'Beulah', Hillary Clinton's Roll of Midriff Fat, Grants First-Ever Interview

First Words: "Are you finishing that?"

Beulah, shown here with Hillary Clinton*, is thrilled to be included in Clinton’s new book. She would also like a bite of your dessert.

Hillary Clinton, in her new book, “Something Lost, Something Gained”, has stunned the nation by speaking frankly about having a post-menopausal roll of belly fat. She also says that she has tried to accept it by giving it a name: Beulah.

As I, like Clinton, am 76, and have been battling my own midriff flab, I was eager to speak with Beulah.

Clinton’s PR team gently turned me down when I requested an interview : “Formerly of the New York Times? Fuck You”. 

But these rolls of belly fat are stubborn, so I was not entirely surprised when Beulah, who was delighted to finally be recognized, reached out to me on her own. She arrived at my place mid-morning, as I was indulging in a rare batch of Challah French Toast. Below, my interview, raw, unedited, and sprinkled with powdered sugar.

Beulah: Are you finishing that?

JW: Please, go ahead.

Beulah: (Scarfing it down.) My God that’s good. I haven’t had a carb since Hillary ran for President and caught all that flak about calling out the Deplorables – who, by the way, knew how to rock a fat belly.  House of Pancakes – HOO RAH!! So, what can I do ya for, Joycie?

JW: First of all, Beulah, I can’t tell you how delighted I am to meet you. But I do have one concern: Won’t Hillary notice you’re gone?

Beulah: “Notice? She’ll be thrilled. She’ll pull out the pantsuit she hasn’t worn since she went to the NATO summit in Lisbon in 2010. Then I’ll pop back on tomorrow morning and she’ll want to kill herself.”

J.W.: Really?  Because while Clinton doesn’t spend that much time in the book discussing you, her whole point seems to be about acceptance. She says she talks with friends about living in a body they no longer recognize and about “shared strategies for confronting the postmenopausal disappearance of our waistline”.  Then, she says, she and a friend decided to “own” their bodies by giving their midsections names. That’s when she decided to name you ‘Beulah’.

Beulah: Yeah, nothing screams acceptance like a name they used in ‘30s movies for the maid.

JW: You’re unhappy with the name?

Beulah: Well, c’mon, Joyce,  it’s bullshit. If you’re happy with a body part, do you give it the name of an exploited frump? You call it something sexy: Marilyn. Ava. Demi.

JW:   Clinton doesn’t say she’s happy with her roll of belly fat. She says – and she’s talking here about her fat midriff and that of a friend named Maria – “they are stubborn old gals, so Maria and I decided that if the two of them won’t go away, we might as well get on speaking terms with them.”

Beulah: Yeah, that’s tender. Soon we’ll be borrowing each other’s clothes. Have you noticed, by the way, that in her movies, Marilyn Monroe always had a belly? Fat little thighs, too.  And men went crazy for her. Remember what Jack Lemon, watching her walk in “Some Like it Hot”, said? “It’s like Jello on springs.”

JW: Yeah, but Monroe was something like 31 or 32 when she made that movie. She had a waist.

Beulah: Oh, Christ, here we go again.

JW: It’s important. It signals sexual readiness. Fecundity. Ripeness. When you’re nineteen, you’re obsessed with whether your ass is too fat. You add a few pounds, your ass gets bigger, you might even get a little belly, but your waist is relatively small. Then, around your late 60’s, you realize that men love a fat ass. It’s all about curves.

Beulah: This really isn’t about me, is it?

J.W.: (Sobbing) I used to be an hourglass. I was 38-28-38 when I was seventeen. Do women even know what those numbers mean anymore? I curved like the Taconic Parkway. There were near collisions. Men slowed down to eyeball me. – How much longer can I keep this riff going?

Beulah: I’d give it another sentence.

J.W.: I was my own roadsign: Dangerous Curves Ahead. If I gained a few pounds, it just made me more voluptuous. I looked at older women  with square, stocky, pigeon-shaped middles and I thought, ‘Thank God, I don’t have that sort of body, that will never happen to me.’ Then, last week, I looked at a selfie I’d taken at a pick-your-own apple orchard, and there is was: Midriff lard. I had the shape of a Jumbo box of Tide.

Beulah: What were you doing at a pick-your-own orchard?

J.W.: I was hoping to meet someone. I know apple picking is a family thing, but I thought maybe I’d meet a divorced dad, desperate to find something to do with the kids. Age-wise, of course, it would have been a granddad. Who, I realized, wouldn’t have had the strength to haul a sack of apples without throwing out his back. It was a stupid idea. But you know how it is. And now, with this belly, who am I kidding? I’ll never have a dirty weekend in the country with a man again.

Beulah: I think your belly fat is adorable. Would you introduce me?

J.W.: It doesn’t have a name. I’m not keeping it.  

Beulah: I think Rita. For Rita Hayworth, the most beautiful woman in movies.

J.W.: Yeah, I’ve always thought that, too.

Beulah: How about whipping up some more of that French toast?  

—————

* Yeah, she can stuff a wild bikini, but this is computer generated HRC, distinguished by her tragically malformed hands. Substack’s AI, for some reason, has problems with extremities. It’s getting scary, though, isn’t it? -JW