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Garvey: Mediocre people need influencers, too

By Georgia Garvey - | Mar 28, 2023

I wish there were influencers for the rest of us: We the imperfect. We the mediocre. We the normal.

That’s what occurred to me lately as I watched famed influencer/actress/dieter Gwyneth Paltrow discuss what she eats (or, more accurately, doesn’t eat) in a typical day.

In the video, she said she fasts until noon. Before then, she drinks something like coffee — nothing that raises her blood sugar. For lunch, she has “bone broth,” and for dinner, “lots of cooked vegetables.”

She relayed all this while wearing an IV that she said had vitamins in it.

I’m not surprised she needs a vitamin IV if her daily caloric intake is mostly composed of what they give to hospitalized people incapable of digesting solid food.

If anyone’s interested in my daily diet, I’m happy to share.

After dropping the kids off at school, I eat a few bites of cold scrambled eggs, bananas and waffles as I’m throwing away the rest of their perfectly good food.

Come lunchtime, I root through the fridge for leftovers. Maybe I’ll make an omelet out of chicken tenders and fries, mixed with diced tomatoes and onions from leftover gyros toppings. Failing that, what has an approaching expiration date? Is there something the kids brought home, untouched, from the previous day’s lunch?

For dinner, I’ll have lemon-baked cod drizzled lightly with olive oil, steamed broccoli and brown basmati rice, and drink sparkling water over ice. Either that or a chopped salad of ditalini pasta, bacon and blue cheese (possibly also containing lettuce, though I wouldn’t swear to it), covered in creamy Italian dressing, followed by deep-dish pepperoni pizza, red wine and brownies.

It’s not aspirational, sure. But mediocrity can sometimes be better.

An illustration: After dropping my son off at preschool the other day, I sat in my car, fiddling with the radio. Suddenly, a woman whipped open my driver’s side front door, obviously thinking it was her car.

She clutched her chest and gasped as if I’d jumped out of the bushes wearing only a trench coat and a grin.

I looked at her in confusion, but before I could process what happened, she’d shut the door and walked away. Nary an apology or explanation to be had.

Maybe she was offended that I had the nerve to drive around in a car that looked so much like hers.

Really, though, it didn’t. As she pulled out of the spot next to me, I saw her car and yes, while one black SUV looks a lot like another black SUV, my car cost about $40,000 less and is covered in a light patina of road salt and dirt. I think it adds to the intrigue.

“Why’s her car so dirty?” people probably wonder. “Has she been to the mountains recently? Does she do a lot of off-roading?”

Also, one of my headlights is broken and the body shop won’t do the repairs until after the insurance approves the charges and I can’t wash the car until the light gets fixed and … well, you don’t need the backstory. What’s important is, her car didn’t look that much like mine. Maybe I should have jumped out of my car and hopped into hers, I thought later. Traded up.

But it’s so much pressure to drive around in a pristine car. What if someone bumps into you at the grocery store? What if your kids insist on rubbing their muddy boots on every interior surface each time they climb into their seats? Isn’t it exhausting to have nice things?

And Gwyneth’s diet’s gotta be exhausting, too. Just changing out the vitamin IVs must be a tremendous hassle. For an influencer, she’s doing a poor job of influencing me to want her lifestyle.

Instead, maybe I’ll keep looking for my influencer, the person who posts Instagram photos and TikTok videos showing mediocrity’s glamorous side. She’ll revel in the joys of being average and sell me on the imperfect lifestyle.

It won’t take too much influencing, honestly.

I must say, I’m already sold.

To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.

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