My Enema Shop Is Open for Business

I’ve been wracking my brain for a business idea, and I finally have it: prenuptial enemas. Persuading the bride that she’s merely a healthy dump away from getting into her dream dress is Advertising for Dummies. Maybe you smell poop, but I smell my beach house.

Would that I could take all of the credit for this money maker, but I had a convergence of entrepreneurial muses on the very same day. The obvious one is last week’s viral story about the K-E Diet. For $1,500 a “doctor” weaves a feeding tube up your nose and into your stomach, and that’s it. No sit-ups, no treadmills, no cabbage soup and Wasa crackers. The bride can bide her time browsing Modern Bride, since she, herself, is so modern that she’s eating without eating.

That afternoon, a nurse friend invited me over for a delightful lunch that she made with her own two hands, the same hands that she used the previous day to give a 97-year-old patient an enema. Over avocado gazpacho and black bean salad, she reenacted how she manually extracted a week’s worth of waste from far above the patient’s ass. She said she knew it was almost over when she pulled out a shopping cart and a tire. The patient had a new lease on life after that, even at 97.

Thanks to Hollywood and Madison Avenue, Step One of my marketing plan is already accomplished: Persuade women that it would be an embarrassment for them to do almost anything in their current state, let alone walk down the aisle in front of God and people with cameras. Is that really how you want to look in your wedding pictures and/or video?

Step Two: Euphemisms. Credit again goes to Hollywood and Madison Avenue because what was once an enema is now a “cleanse” or “detoxification.” It sounds so healthy. No woman wants to be internally dirty or poisonous on her wedding day, especially when all that sludge can be measured in pounds. I know better than to use the words sludge or dump, by the way. They’re not genteel enough for brides. I’ll also avoid old-people terms like feces, excrement,and  stool in my Salon de Merde.

Step Three: Real women and celebrity testimonials. Once-bloated brides, now drifting along in featherlight serenity, then frolicking in bikinis on their honeymoons, all smiley and unconstipated. Tell me you won’t get sucked into this infomercial like it’s Sensa or that ab belt thing, especially if Tootie from Facts of Life is the spokeswoman. Who’s more sincere and lovable than Tootie? Definitely not that bitch, Blair.

Does it seem that ridiculous that, for much less than $1,500, and a shorter tube (not in a better orifice) the bride and her willing attendants will get an internal pampering, which will include a complementary Pamper for the ride home? What’s it going to be, tube down your throat, up your ass, or everything but your head encased in Spanx for 15 hours? Decisions, decisions.

Being a successful entrepreneur comes down to seizing the moment of demand with supply, and the demand for the ideal woman is a dependable constant. Laugh all you want at my pitch for marketing the matrimonial flush, but we’ve been indoctrinated to the point of sisters—who shall remain nameless but you know who they are, even if you don’t watch their pathetic show on E—getting simultaneous on-camera enemas in the name of beauty. The bride in the feeding-tube story didn’t need to lose 10 ounces, let alone 10 pounds. She was gorgeous, yet she walked around with a tube hanging out of her face to feel better about wearing her wedding gown.

Go on and judge her. I did. Then I made a mental list of all of the weight loss/exercise/brand-new-you products and services, at least the ones that I could remember, for which I have buyer’s remorse, and the cost of which would probably add up to at least the downpayment on my beach house.

On the verge of turning 44, I want to pull out the feeding tube of propaganda that’s nourished my insecurity for so long. I want to say that my muffin top and I aren’t going to take it any more. We’re even eating muffins, and we don’t feel one bit guilty. We’re taking a stand against all of the shit that weighs us down, just as soon as we touch up our gray roots.