Oh, Gwynnie!
I remember my 14-year-old self watching your acceptance speech as you won the Oscar in 1999 for Best Actress in Shakespeare in Love and thinking to myself, "Hey, I like that lady! I want to be like her when I grow up!"
I am so glad I opted against the platinum blonde pixie cut and following in your goopy footsteps.
Woman, you need to be doused in perspective, real life perspective.
I'm happy to see that you've accepted the #FoodBankNYCChallenge from celebrity chef Mario Batali. Apparently, in this challenge, you are to nourish your family's bellies with a budget of $29.00/week for food, just as a family on the SNAP program would do.
I believe in raising awareness for all causes, but I'm quite certain my hopes are verging on psychosis that this seven-day experience may actually seep into that seemingly thick, narcissistic skull of yours.
While I'm sincerely hoping that this challenge manages to bring you half-way back to reality, you've dropped some pretty idiotic statements over the years that lead me to believe that you likely enjoyed an $89.00 kale smoothie while your $29.00 bag of experimental groceries rotted in your $4,000 refrigerator.
In 2005, you told Conan O'Brien: "I would rather die than let my kid eat Cup-a-Soup." Hmm. Well, you might want to pick up a hard copy of the Sunday paper and bust out your trusted gold-plated kitchen scissors: You're going to need some serious coupons on your new $29/week budget.
In 2009, you said: "I am who I am. I can't pretend to be somebody who makes $25,000 a year."
How do those words taste now?
In 2011, you were quoted at the iTunes Music Festival as saying: "I'd rather smoke crack than eat cheese from a tin."
Well, bad news here: I'm pretty sure that crack is a wee bit more expensive than Easy Cheese. Bust out those generic Ritz Crackers, baby!
In your cookbook, My Father's Daughter, you wrote: "I basically love anything that comes in a hot dog bun... except hot dogs."
Oscar Meyer is calling your name this week, muffin.
In all seriousness, I truly hope your week living off $29.00 worth of food gave you an ounce of perspective. Maybe your next GOOP Holiday Gift Guide, you'll leave out the ever-so-practical $550 traveling backgammon set or the must-have $5,000 gold juicer.
Maybe you'll think twice before making ludicrous blanket statements that being a movie-star mom is a lot more complicated than it is for us moms with "regular jobs."
I hope that this challenge taught you a few things: mainly, how a large percentage of the American population lives quite differently than you do. More so, I hope the next time you sit back and ponder why you get slammed in the media so frequently, you will re-read the above ridiculous statements (and the countless others) you've made over the years and be sprinkled with a few drops of, dare I say it, perspective.
Seeing that fails, I'm all for starting a new challenge: #7DaysAsANormalMom, and I'd be happy to nominate you first. This challenge would include no chef, no gold plated juicers, no Jay-Z and Beyonce on speed dial, no traveling backgammon sets, no housekeepers or nannies and certainly no vagina steaming. I'm certain there are plenty of moms who would gladly welcome you to step into their $25,000/year-household-income shoes and show you the ropes.
This post originally appeared on SmashleyAshley.com
Ashley Alteman is known for her love of dinosaurs, ponies wearing sweaters, and overuse of commas. She is an editor's nightmare. She won a spelling bee in the 8th grade for correctly spelling "carrot" and knew from that moment she was destined to be an amazing journalist, or a sarcastic blogger; she went with the latter. Ashley details her laugh-out-loud parenting and personal fails at SmashleyAshley.com. You can also find her on BLUNTmoms.com and ScaryMommy.com. Follow Smash on Facebook