One To Watch(12)
At this, Bea burst out laughing. “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, but just—why?”
A busboy dropped off their appetizers, and Lauren helped herself to some guac, as if this were a totally normal drinks meeting and not the most absurd conversation Bea had ever had.
“Bea, your piece was absolutely spot-on. Everything you said about the way the show totally ignores women who don’t subscribe to one specific hyperfeminine beauty standard, about how we systematically erase every kind of diversity. The guys who used to run the show, the guys I worked for? They hated you. And you know what? I fucking hated them. I hated how smug and callous they were about women, how they think we’re such idiots that we’ll swallow their garbage version of Cinderella year after year, that we can’t possibly want more for ourselves—or expect more of the men we fall in love with. Beauty queen, wife, mother. As if that’s the totality of everything we could ever want to be.”
“So it’s true you staged a coup?” Bea asked. Lauren leaned back in her chair, a satisfied smirk twitching on her lips.
“I wouldn’t say ‘coup.’”
“What would you say?”
“I’d say that I’ve been overseeing the day-to-day operations of Main Squeeze for the past four seasons. That I’ve made myself indispensable—and that the cast, the crew, and the network all work with me a lot more than they work with certain men whose primary roles at the show have devolved into acting like pigs and cashing huge checks.”
“And you convinced the network that it was worth losing the pigs to save themselves the checks.”
Lauren tapped her nose—bingo.
“So why rock the boat?” Bea asked. “If you’re finally running the show, why not just go with the old blueprint and keep your job secure?”
“First of all, the old blueprint isn’t working—last season was our lowest-rated finale in five years. Second, what’s the point of putting me in charge if I’m just going to execute someone else’s regressive vision? I told the network that I’m going to shake things up and deliver higher ratings, and I’m working on a lot of exciting ways to do that.”
“Such as?” Bea prompted.
“Eradicating spoilers, for one.”
“What? How can you humanly contain them?” Bea was extremely skeptical—ever since the advent of cell-phone cameras, the twists and turns of every season of Main Squeeze were captured by rabid fans and spread across the Internet well before they ever made it to television.
“By changing up our shooting schedule. Instead of filming the whole season in advance and then airing it afterward, we’re going to kick things off with a live premiere, and then film our episodes on a nearly real-time schedule: The dates we shoot each week will air the following Monday.”
“Holy shit.” Bea was genuinely impressed. “Is that even possible?”
“Sure! There are British reality shows that air new episodes every day—it won’t be easy, but I know our editing unit can turn around an episode per week no problem. Getting rid of spoilers is one half of my strategy—casting you is the other. America has never seen anyone like you lead a show like this. We’re going to be right in the middle of the zeitgeist and send our ratings through the roof.”
“Even if that’s a sound strategy, why would you choose me? I’m sure the fact that I have a built-in fan base is a plus, but why not cast someone who hasn’t, you know, openly vilified the show? Don’t you think people will see me as some kind of fame-seeking hypocrite if I do this?”
“The fact that you have a lot of followers is huge for us,” Lauren admitted. “But Bea, your piece is the reason I want to cast you. You wrote about why you watch the show in the first place—how much you connect with all these silly people risking looking like idiots on national television because they really do want to find love. You felt let down by the fact that the show was saying that not a single one of those silly idiots could look remotely like you. If you come on the show, it’s a chance to prove that you—and, by extension, millions of women who look like you—can find love. And that you deserve the spotlight as much as any other woman.”
Bea picked up her French 75 and took a deep drink, letting the fizzy, astringent liquid prickle down her throat.
“Can I ask you a question?” Lauren gazed at Bea with her piercing eyes. “Bea, why wouldn’t you do this?”
“Being a fat woman in the public eye isn’t exactly a cakewalk,” Bea replied. “I got a taste of massive trolling when my piece went viral.”
“I read about the SlimFast shakes.” Lauren scowled. “Fucking disgusting.”
The shakes had been terrible. What started as a daily laugh with Dante the UPS guy morphed into full-blown mortification as hundreds and eventually thousands of shakes arrived at her doorstep. But they weren’t the worst of it—not by a long shot.
“I couldn’t post anything on Twitter without getting rape threats and death threats. They posted my home address all over the Internet, sent revolting text messages from anonymous phone numbers, dick pics at all hours of the day and night, strange men telling me they’d force me down and make me squeal like the pig I am. And that was just from one blog post! If I do this, with all the exposure … I don’t know. I just don’t know if it would be worth it.”