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"  DEAR E. JEAN : Grab a box of Kleenex. This is a sad one. My guy of three years is funny, smart, stable, and bears a striking resemblance to George Clooney\u2014but he&amp;#039;s a bit of a bore in bed. I feel you can&amp;#039;t teach an old dog new tricks (he&amp;#039;s 37), so since everything else is perfect, should I let this slide? My life is in your hands. No pressure.\u2014He&amp;#039;s Vanilla, I&amp;#039;m Rocky Road  ROCKY, HONEY : Phoo. Just tell the old geezer what you want. (And if you happen to be wearing a raffish pair of boxsies with cr\u00E8me de menthe thigh-high satin boots and begin by enumerating, in Kama Sutra-licious detail, what you looove about him, and employ a little &amp;quot;show and tell&amp;quot; to illustrate what you like, the lad will kill himself to be your hot dog.) Ancient relics of 37 are more adept, ardent, and eager when it comes to learning new tricks than 17-year-olds (who are too busy acting 37). DEAR E. JEAN : I&amp;#039;m overweight. I was tormented all through school. University was better (my peers had matured), but I recognized my limits and practiced disappearing; I got so good at it, I felt only half the usual pain.  Now I&amp;#039;m trying to turn my life around. I want to be attractive despite my weight. How do I end the vanishing act, wear the right clothes, approach a man, and ask him out without feeling like everything I do is wrong? I have no confidence. My fat shouldn&amp;#039;t define who I am! What makes me me should be the main attraction.\u2014Daunted in Dawson Creek (Canada) DEAREST DAUNTED : Zaftig-ettes of the world unite! The most compelling letter of the day has arrived, replete with a tug at the heartstrings and a shovel-load of bull hockey. Miss Daunted, your drawing power\u2014your major-league lovability\u2014comes from the fact that though nearly every hour of your girlhood was hell on earth, and though your weight is now one husky headache, you end your letter with a defiant shout that your &amp;quot;fat shouldn&amp;#039;t define&amp;quot; you. Auntie Eeee adores the irony (and adores you, too), but come on, honey bun, your size is defining you. Hell, it&amp;#039;s the only thing defining you. You wouldn&amp;#039;t know who you were without it. And the one sure way to find out...is to get rid of it.  It may be the hardest thing you ever do. Harder than reading Jewel&amp;#039;s poetry. But if you follow the principles of mathematics\u2014burn a higher number of calories than you eat, log in eight hours of sleep, exercise 30 minutes a day\u2014and follow the Ask E. Jean Queenhell Eating Plan by enjoying 27 different foods a day (I am serious: Consuming tiny portions of lots of delish good foods is so devastatingly effective\u2014mainly because it turns every day into a feast\u2014that I&amp;#039;m thinking of writing a book about it), you will lose.  As the pounds melt away (trust me, they&amp;#039;ll disappear like Us Weekly&amp;#039;s interest in Paris Hilton), you&amp;#039;ll gain a new definition of yourself. Small sparks of confidence will fan into a bonfire; and, with pretty new clothes chosen with a friend who has a good eye for shape and color, who knows? You may find yourself so chock-full of \u00E9lan, you&amp;#039;ll smile, say hello to a guy you like\u2014and boom! DEAR E. JEAN : I&amp;#039;ve been suckered, duped, dumped, and wounded so many times by men, I&amp;#039;ve become a Man Hater. I&amp;#039;m the most cynical, disillusioned 34-year-old you&amp;#039;ve ever met, plus I&amp;#039;ve lost the sweetness that makes women attractive to men. The truth is, I&amp;#039;d love to have a boyfriend, but I am so hopeless! Help!\u2014A Big Hug From Miss B. MISS B. : Why, of course you&amp;#039;re a Man Hater. Any woman with half a brain hates men. The dudes have done a surreal job bungling up the whole world since we let them have weapons 25 million years ago. The trick for disillusioned young ladies is to not abominate all the buggers. Pick and choose. (I, for instance, love hundreds of guys, but I hate Dick Cheney.) Withhold your judgment till you know a chap well. Never assume it&amp;#039;s only &amp;quot;sweetness&amp;quot; that attracts (honey, the tart can be twice as tempting); a fetching streak of dislike on your part can ignite a man&amp;#039;s interest. Remember, in Pride and Prejudice it was Elizabeth Bennet&amp;#039;s saucy dislike of Mr. Darcy that made him fall in love. So no more of that &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m so hopeless&amp;quot; twitpiffle. Go out there and give as good as you get!  