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"  Dolls, old Eeee can&amp;#039;t quite muster the energy to roll off the sofa and restore her ruins for ELLE&amp;#039;s makeover issue. But I can advise friends who want to make over friends (a dangerous undertaking that caused even Dear Abby to steal into the pantry and brace herself with the cooking sherry). Read on....   How to Deal with a Douche BaguetteDear E. Jean : Since my best friend and I graduated from college, I&amp;#039;ve noticed that she&amp;#039;s becoming more and more negative and officious-from her delusional ideas about being the most fashionable (she simply apes celebrities), to being the best writer in the world, to hating most people around her. It gets worse. She now loathes the city in which we live, has become a workaholic, complains constantly about her coworkers, starves herself, and is continuously talking about being fat and finding &amp;quot;wrinkles.&amp;quot; (She&amp;#039;s 24!!) I don&amp;#039;t know what to do, E. Jean! I feel her attitude and behavior rubbing off on me. I don&amp;#039;t want to see her (or me) like this!\u2014Best Friend  Best, my young beezle : The girl is a stinker. Shall I be blunt? Get rid of her. However, if you still see traces of your old friend in there somewhere, next time her bile starts bubbling, rev up your larynx and say: &amp;quot;Darling, you&amp;#039;re wonderfully mad. And you know I love you because you&amp;#039;re so mad for fashion, mad for art, mad to be the best writer since Plutarch; but you&amp;#039;re making yourself mental. You&amp;#039;ve put yourself under just waaaay too much pressure. And where does that pressure come from? Please don&amp;#039;t interrupt. No. That is not a wrinkle. The pressure comes from the stress you create with your ridiculously insane expectations. Because-listen to me-because gorgeous as you are, if you expect never to see a wrinkle again, you&amp;#039;re going to be a complete mess for the rest of your life.&amp;quot; She won&amp;#039;t hear you. She&amp;#039;ll be scrawned-out, bloated from lack of sleep, and trolling Patrickmcmullan .com for her picture, but keep talking. Tell her again about forming &amp;quot;reasonable expectations&amp;quot; when you drag her to an origami class (the girl must learn to purge her head and calm fricking down for 45 minutes) and to a holistic nutritionist who&amp;#039;ll explain that hyperactive snarky young ladies can run all kinds of good food through their systems at the rate of 2,000 to 2,400 calories a day without gaining an ounce and how baked Brie with pecans will make her smarter, prettier, happier, mad as ever, but not batty. Good luck. In my opinion, you&amp;#039;d have an easier time getting a chicken to molt.  E-mail your questions to e.jean@askejean.com  How to Get Rid of a FriendDear E. Jean : My friend had a bad breakup last year and needed a place to stay, so I took her in, loaned her money, brought her on trips, and counseled her for many hours on the phone. I&amp;#039;ve tried to get her back on her feet, but she sticks to me like a leech! She calls with all her problems and gets very emotional if I don&amp;#039;t return the call. I&amp;#039;m a woman with a busy career, a marriage, a family, and lots of friends, and she&amp;#039;s becoming really annoying. What should I do?\u2014Unwilling Best Friend Miss Unwilling, my custard : Next time she calls, say: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m dying to talk to you! How about lunch on the 23rd?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;But, but, but that&amp;#039;s four weeks away!&amp;quot; she&amp;#039;ll reply. &amp;quot;I know! I&amp;#039;m halfdead,&amp;quot; you&amp;#039;ll say. &amp;quot;My schedule&amp;#039;s nuts-I won&amp;#039;t be able to breathe in the next few weeks. If you call and I don&amp;#039;t call back, it&amp;#039;s not that I don&amp;#039;t want to talk. I&amp;#039;d love to talk; that&amp;#039;s why I wanted to set a long, cozy lunch.&amp;quot; Every time she calls after that, say, &amp;quot;Darling, don&amp;#039;t have a moment, see you on the 23rd!&amp;quot; Then, when you meet for lunch, be happy to see her, praise her for making decisions on her own, encourage her to continue doing so, and schedule the next lunch six weeks hence. This time, take no calls between lunches. By the end of the year, you&amp;#039;ll have weaned her, and the friendship will softly recede into a quieter kind of goodwill. E-mail your questions to e.jean@askejean.com  How To Help a Friend&amp;#039;s CareerDear E. Jean : I broke up with my screenwriter boyfriend last year. My new boyfriend is a movie producer. My old boyfriend&amp;#039;s stuffy pride and jealousy over my friendship with the producer and his fancy credits is what broke us up in the first place. I love them both equally. Now my new producer boyfriend has offered to read the latest script of my old boyfriend. I think this would be beneficial to both! Should I facilitate the connection?