Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit? by Steve Lowe, Alan Mcarthur, Brendan Hay Page A

have moments when I cry.” Yes, us too.
    Sometimes fashion journalists get paid to write novels, like Plum Sykes’s excruciating
Bergdorf Blondes,
a book that has apparently become “a Bible for the fabulously wealthy, the inner circle elite.” And which proves, decisively, that you should never read books by anyone named after a fruit.
    FAST-FOOD CHAINS MARKETING THEMSELVES AS “HEALTHY” (AND FEMINIST)
    “Hi—we’re McDonald’s, a great big company that would love to come by your house and tell you about how we’re changing.”
    In the 1950s, French artist Yves Klein invented his own color, International Klein Blue, which he believed represented
Le Vide
(the void)—not a vacuum or terrifying darkness, but a void that invokes positive sensations of openness and liberty, a feeling of profound fulfillment beyond the everyday and material. Standing before Klein’s huge canvases of solid blue, many report being enveloped by serene, trance-like feelings.
    We feel something very similar looking at the pictures of salads in the window of KFC. Or that surreal meal deal with the plastic bowl of rice. You wouldn’t actually order these items, but their very existence expresses that corporation’s painful identity crisis when faced with a shrinking market. Mmmm. Lovely.
    We get similar buoyant sensations by reading the McDonald’s Corporation’s pamphlet
(We Thought We’d Come to You for a) Change,
posted through mailboxes across the land, which bravely reconfigures McDonald’s as a health-food restaurant and general harbinger of world peace. The tone of a spurned lover who treated you wrong and now sees the error of his ways pervades the whole document: “Hi—we’re McDonald’s,” it begins, “a great big company that would love to come by your house and tell you about how we’re changing. But there are a lot of us and it takes ages to get organized.” That’s a joke (no, really) to show us they have a Good Sense of Humor.
    “We’ve knocked the booze on the head and gotten a job. We’ve moved out of our mom’s basement and gotten an apartment: It’s not much, but it’s a home. It could be
our
home.” (We made that last bit up.)
    The pamphlet desperately bids to woo everyone back to their formerly favorite restaurant: There are pictures of cute black children, pictures of cute moo cows, parents lovingly clasping their children’s hands, and a cute child on a swing—all brimming with salad-derived vitamins. In keeping with the identity crisis theme, there’s also a picture of some paunchy dudes watching football in a bar to reassuringly convey the message: Yes, we do still sell shitty burgers that chew your guts up something rotten.
    Another section, which contains some of the most remarkable prose ever written, aims to reposition McDonald’s at the head of the feminist market (this is not made up). Headlined “You Go Girls,” the empowering passage claims that “spending time away from the boys is a rare and precious thing. Make the most of it while you can. Take a shopping break, put the bags down and find somewhere fun to eat.” Because, this says, being a carer to men and shopaholic (which, of course, is the very essence of womanhood) is hard work. But where could you possibly have this break? “Yoohoo!—we’re over here.” Ah yes, McDonald’s.
    The text—and if you don’t believe this actually happened, you can check it out: We’ve donated a copy to the public library—ends like this: “Girls, before you know it, you’ll be back home and showing the things you bought to the boys, and unless it’s got cars or football on it—they won’t care. So have a great day, have a great salad, and sisters? Do it for yourselves.”
    FAUX SWEARING
    Strolling past The Shop Formerly Known as French Connection, have you ever been driven to splutter, giggle, tap your companion’s shoulder, and exclaim, “Look, look—it almost says
fuck
!”? I’m guessing you haven’t.
    There is nothing