Dear Dr Dukan of the Dukan Diet,
Thank you so much for your unsolicited email to me. This is what it said:
Treat mum this Mother’s Day to a selection of homemade pattiseries and delicious desserts with a little help from the man behind the plan. If your mum’s watching her waistline this Mother’s Day there’s no need for her miss out on the finer things in life, as the creator of the Dukan Diet, Dr Pierre Dukan, reveals his revolutionary indulgent dessert and patisserie recipes for all to enjoy.
Mum can enjoy her guilty pleasures guilt-free and still lose those inches fast. Hailing an “eat as much as you want” policy, the Dukan Diet can help you successfully shift those unwanted pounds without going hungry or missing out. Indulge mum in cupcakes, meringues and Madeleines without compromising the success of her weight-loss.
Thank you for the recipes you provided without me asking for them, for cupcakes, madeleines and meringues and a "lemon extravaganza". What a lot of work you expect me to do for nothing! Or do you expect my mother to do it? Thank you for making it clear, through your patronising assumptions, sexist cliches and reductive simplifications, just what you think women are like - and thank you for putting yourself forward as "the man behind the plan" offering us pathetic women "a little help" for our little goals in our stupid little lives. What plan would that be, by the way? Ah! Every woman's plan, every woman's obsession, every woman's little favourite hobby: in your eyes we are infantile enough to be tempted by hideous pastel cupcakes and other sweeties, obsessed with losing weight, watching our waistlines with the feverish attention which men give to more important and interesting things, so pathetic that we think mere desserts are among "the finer things in life", yet masochistically riddled with guilt when we do eat them (because we are so weak we cannot resist), desperate to lose inches and only able to judge success and failure by our size. That is all a mother is to you, isn't it, a nameless, domestic, small-minded "mum" with petty obsessions, who you think you know everything about.
Dr Dukan. My mother is a tough, cool academic who has been patronised, demeaned and objectified by helpful gents just like you all her life, as have I, as have all women. We are tired of your insulting assumptions about us. We are not objects and we don't hate ourselves enough to obsess over our size, shape or weight. It is not our job to spend all day in the kitchen like pathetic Stepford Wives and we are not interested in the revolting dessert recipes you have sent me out of the blue, accompanied by this gack-making pastel picture:
Dr Dukan, I think I speak for so many high-minded and noble women of dignity, vintage and spirit when I say, Dr Dukan, with great forethought and nuance: Dr Dukan, go fuck yourself. Kan you do that, Doctor Dukan?
