Your skin is a horror. No offense, but your face looks like a white paper deli bag containing a leaky beverage. It’s all a result of your horrible habits: You are destroying your complexion with excessive sun exposure, booze, Red Bull and coffee. Those venti caramel macchiato espressos ($4.15) from Starbucks are drying out your epidermis and raping her of her minerals. (If ships are female, then so, by God, is your epidermis.)
The answer?
Those topically applied unguents upon which you spend such a fortune can only do so much to counteract your dreadful ways. You need to address the problem through nutrition. More specifically, seaweed: arame, hiziki, kombu, wakame. Yes, I’m talking about macrobiotics!
Before you dismiss the whole idea, I would ask you to remember that Madonna, Gwyneth and I are all, to varying degrees, macro-neurotic seaweed-chompers, and we all have great skin. So there.
For further clarification, run out and buy a copy of The Hip Chick’s Guide to Macrobiotics (Avery, $16.95), a brand-new and fascinatingly woo-woo tome from Portland, Me.–based macro-guru, hypnotherapist and radio broadcaster Jessica Porter. According to Ms. Porter, “Aging is basically going from grape to raisin, and sea vegetables keep you young and juicy!”
This book is chock-full of life lessons, recipes and—Canadian-born Jessica’s specialty—hugely sweeping philosophical generalizations about yin and yang and the Nature of the Universe.
I vigorously pumped Jessica for beauty tips by phone last week as she prepared to embark on her coast-to-coast, seaweed-strewn book-tour.
“Skin is a major organ of discharge,” said the tall, 37-year-old Brown grad, “so if you’re putting crap in your body, it’s gonna show up on the skin in the form of zits, rashes, dry patches, dark patches, etc.” According to Ms. Porter, a dollop of arame seaweed, twice a week, will bring damaged skin “bouncing back like a baby’s ass.”
This svelte multitasker—who is probably the only person on the planet to have done stand-up comedy in a macrobiotic restaurant—is very forthright about the weight-loss benefits of the macro lifestyle. “The nice thing about macro weight loss is that it comes with nice skin and shiny hair and lots of flexibility,” she said. “Don’t forget: Madonna is not just skinny—she can put her knee behind her head.”
Apparently there is no problem on Earth which can not be solved by a seaweed-filled macrobiotic diet.
Michael Jackson? “He will need help to get through his trial,” Ms. Porter said. “I recommend 10 days of brown rice and kukicha tea. Nothing else. This regimen will center him and make him so unbelievably yang that he might even self-reflect on his behavior.” For this macrobiotic philosopher, Mr. Jackson is of particular interest: “He is the most extreme example of the law of the universe that says, ‘Everything eventually becomes its opposite,’” she declared. “He has gone from black to white, male to female, star to pariah, all within one lifetime! That’s pretty amazing. Unfortunately, he may have also made the shift from victim to abuser.”
Suicide-bombing terrorist? “By blowing themselves up, they achieve the kind of instantaneous yin/yang transition which would normally only take place over geological time—hence the devastation.”
John Kerry’s lag? “George Bush is insanely yang, scrappy and testosterone-laden. Kerry is a good guy, but less charismatic and engaging. All that flip-flopping is classic yin. To catch up, all Kerry needs to do is suck on some kombu seaweed sticks while riding in that private jet—then we’ll have a yang vs. yang showdown. I can’t wait.”
Bags of dried organic seaweed are available from Whole Foods (in Chelsea or Columbus Circle) starting at $3.99. As you cruise the aisles, sing the following lyrics to the tune of Madonna’s “Erotica”:
Neurotic, neurotic,
I’m totally macrobiotic ….
