Anne Slowey, electrocutor of her own ass.Photo: Getty Images
Anne Slowey is the fashion news and accessories editor at Elle. We base this on nothing more than looking at her pretty picture and reading what she’s written, but she strikes us as one of those women who’s a perfectly normal size but can’t help but strive to be thinner, because she — like everyone else in the world, ourselves included — can’t remember what a healthy woman looks like. Allow us to explain.
A year ago, Slowey wrote a food diary for this magazine during Fashion Week, and according to her diary, she consumed the fewest calories of all participants, even less than the model. And you know what? Good for her for being honest about it (before we get all health-conscious and finger-waggy on her, and we’ll admit that we’re a little amazed by her fasting power). So, suffice to say, Anne Slowey is no heifer. And yet, because Slowey is as human as the rest of us, this afternoon she posted an extensive rant on her Elle blog about her determination to rid her ass of dimpled fat (sing it, sister). But how will Slowey make the evil that plagues so many of us disappear? By electrocuting herself. Slowey came across the treatment while channel-surfing in Milan:
She’s talking about the Exhale Power Body Detox by French company Ionithermie. She’s used it five times but hasn’t seen any results, even though the company promises to knock off eight inches per treatment. “I’m not sure that’s true,” Slowey writes (ah, our reluctance to accept reality). “But a lesbian did tell me my ass looked small yesterday so maybe it is!” And if ass electrocution is failing her, Slowey won’t be stopped: She’s so desperate to get into one Lanvin skirt that she’s also going on the Jill Pettijohn juice fast to try to shed about twenty pounds by the Paris shows, which start in ten days. (Godspeed, lady.)
But the tale of Slowey’s ass and its hard path to shrinkage only gets weirder from there. Inspired by stories of pet psychics being in touch with Vivi, the whippet who ran away from JFK airport after appearing in last year’s Westminster dog show, she called her own psychic to talk about her ass. According to her psychic, “[Slowey’s] ass no longer wants to be fat. It just wants to be complimented. But you are putting entirely too much pressure on it. It keeps saying, ‘Free me! Free me!’” Um, right. This is how Slowey responded:
All I have to do for my derriere to be happy is moon people and scream, “Free your ass?” Sorry, butt psychic. I am electrocuting the hell out of it at Exhale, scrunching and bumping it at Physique 57, and doing another week of juice fasting with Jill Petitjohn. Putting my ass’s happiness before my desire for a svelte silhouette is just ass-backwards…I’m getting into that Lanvin skirt, even if it means I can’t bend at the waist and need two goons hauling me around by the arms around like a rusted Tin Man. To hell with my repressed ass, it’s Lanvin or bust.
We’ve gotta say, Slowey is damn brave to put all this up there. Not all women can be so honest about the sheer assanity that goes through their heads, but Slowey took one for the team — and we’re thankful that she did because we can all learn many lessons from her post:
1. Drastic attempts to lose weight generally results in losing little weight over the long term. Duh. We looked at pictures of Slowey from over the past couple of years, and she looks to be of a totally normal, consistent (and, ahem, attractive) weight the whole time. It’s like every diet guide says: If you put too many restrictions on your diet, when you break the rules, you do so in a big, bad way. So, yeah, you might not have had chocolate for three days and then electrocuted your ass for a week, but then Valentine’s Day comes around and you decide to just have one chocolate, which is SO GOOD it turns into three, and then six, and then the whole box — and suddenly all your fasting and electrocuting was for naught. Which brings us to…
2. Electrocuting your ass will not make it smaller.
3. Don’t pay twenty euros to watch Milanese porn, and maybe you won’t be as insanely inspired as Slowey.
4. If a product promises you magic results, it’s a stone-cold lie.
5. Buying clothes — even if they cost thousands of dollars — that are too small for you will not necessarily inspire you to lose enough weight to fit into them.
6. Not even a phone psychic will tell you your ass is fat. Because it isn’t, girl. Now go have a cookie and buy Lanvin in your God-given size.
High Voltage [Elle]
Related: The Fashion Week Food Diaries [NYM]
