Last week, a “fat-burning lip balm” went on sale in the UK. It has been available in the US for a few months already; I bought one when I was over there in June. (In Las Vegas, obviously. Playing poker. I barely saw daylight, never mind a waterfall.)
The slogan on the packet was: “Huge lips, Skinny hips”. Of course, that actually sounds hideous. I don’t want to look like a matchstick with a giant mouth. I was just fascinated by the madness of the short cut. The answer to excess weight is a slow process of diet and exercise, not reaching for yet another sweet, sticky substance and smearing it on your face. And it doesn’t work anyway. Its cinnamon flavor made me so peckish I slicked it on and immediately consumed three doughnuts.
What we sometimes forget about diets and exercise is that, like hiking through Yosemite or mowing the lawn, they are, in their arduousness, ultimately satisfying. People must stop inventing new products that remove our motivation to do something the right way, the effortful way, and feel good about it. What next? A box of doughnuts that watches Shakespeare plays on our behalf and gives us a three-line plot summary? A packet of cigarettes that phones our parents to see how they are? A TV remote that walks the dog, gives blood, helps an old lady across the road and hurries back in time for us to flick over to the latest instalment of a favorite soap?
Perhaps Dr Nick Lavidis is already working on all these gadgets and more. But sometimes, Dr Lavidis, you can’t get the good feeling of having done something, the “happiness” or the “better memory,” unless you actually do it.
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