Free The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty by Amanda Filipacchi Page A

in unhealthy, compulsive behavior like everyone here. When you guys go to the store to buy your fatty things, I go to a store and buy a different kind of fatty thing. And then I go home, and instead of eating mine, I put it on my body. My brain and emotions have the same need as yours to be fat, but my body is unable to manufacture that fat for reasons of taste. I hate the taste of fattening foods. I hate overeating. And I hate being inactive. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a very serious weight problem. I can’t stop putting on the weight. When I take it off, I can’t keep it off. Either your way or my way, the fat ends up visible to everyone, and the result is the same in the eyes of the world.”
    “Okay,” says the group leader. “Let’s move on . . . Sally? Would you like to share?”
    I sit in silence for forty more minutes until the meeting finally ends.
    GEORGIA TELLS US her agent wants to know if our whole group would be willing to appear on TV, on News with Peter Marrick, to be interviewed about our Nights of Creation and our creativity in general.
    “They want us on Wednesday night at six,” Georgia explains. “They’re doing a segment on creativity. They read about our Nights of Creation in that Observer article last year.”
    We agree to do it. We’re particularly excited that the great Peter Marrick himself, America’s favorite local news anchor, will be conducting the interview. Even if he weren’t so charismatic and charming on camera, the incident a few years ago when he ran into a burning building and saved three children would make him America’s sweetheart. His cameraman captured the spectacle of Peter running out of the burning house, his hair on fire, carrying a baby in one arm and dragging two small children in his other hand. The only injury he sustained was to his hair follicles. His decision to continue anchoring the news with singed hair and then with a shaved head drew even more viewers. And when his hair grew back nicer and more unusual than before, that didn’t hurt the ratings either. He looked angelic—almost ethereal with his hair floating around his head, light and airy, like a halo.
    “You should all go on the show without me,” Georgia says. “I’ve got nothing to say about creativity anymore. When you lose your faith in your work, what have you got left as an artist? Nothing much.”
    “Haven’t you done any writing in the last week since you got your laptop back?” Jack asks.
    “I tried.”
    “And?”
    “I’ve become an expert at backing up my laptop. I’ve set up three different backup systems. The first is manual. The second is automatic, hourly, wireless, in the apartment. And the third is automatic, daily, in the cloud, which means that all of America could blow up and I could still retrieve a backup from the Internet in Europe, assuming I wasn’t in America when it blew up.”

Chapter Seven
    I discover a new letter from Gabriel waiting for me in my mailbox.
    That letter shocks me so deeply that I’m not able to call my friends right away to tell them about it. I do research online for about an hour. Then I think. I spend the entire night thinking. I don’t even try to sleep.
    IN THE MORNING, I call my friends. I tell them to come to my apartment at three. This way, I’ll still have a few hours to think more about the letter.
    MY FRIENDS ARRIVE promptly. We settle ourselves on the couch.
    Not beating around the bush, I unfold the letter.
    I take a deep breath and begin reading—
    Dear Barb, Georgia, Lily, Penelope, and Jack,
    This is my final letter to you before October 27 th . I didn’t want to upset you sooner than necessary, but now I must tell you the terrible thing one of you did, and I must issue an urgent warning that I hope is no longer necessary, but if it is, you must heed it.
    On Lily’s birthday, we were all out at a bar. It was a great evening. We were in high spirits, having a wonderful time, laughing a lot. Lily was turning