We See Ryan Phillippe’s Underwear

(and other takeaways from the “Sexiest Man Alive!” issue of “People” magazine.

Which I never planned to read. But somehow did anyway)

I am not supposed to be receiving “People” magazine in my post office box.

It is addressed to someone else, but with my box number on the address label. It’s been coming to me for nearly a year now. Maybe the subscription is almost up? I hope so.

I told our overworked postal employee about this months ago, and he said, “I have no idea who that person is, so it’s yours.” It’s a small post office: one worker is responsible for all the staffing and mail delivery and is on-site only four hours a day.  He knows everyone attached to all the post office boxes in our town. If he couldn’t help me, no one could. For awhile, I felt bad for the person who had ordered the magazine but never received it. Now I am just annoyed that they didn’t fill out their subscription order form right and never corrected the problem.

Here is what I try to do when the “People” magazine shows up every week: immediately put it on the post office window sill where folks in my town often leave unwanted but possibly useful items.  Other magazines (like “the New Yorker,” which is pretty much the opposite of  “People” magazine) show up there, or a box of clothes with a “free” sign attached, or bags of rice or beans that disappear before too long. My hope is that someone who would enjoy my magazine will take it. I think that must be happening, because it’s always gone when I stop by to get my mail the next day. But I have to leave it there without even glancing at it.

Because if I look at it? It sucks me in.

It’s not that I am not interested in the articles, because I sometimes am, though I am not proud of that; it’s more that they are not something that I want to give myself to. If I take the magazine home, most likely I will read it. And if I read it, I will disappear into its pages for fifteen or twenty minutes, and then look up and realize that those are minutes of my life that I will never get back.

Here is my confession.

The latest issue of “People” arrived yesterday. I placed it on the post office window sill. I was walking out the door, the rest of my mail in hand. But then? Oh fatal error. I peeked inside. And then I brought it home.

Because it was a special double issue with this year’s “SEXIEST MAN ALIVE!” on the cover. Paul Rudd! Wouldn’t it be fun to read a little  about his daily life? It also had dozens of pictures of their “Men of the Year,” heartthrobs that included well-known fellows and some lesser known ones, too. You could probably guess some of the folks who made the magazine this year, some young, some older: Orlando Bloom. Matt Damon. Kevin Costner. Even 83-year-old Anthony Hopkins.

I lost at least 20 minutes looking through its pages and skimming the articles. (Good news! Paul Rudd is very happily married! For a long time! With two adorable children!) It was also hard to miss a shirtless Ryan Phillippe with his hand near his jeans zipper in a section called “Redefining the Dad Bod.”

What?

Really?

“Redefining the Dad Bod?”

Which is when reality started to settle back in and helped awaken me from my “People” magazine stupor.

Who came up with this ridiculous headline?

All dads have bods, after all, and the shape of the bod says nothing about the heart of the dad, which is what really matters. What is this eternal, crazy obsession with “bods,” our physical, outward appearance anyway? All of us lucky enough to be on this earth have bods and what they look like isn’t important, especially since even the favored ones (ostensibly? Because are they really favored?) who grace the magazine’s pages are photoshopped and undoubtedly occasionally smelly, farty, and unsexy like the rest of us.  We have more important concerns now: for example, just about anything you can think of.

I guess I could look at it as a little mindless fun, and maybe I would if it left me feeling energized or refreshed. Maybe for some folks it does. It doesn’t work like that for me, though. Those minutes in the land of “People” generally make me feel crappy about myself, since I clearly do not measure up to the photo shopped fantasies I just ingested (in truth, the people in those fantasies don’t either). It feels a lot like eating nacho cheese flavored Doritos. I try not to eat even one of those tasty treats because I know there is a good chance I will consume the entire bag. It feels good in the moment, but pretty terrible afterwards.  One glance at the parade of “Sexiest Men Alive!” and I am drawn in, only to be spit out again,  tired and a little sad.   Thankfully, that sour feeling doesn’t last long anymore; I tend to remember more quickly these days that all the people in the “People” magazine are people like me with lives that are not airbrushed. But it takes me a minute or so to acclimate to reality again, a little like shaking off a bad dream.

In a few minutes, I will walk back up to the post office, magazine in hand. I will put it on the window sill, where I should have left it yesterday, because I know someone else will enjoy it.  I have some misgivings about this, though. It feels a little like inviting someone over for a meal and then offering them nothing but potato chips, Cheez-Its, and Jolly Ranchers. Reading that magazine gives a few minutes of  fantasy, a little escape, but it doesn’t add anything meaningful to life. Even worse?  It might make us wistful, forgetting that we are enough and that our lives (all our lives) matter, and that we are valuable and beautiful, just as we are.