfast as though it were logical. Before the farmer looked out and saw too many pigs in the yard, most Americans were dipping toast into coffee and running off to their places of employment. Europeans still do this, I'm told.

But not us. We eat fatty meat first thing in the morning because some advertising man told us to. It's even possible that we've created our own strain of killer bacteria because TV commercials convinced us to use antibacterial products far too indiscriminately, thus giving the microbes the edge.

How dumb is that? Not a half-minute goes by on this planet that some mellifluous voice somewhere isn't telling you to have another burger. A half-minute later, you're told to lose that poundage. A half-minute after that: have a cookie.

As I've gotten older, I've tried very very hard to resist the siren lore of the disparaging word. I try to flip quickly through magazines, past all the pages of fragrantly scented angry faces to the editorial section ... but I always get caught on something, usually something DKNY or Polo.

And why, why, why? I ask you -- why? Why are all the models so angry and gloomy and miserable and mean and fuming and glaring and just plain pissed off in fashion magazine ads today?

Geeze. I turn the pages very gingerly, as one pained and furious expression after another blazes onto my retina. Why are they so upset? Are they supposed to be rich? Troubled about a turbulent obsession? Concerned with the serious matters of the planet? Here, have a cookie, I say.

Got guilt?