Minutiæ

Every girl knows her worst enemy is the cookie jar. The vel­vet noose of female­dom. The Achilles heel of being a lady. Always there to embrace you with warmth and sugar when you have no man to hold you.

Day­time tele­vi­sion per­son­al­ity Chris­tianne Van Demme shares her guide to sur­viv­ing the con­stancy of the eter­nal cookie jar. Lis­ten to her, ladies. She’s been there before.

First and fore­most, always pay for your gro­ceries in cash– and never bring enough cash to get any­thing but the basics. When you inevitably sac­ri­fice a few apples for a bag of cook­ies, remem­ber to buy only taste­less low-cal lemon cook­ies. Even you won’t want to eat these!

Of course, when you do break into these lemon-flavored bits of card­board, try to eat only two a day– and make them last as long as possible!

When you end up eat­ing the entirety of the cit­rus bricks dur­ing a late night sob-fest watch­ing Brid­get Jones… DON’T WORRY! Just go out, get drunk, and hit on the nerdi­est man you can find at your cor­ner bar. This will make you feel bet­ter — and he’ll feel bet­ter, too! Nerds are glad for any female to go out with them. Even a girl whose hips are fat with cook­ies. After bring­ing the nerd home, make this weak­ling your boyfriend. Do it for your future.
You should then con­grat­u­late your­self on get­ting a boyfriend by buy­ing really fancy French bis­cuit cook­ies. Put them in the cookie jar. Screw the cap on tight.

When your new boyfriend is too weak to open the jar, feel free to dump him in a sugar-jonesing rage. Your angry adren­a­line will fuel you enough to open and eat the entire jar.

Drunk on sugar and not think­ing straight, you stum­ble to the store and buy some Chips Ahoy! Chunky. Go ahead and eat these as you shuf­fle down the street. Then fall into the good olé bar around the corner.

Drown your sor­rows in a wine that pairs well with cook­ies; when things get hairy and you start dip­ping Chips Ahoy! in your Chardon­nay, you may notice a pair of sym­pa­thetic hazel eyes watch­ing you from across the pub. They’re a girl’s eyes and, trust us, that is just fine. We all have les­bian affairs from time to time — embrace it!

Bond with each other over late night snick­er­doo­dle bak­ing par­ties. Eat Ital­ian wed­ding cook­ies in bed. Savor Oreos on cold, rainy nights by the fire. But remem­ber: like the best Oreos, unfor­tu­nately, the affair will get stale.

You’ll real­ize that cook­ies are the only thing you have in com­mon. And the rela­tion­ship will just slowly… disappear.

You’ll fall into despair, down a spi­ral of self-destruction when you real­ize your les­bian girl­friend was the only man you ever loved. Even­tu­ally, your friends– find­ing you cry­ing and cov­ered in crumbs on your kitchen floor — encour­age you to go out again for a girls’ night on the town!

You go along, unwit­tingly, your club­bing pants far too tight now from months of shame­less eat­ing. But, chin up! — boys love curves. And then a hot guy stares at you from across the dance floor. Encour­aged by the new­found new­ness of het­ero­sex­u­al­ity, your con­fi­dence surges — hit on that hot tall guy at the end of the bar!

Bring him home with you! Before you sleep with him though, put the cook­ies you bought before your friends’ lat­est inter­ven­tion in the cookie jar and have the boy hide the jar on the top-most shelf in your apart­ment. Then, ever so quickly, break it off with him before he can buy you a step-ladder.

Depressed that you broke up with the only guy who ever truly cared for you, take two Ambien to help you sleep. In the mid­dle of the night, you will sleep­walk to the kitchen, scale the counter, climb on top of the refrig­er­a­tor and, almost dying in the process, retrieve the cookie jar.

You will awake in a pool of crumbs on your kitchen floor. Again. Wip­ing the choco­late chips from your eyes, you take a long, soul-searching look in the mirror.

Heav­ier than you want to be and con­trolled by the fem­i­nine hor­monal need for sugar, accept who you are. You are a woman. And you love cook­ies. It’s okay! I’ve done it myself and I still love you. ✦