Now, you do too remember who Susan Powter is, but please refrain from calling her the "Stop the Insanity Lady," thank you. It riles her up, and Susan Powter needs riling up like you need a second helping, lard ass.
Once upon a time, see, Ms. Powter was a poor, portly pepper pot, with a cheating husband, two kids under two, and eating habits that kept her 130 pounds overweight. But through a regimen of "eating, moving and breathing" (her meatless mantra), she whittled her redwood-like torso down to a tight sexy toothpick. Inspired by the transformation, she borrowed Bart Simpson's haircut, developed one hell of a tag line (something about stopping insanity, yada, yada), and infomercialed all of mid-'90s America into eating butterless feasts of fat-free everything. And we loved her for it.
Susan was, they say, revolutionary. She was loud. She was butcher than Richard Simmons, cut like paper lace curtains, and she had an agenda. If you possessed a Y-chromosome (ergo a penis), buddy, her agenda didn't necessarily include you. Powter was a fat-free Wonder Woman with a capital Woman, lean as a public school budget, tougher than prehistoric turkey jerky. But somehow, suddenly, she seemed to vanish.
The former infomercial queen's war cry peaked around 1997, eventually fading to a comparatively ungentle whisper. Barring the odd radio appearance (including her short-lived local radio show on 100.7 The Buzz) or women-only workshop, her war cry was heard hardly at all.
But 2003 finds Susan freshly motivated, living in Puget Sound, sporting some rotating hairstyles that have nothing to do with animated satire, and battling her way to the top of her game again. Her newest book (she's written six--three of them New York Times bestsellers), The Politics of Stupid ($14.95 from Crone, Inc.), not only gives women a battle plan to win the war on French fry thighs and butterscotch dreams, it gives them an honest-to-goddess political manifesto.
The book is a wild, stirring rant, saltily peppered with funny fonts, purposeful misspellings, significance-rich parentheticals, and clever Powterisms like "overfat" (along with irritating ones like "hu-person being"). In it, Susan lays down the Law According to Her. Sometimes it's so according-to-her that anyone who isn't her might not get what the heck she's talking about. The book is "alllllllll about the direct connection between The Politics behind the fat that is hanging from millions of people's bodies and the epidemic of obesity, heart disease, cancer and a whole lot more in this country," Powter explains.
Susan was doing gigs in Vancouver, BC, so we had to settle for an e-mail tête-à-tête to talk about her new book. She also asked me to leave her creative capitalization and punctuation alone, insisting that any errors that may appear are intentional.
What is your image of the perfect world, with you as ultimate Overlady?
The facts are the facts: The boys have had full rule of government, religion, education, medicine for the last five thousand years... and you've fucked it up totally and absolutely. Your end results speak for themselves, man is truly the only animal on Earth dumb enough to destroy his own habitat... it's indisputable... male run (into the ground) has got to go.
In your dream world, do you see gender parity in the power structure or is it an Amazon paradise?
Power structure? The point exactly... the language sir, the language.... I'm not asking to share this mess with you. No, no, no... equality? You can't be? It'll take quite a bit of interconnected (because it all is) to the hole (intentional spelling) before you boys get anywhere near balanced. Much time respecting and honoring Her systems (that have worked brilliantly for millions and millions of years by the way) before the refined white boys balance back to anything other than what they are... the death machine.... I don't want to share anything with them.
Do you ever just get a hankering for a fucking cheeseburger?
Nobody picks junk. Crappy living isn't a choice. Sheep to the slaughter isn't consciousness. Overfat and unfit isn't intentional (the definition of the word consciousness) and if you, or anyone (and I have) ever walked into a meat/chicken mass production house in this country, you wouldn't eat what comes out of there. The stream line inspection system in the us [sic] today says it all: 80,000 birds a day processed. Out of those 80,000, only fifteen birds are inspected. Out of those fifteen birds, they have to have three or more pen abscesses to be pulled off the line. Now, if that's OK with you--then you are already brain dead. If you believe that this government is anything other than a lobby system, then you are stupid as shit. If you believe the FDA is protecting you and your family, you shouldn't read The Politics of Stupid... perhaps a fairy tale, one by Disney--Snow White, ya know--the maid to seven midgets!!!
Wow. Do you think women are intrinsically superior to men?
Your penis can not compare to my vagina. The 85,000 nerve endings in my clitoris, alone, speak volumes. Your penis can not birth a l0 pound hu-person being... my vagina has birthed two... your penis does not bleed, the blood of life, my vagina does...your penis, my vagina, your body, my body are not in the same galaxies. Mine is directly connected to the Earth, exactly why men's violence against Mother Earth, and the Women living on it are interconnected, because they are... when men don't understand it, they control, kill, rape, pillage it???? Certainly has been the pattern so far?
Anthony Robbins has a "change your life in one minute" technique that's similar to yours. Did he rip you off?
Poor Tony! No need to waste the energy typing a response to anything about a man who sells people on the absurdity that you can "control destiny"--it's comical, at best... and, the language, perfectly male, wouldn't you say??????
When was the last time you got down and really binged?
Sexually--three nights ago.
Are men as lovers out of your life for good?
That's up to the gender that has a long, long way to go before they could even call themselves lovers of Women....
Do you support the war in Iraq?
I'm forced to by paying taxes to the boys who are building their killing machines, but support war? How could anyone?
How do you see your life in five years?
Exactly the way it's gonna be... Private island, Tree houses, Woman, Children, Art, The Mother, Sexuality, Creativity, Whole Foods, Glorious music, Magical words, Laughter and me, crouched in the trees ready to spit poison darts at anyone who's got the stupidity to come over without my permission....
And what is your favorite color?
Blood red.
Of course it is.
