With each new year comes a month of healthy planning and ambitious list-making that can, let’s face it, reduce some of us into a pile of neurotic checklists. When selecting our January Guest Editor, we knew we needed to find someone who would balance our buttoned-up dreams of juice cleansing and resolution-keeping with a little humor and, dare we say, sass.
We’ve outdone ourselves by landing on the perfect pick: funny girl, next gen comedienne, author, producer, and television star, Mindy Kaling. Of all people, surely Mindy grasps that delicate balance between hilarity and productivity – she produces and stars in her own namesake television show, The Mindy Project, recently penned the ridiculously witty gem of a best-selling book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)
, and has written and starred in some of our favorite funny projects of the decade. Having that kind of smashing success as a funny girl in Hollywood proves one thing for sure: Mindy has a firm grasp on how to keep herself fully entertained while still juggling a laundry list of priorities.
With her opening line below, Mindy has us at hello. Her glaringly honest – and hilarious – version of what it’s like to emerge from the holiday party stupor wondering how you ever classified as any form of health expert whatsoever has our whole staff blushing with cookie crumb-lipped recognition. Here’s the best companion you could hope for in a month like this one – the sassy, has-she-always-looked-this-good?, tell-it-like-it-is powerhouse, Mindy Kaling…
Dear Chalkboard readers,
I was very excited to be asked to be a guest editor, because The Chalkboard is a site that promotes healthy living, and to be affiliated with such a site – with the way I ate and drank over the holidays – is one of the greatest scams I’ve ever pulled off. I’m the Wolf of Wall Street, basically, but for television actresses who are trying to pose as healthy role models.
Don’t get me wrong, I am always trying to be healthier. Right now I’m barre-class crazy, and I took five Physique 57 classes in New York when I was visiting last week. It’s so hard, and I love the stretching, because I am very wooden and inflexible, like a nutcracker. I also find it competitively exhilarating to be in the same class with some of the most toned, Type-A, Manhattan hot girls. They do not fuck around, and being near their sinewy selves makes me feel like I have my life together.
And of course, since I’m me, I would offset Physique 57 with: eating out and drinking with friends every night.
Please feel free to reference my Instagram to find me last week drinking a ‘Kelly Kapoor ‘- a Seven & Seven with 8 maraschino cherries and sugar on the rim.
But somehow, and I am so lucky my personality is like this, even if I didn’t fill all my daily health goals, I wake up with an excited and hopeful outlook. So what if I ate a Porterhouse steak, drank two Moscow Mules and fell asleep during Seinfeld reruns? So what if in the middle of the night I wake up and realize I am sleeping in my sequined party dress and there are sequins in my bra? Today is a new day, and I’m going to drink green juice and wear yoga pants until I somehow become the Kelly Ripa I know is inside of me.
In that way I’m a lot like Mindy Lahiri, the character I created on my show, The Mindy Project. A little delusional, pretty psyched, and determined to be better every day.
My New Year’s resolution is to do a seven-day juice cleanse starting December 31st! I’ve done a 21-day cleanse and it was the best three weeks of my life. I was so clear-headed and funny and skinny and I felt superior to everyone else, too.
May you begin your year with your own little superiority complex!
Love,
Mindy