\u2014Making Links Miss Linx : No. Your ex-boyfriend has had just about as much facilitation as he can take. (And I suspect your new boyfriend is making the offer to drive the poor fellow completely over the edge.) Any more of your &amp;quot;help&amp;quot; and these dudes will kill one another. Stop tweaking the testosterone.  How To Give a Friend a Slim ChanceDear E. Jean : I have a really good friend who&amp;#039;s severely overweight. I love her, so it&amp;#039;s hard to sit by and watch her health deteriorate. When we went to a local ice cream parlor recently, she ordered a huge, huge sundae. It feels like she&amp;#039;s given up! Her other friends and I (we all have fluctuations, but we&amp;#039;re normal weight) have discussed holding some sort of intervention. We want to try to compel her to talk to a nutritionist and even start exercising, but we&amp;#039;re afraid of what she&amp;#039;ll say. She&amp;#039;ll say we have no right-but what if she develops diabetes? Or worse? How can we go about this without hurting her feelings and damaging our friendships?\u2014Weighting in Massachusetts  Miss Weighting, my waffle : Come, come, what&amp;#039;s this horror of &amp;quot;huge, huge&amp;quot; sundaes? When did the ice cream parlor become the Bates Motel? The truth is, she may be utterly healthy and happy. At any rate, you can&amp;#039;t force her to take off weight. She knows she&amp;#039;s voluminous. She&amp;#039;s heard that obesity is linked to diabetes, breast cancer, heart disease (the round-the-clock circuit-blowing noise about fat in this culture makes it impossible not to know), and confronting her with delicate exclamations of your well meaning &amp;quot;concerns&amp;quot; will make her think you&amp;#039;re a bunch of prying huge weasels. That said, if she&amp;#039;s not enjoying, shall we say, the zenith of health, you can perform an intervention- but an intervention so subtle, so soft, it will get her on a program and draw you closer. Like many things in life, this will require tenderness and finesse.  E-mail your questions to e.jean@askejean.com Call and ask her to be your walking partner. Naturally, nobody has time to meet up with a walking partner who lives three (11, 20) miles away, and that&amp;#039;s why you&amp;#039;re going to propose being phone-walking partners. (It&amp;#039;s like phone sex, except you don&amp;#039;t have to deliver the hilarious Kate Winslet line from Extras: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m playing with my dirty pillows.&amp;quot;) You each leave your apartments at the same time and briskly walk and talk for 35 minutes twice a week. If, after a couple of exhilarating, mood-lifting walks, she doesn&amp;#039;t bring up The Large Subject No One Talks About, I&amp;#039;ll be surprised. But no matter; your intimacy will quickly reach a point where you can say, without hurting her feelings, that your sincere regard leads you to suggest she see a physician specializing in weight, nutrition, and fitness. Have a couple of names at the ready. And keep up the walking! You can celebrate together as the pounds come slowly off, off, off.   How to Make A Boyfriend Reconsider His MoveDear E. Jean : My boyfriend is thinking about living with a girl he has known for a few months (a friend of friends). I&amp;#039;m completely confident in our relationship, so I&amp;#039;m comfortable with him living with a woman. Just not this one! Her personality is repulsive and she brags about sleeping around-a lot! I&amp;#039;m not afraid she&amp;#039;ll try to get with my boyfriend (I&amp;#039;m sure he&amp;#039;d reject her because she&amp;#039;s unattractive). I&amp;#039;m annoyed with the fact that I&amp;#039;ll be forced to see her frequently. How honest can I be with him?\u2014Is the Apartment Crunch This Bad? Crunch, my cupcake : Wait. My eyes have rolled so far up in my head, I have to sit under my Mac to type this. You&amp;#039;re &amp;quot;sure he&amp;#039;d reject her because she&amp;#039;s unattractive?&amp;quot; Gah! Here&amp;#039;s the rule: Beware the &amp;quot;unattractive&amp;quot; woman. If she has sex appeal (and apparently the young lady in question is simply chock-full of the stuff), she&amp;#039;ll be playing &amp;quot;Tuck me in&amp;quot; with the lad five times quicker than a beauty queen. You have two options before you: Tell him frankly you don&amp;#039;t like her (spare him the confusticating detail), and you don&amp;#039;t want him moving in with her. Or if you&amp;#039;d prefer to get rid of the problem entirely, the next time he comes to your place, let him notice a messy stack of Craigslist printouts on the table. When he comments, say, &amp;quot;Oh...yeah, those guys-who knew there were so many gorgeous-uh, I mean, I&amp;#039;m flirting with the idea of getting a new roommate. These guys are looking for shares, and I can&amp;#039;t decide between Sven [push Sven toward him], the photographer from Sweden; DuShawn, who has the 50-inch plasma TV; or Harry, the Calvin Klein model.&amp;quot; He&amp;#039;ll see the big picture.  E-mail your questions to e.jean@askejean.com "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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