you need to listen to that alanis morissette album

this advice column won’t quit. the profanity makes me so happy. here’s a clip from polly giving advice to a 29-year-old who was scared of losing her looks:

You need to listen to that Alanis Morissette album, the one where she thanks India and proclaims that she’ll be good even if she gains ten pounds. Alanis is just the ticket for you right now. She’ll make you see how poisonous your superiority complex is. You may hate the old, ugly person you think you’ll become because you’re not sure what else you have to offer, besides your face. You should dedicate yourself to becoming someone whom you’ll feel proud of, without or without the shimmering and the crackling. Haven’t you ever met anyone who wasn’t conventionally attractive, but who was incredibly charismatic and enviable? If not, you really need to get out more. Instead of gazing at your own heart-stopping face, you should throw out your mirror and dedicate yourself to something that feeds your soul and makes you feel even more alive than, I don’t know, admiring your own image? It’s a bad habit. And apparently it makes you feel powerless, because you’re getting off on something you feel you’re about to lose.

Here’s the truth, and you’re just going to have to trust me on this: You’re not nearly as old or as beautiful as you think you are. And even if you are the most ravishing woman alive, I’d advise you to imagine, instead, that you are very young and very plain. Then walk out into the world, and be a regular person among the other regular people, with your whole life ahead of you. You’ll be surprised at how good that feels.You pity the old ladies. What you don’t know is that they pity you even more. They know what a burden you’re carrying around, and they know how bad it makes you feel, to think of losing this thing that’s actually a crutch that keeps you from maturing and connecting with the real world.

I know you’re just being honest. I don’t want to give you shit for that. I just think you need to get a bad haircut and eat a big piece of cherry pie and join the rest of us. When you do, you’ll see the truth at last: Life is beautiful. Pretty faces are a dime a dozen.

“I just think you need to get a bad haircut and eat a big piece of cherry pie and join the rest of us. When you do, you’ll see the truth at last: Life is beautiful.”