Dear Susan Powter,

I believed every word you said.

Jul 14, 2023

‘Twas the year of our Lord 1993.

“Food does not make you fat,” you bellowed, “fat makes you fat!”

Thusly you preached from the television screen and boy-oh-boy did I see the light. I responded with one enthusiastic amen, sister after another.

Would I rather have “one slice of regular cheese or 32 baked potatoes?” you posed. I thought a split second before exclaiming, “Spud me, baby!” You showed me a terrifying blob of sticky goo that equaled five pounds of human body fat and I recoiled as if I'd been confronted by the devil himself.

Back in the early/mid-90s, you were everywhere. Your STOP THE INSANITY infomercial utterly captivated me. When it came on the tube, I simply could not take my eyes from the screen. Your voice was like a roller coaster, seducing me well before we crested the first swell. And that spiked platinum hair—so bold, so in-your-face! But it was, weirdly enough, your outfit that really fascinated me.

No matter how you bounded across the stage with superhuman energy, the cropped and slashed sweatshirt never revealed too much. It was like some mad combination of an umbrella and babydoll nightie, endlessly flouncing and flirting while coquettishly covering the critical areas.

The pants were simultaneously—and inexplicably—loose and tight, alluring and hideous. Those weird belted capri sweats hugged the cleft of your oh-so-firm buttocks and clearly defined your frontal vee. But they also moved effortlessly along with you while never appearing the least bit binding no matter how fervently you jumped and spun in those sassy ankle socks and chunky tennies.

“I’m a housewife who figured something out,” you exclaimed. Oh girl, you most certainly did.

With your talk about rogue husbands, diaper bags, and judgmental receptionists, you were the everywoman next door. But alas, everything about you was out of my reach, starting with that gorgeous makeup and concluding with your slinky waist (which was remarkably free of stretch marks for a woman who claimed to have lost 130 pounds).

You do not want to know how fervently I creeped on you in preparation for this writing. In the absence of an authorized press page, I badly wanted to pilfer and repost your photos. But no way would I pirate an image, so the YouTube embeds will have to do. Furthermore, the internet is not as "forever" as many of us believe.

Plenty of videos featuring you have been scrubbed. I cannot find a link to your appearance on Chelsea Lately to save my life, but I sure did love watching you and Jay Leno do late night. And that one “eat a pear” YouTube in which you proclaim, "I think Nicole Ritchie is the new Twiggy," should most certainly be in the internet hall of fame.

Years ago I had an associate who I thought knew it all until I realized she was just a know-it-all. Regarding sugar consumption, she once dismissively advised me, "Your body just burns it off," as we consumed a particularly bad lunch. That disastrous line fell into perfect concurrence with your fat-makes-you-fat shtick.

None of it worked out too well for me.

My myriad low-fat efforts failed to produce any significant weight loss, so I doubled down and got on a program that strictly eschewed fat and meat. Two weeks later, I was exhausted and sickly. My mouth was full of canker sores. I hadn’t lost a pound and never felt worse.

Did I do it wrong? I have no idea, but when the spell finally broke and I ate a cheeseburger, I felt like Superwoman the next day. The revelation was staggering, and it gave me a new appreciation for … wait for it … vampires.

No wonder Bram Stoker's signature creation landed with such dark triumph, I thought as life returned to my beleaguered body. Food security was sketchy to say the least in the 1800s. Back then, peeps understood real hunger and they knew exactly how a chunk of bloody meat could revitalize a person after a long and involuntary fast. A fictional dream starring a dashing antihero fueled on human blood was easy to step into.

Vampires?

Babygirl, these days I’m more likely to run into a real vampire than find you, well, anywhere. Considering your previous omnipresence (TV, radio, syndication, books), that’s saying something. Years after the STOP THE INSANITY phenomenon faded, you referred to that effort as a “dress rehearsal,” but the prime time performance has still yet to unfurl.

You burned like magnesium—so fast and so bright, and now you've simply disappeared.

Did you pull a Richard Simmons and turn away from it all? I hope so. I hope you're living with all your kids and ex-husbands and ex-girlfriends and all their kids and exes, as well as oodles of cats and dogs and alpacas. I hope you're wearing the crop top and tight-not-tight sweatpants.

As for me, Miss Susan, I used to wax angry at you and my know-it-all friend for the horrendous diet advice, but not anymore. To be fair, the food thing is complicated and you were 100 percent right about the breathing and move-your-body stuff. Even so, the countless miles I walk haven’t given me a slinky waist like yours, but unlike you I am still here.

Maybe I’ll eat an organic pear. Maybe somewhere you’ll join me.

Love, Erin

ps: I can’t help but wonder if you got quasi-blacklisted for espousing your not-so-political-correctness some 14 years ago. (Wait … what’s that? Oh, I’ll tell you exactly what I’m talking about: Start at the 5:10 mark in this clip and go for about a minute.)

pss: I’ve listening to hours and hours of you talk. Truth is, Suze, although the content couldn’t be more different, when it comes to speaking style I couldn’t fit a beer can shim between you and Donald Trump. Your speech is voluminous, loud, repetitive, short on content, and full of fluff. You rarely finish a sentence or thought.

psss: It doesn’t stop there. Everything from your cadence to how you ignored/cut off callers on this episode reminded me of Rush Limbaugh. I listened to about an hour of the 90-minute show and I couldn’t tell you who “Charlotte” is or how “it’s grief, not depression,” but feel free to school me.

pssss: Well then, it looks like you and I have something in common. You wrote a whole book, while I was a bit more brief.

psssss: No, I never shelled out the four easy payments of $19.95 for the STOP THE INSANITY program, but that doesn't mean I'm immune to such charms.