Why Not Me?

by Mindy Kaling

Here’s what I do like: love stories. Romance. In fact, most of my favorite books employ the “marriage plot.” What is the “marriage plot,” besides the most interesting-sounding movie Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant never made? This is how I’d explain it. You know how all those movie adaptations of Jane Austen books end with Kate Winslet or Keira Knightley standing outside a chapel in the English countryside in a wedding dress with the man of their dreams? That’s the marriage plot. A man and a woman are very attracted to each other but there still seem to be lots of reasons why they can’t be together. Sometimes it’s logistical (he goes off to war), sometimes it’s situational (she’s engaged to someone else), sometimes it’s emotional (he calls her family tacky and she thinks he’s a dickhead). Whatever it is, the audience knows in the back of their heads that these two dum-dums will eventually figure it out and get together and, if we’re lucky, there will be a funny sex scene along the way. But that’s why I usually love the marriage plot. Because you see everything except the wedding.

As for Mindy? Um, Mindy is much less like Elizabeth Bennet than she is a combination of Carrie Bradshaw and Eric Cartman.

You would think people who specialize in Romance languages would dress better! I think you dress nicely, though I’ve never really thought about it. You look like a presidential candidate during the Depression.

The truth is, if I were going to lose weight successfully, I would have to think about what I eat constantly. I cannot imagine a life more boring and a more time-consuming obsession than being preoccupied with watching what I eat.

I will leave you with one last piece of advice, which is: If you’ve got it, flaunt it. And if you don’t got it? Flaunt it. ’Cause what are we even doing here if we’re not flaunting it?

Which is why you need the tiniest bit of bravery. People get scared when you try to do something, especially when it looks like you’re succeeding. People do not get scared when you’re failing. It calms them.