Anyway, it’s a unique position to be in, to be sure. There are many others showcasing Hilaria in stilettos in various yoga poses. I found these altogether delightful. They were my favorite things. I disagree with the people on Goodreads who say they found them elitist and ridiculous. There should be even more of them. This book should have been a calendar.
To be perfectly candid with you, I thought I was going to find a lot more to make fun of here. I approach all pieces of literature with an open mind, of course, and I didn’t embark on this series with the intention of mocking people. But one must acknowledge that the House of Baldwin has been beset by some scandals. A rather harmless one, and also my favorite, is Hilaria’s unique relationship with Spanish identity.
This—how do you say in English—“charade” is perhaps best exemplified by a doomed appearance on the Today show in which Hilaria pretends not to know the English word for cucumber while preparing a meal. “This is how I learned in Spain,” she says, peeling a tomato like an apple before going on to say, “in Spain, we don’t use these spicier sauces.” Hilaria is from Boston, Massachusetts.
Look, if pretending to be Spanish despite contradicting evidence is a crime, then my entire Mexican family is in trouble. I feel you, hermana! Anyway, Hilaria had to release an apology and clarify that she is not, in fact, from Spain. It’s always good to bring clarity to a situation like this. One might say she was living clearly. Viviendo con claridad.
Ahem. All this is to say: I had certain expectations when I opened this book up. But to be honest with you, I found Hilaria likable. It could very well be the case that something in my psyche was irreparably shattered after reading Skinny Bitch, the last diet book I read for this series, wherein I was repeatedly called a silly pig with a lumpy ass through a bedazzled megaphone. In contrast, The Living Clearly Method felt like a soft-spoken yoga instructor tenderly asking me, “Who put all this trauma in your root chakra?” Oh, Hilaria. It was the skinny bitches.
The Living Clearly Method is based on five principles: perspective, breathing, grounding, balance, and letting go. Some of these might sound kind of close to each other, and they kind of are. Perspective and grounding, in particular, are a bit blurry in my mind. But the gist of it is that we go about much of our daily lives without being present. We establish routines, and those routines are often riddled with self-sabotage and unhealthy habits—but we find comfort in the familiar, and so we surrender agency in exchange for the stability that those things offer.
This is actually pretty true! And it’s exactly the kind of theme I would want a yoga instructor to touch on while I’m holding a sweaty chair pose. I got the sense that Hilaria is probably an amazing yoga teacher. I do think my third eye would open a little bit during my savasana in her class. I also found her to be very forthcoming and candid, as she was when discussing her lifelong struggles with anorexia and bulimia, and with the hip injury that she incurred in her thirties from pushing herself too hard. “After so much pushing, my body had screamed at me to stop through the only way it could get my attention: breaking me,” she said.