Quickfail

Dear Kim Kardashian:

I didn't want to like you, but you managed to win me over with your unexpected sweetness and willingness to answer almost any question. And I must say that current boyfriend Reggie Bush is a vast improvement over your ex, Ray-J, whose popularity with the ladies continues to baffle me.

What really impressed me was your interview with Muscle & Fitness Hers. You came across like a normal woman who has worked hard to get in shape and stay there. Your frustration with the wafer-thin beauty standard in L.A. was palpable, and I like how you are representing for women who are not shaped like 12-year-old boys — all while working hard in the gym to keep the junk in the trunk from overflowing. Heck, I was inspired. I told my friend H. that I was going to keep you in mind when that last running interval/Arnold press/lunge seemed too difficult to complete.

But then you and your sister Khloe cooked up some weight-loss product called Quicktrim, a "cleanse" that you plan to market and sell. First, there's that name. Why perpetuate the lie that body transformation is a quick and easy process? The last thing people need is more sketchy information and false hope about permanent weight loss. And you must know that, somewhere in the back of their minds, the women who plan to buy this stuff are hoping that it will make their bodies look like yours — fine print, be damned.

Judging from the reaction from fitness-loving types, this hasn't exactly bolstered your credibility. (Although you are a long, long way from "fat," the last resort of haters.) That's too bad, because it was refreshing to hear some real talk about nutrition and exercise from someone who appeared to be in the trenches with the rest of us — that is, if we were rich and worked out with Gunnar Peterson. You know what I mean.

Still, Reggie Bush? Major upgrade.

Sincerely,
EDP

She's Got Legs

If you're a woman of a certain age in Tallahassee, you have to be OK with seeing uber-fit, gorgeous, (much) younger women all the time. In a town with two universities and a community college, they're a given; a fact of life. A friend in her 50s told me that I'd eventually get to a point where I'd stop seeing them through competitive eyes and regarding them in the fashion of a lovely painting or vase of flowers.

It started happening somewhere around my 37th birthday. Maybe it's because I was out of the breeding game or reasonably certain that my husband wasn't going to leave his family for a psychology major named Destiny. But ever since then, when I see a pretty young woman (inevitably) jogging down the street, my first thought is usually, "She's adorable! I hope she doesn't think she's fat."

That is, 99 percent of the time. I am human, and every blue moon, I see someone so outrageously fit/attractive that I want to drop what I'm doing and find a 24-hour gym that also offers plastic surgery. One such moment came Friday night, when the husband and I were hanging out with friends at a new wine bar. A mini-skirted woman with the best legs this side of 2000-era Britney Spears walked in, and we muttered a collective "Holy shit." I can't even hate, because it was clear that Hot Gams (left) has a serious workout game. Even when I was 22, my legs did not look like this.

I'm sure she and her friends wondered why some suburban mom was pointing a camera in their direction, but the moment had to be documented. Identities have been protected, though if it were me, I would want the world to know.