DEAR E. JEAN : I HATE my life. I&amp;#039;m 26 with a degree from a top-tier school. But my job at a bank sucks; I have no boyfriend, no friends, an overbearing mother\u2014and I live in the same boring-ass town I grew up in. It kills me to see TV shows that take place in New York, Chicago, Miami, and L.A., because I think I deserve to live in a big city where there are single men, things to do, interesting people, and good jobs! But I have no money, no skills, no contacts, and no nerve.\u2014Marooned on an Island of Boredom E-mail your questions to e.jean@askejean.com MISS MAROONED : Lord! What a crybaby! Where are you? In a Taliban trailer park? Pull yourself together, you little dumbcluck. Get yourself a Polaroid ($39) and take five pictures each day of things that make you happy. Tape them to your bedroom wall for inspiration. (Research shows this will give a remarkable boost to your feelings of well-being\u2014er, that is, the research was actually done on people who kept &amp;quot;gratitude journals,&amp;quot; but your wall will be waaay cooler, which in itself should make you dang ecstatic.)  Two more things: (a) You get one ride in this life and it takes you through both heaven and hell (for an all-inclusive tour)\u2014learn to take the ups and downs, and move on. Why? Because (b) if you don&amp;#039;t learn to be happy in your own skin, you won&amp;#039;t be happy in Chicago, New York, or Miami. (You can be happy in L.A., however, because most folks there hold a bleaker opinion of their careers than even you do.) DEAR E. JEAN : My life has been a good one. I come from an upper-middle-class family, and I&amp;#039;m surrounded by caring, conscientious people. I&amp;#039;ve also been very insulated. I&amp;#039;d never given a thought to the Armenian genocide or the holocaust. But because of my college classes and pictures of the starving children coming out of Darfur (and other places in the world), I&amp;#039;m becoming aware of the fact that many people are suffering. And I&amp;#039;m feeling increasingly guilty and helpless to do anything about it!  I know, I know, I should volunteer, but I attend a small school in a small town and can&amp;#039;t find any great volunteer opportunities. Some friends and I are trying to form a group for helping the people of Darfur, but they&amp;#039;re already losing interest (it&amp;#039;s difficult to get people involved), and it&amp;#039;s too much to do all on my own. I&amp;#039;m tired of feeling so crappy! How can I channel these feelings into something useful?\u2014Guilt-Ridden Girl GUILT, MY GIRL : I&amp;#039;m with you. Every day I ask myself the same question: Why the hell am I speed-dialing my vote for Ace on American Idol when I should be doing something about the terrible situations in Darfur and Chad? Don&amp;#039;t fret, though. Here are three things that are doable:  1. Even UN troops are scared to go into the region, though one of the few organizations brave enough to is Doctors Without Borders. This would be an excellent organization\u2014they won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999\u2014to send money to.  2. What money? Your school is small, but so what? Agitate. Ask each kid to give just one buck. Chase them across campus if you have to. You&amp;#039;ll become famous, but deal. Don&amp;#039;t forget to hit your Facebook and MySpace pages. E-mail your questions to e.jean@askejean.com 3. Go to an impoverished country (or an economically challenged area in this country) for vacation. True, it won&amp;#039;t be Cape Cod, and I&amp;#039;m not suggesting you go anywhere dangerous, but your help in orphanages, refugee camps, and schools will round out your education more than four years of higher learning. Remember what Anne Frank said: &amp;quot;How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.&amp;quot; DEAR E. JEAN : How do you wean a boyfriend from his mother? We&amp;#039;ve been together six years. Our relationship&amp;#039;s in good standing, but he&amp;#039;s 27, he just moved out of his parents&amp;#039; house, and he still clings to his mother, lunching with her often and spending every weekend with them (which she guilts him into\u2014easy to do because he has no practice being on his own). I just want to spend a Sunday alone with him!\u2014Mama&amp;#039;s Boy&amp;#039;s Babe BOY&amp;#039;S BABE : Rent a candy-apple-red convertible, screech up to his parents&amp;#039; house Sunday around noon, jam the horn (yes, challenge his mother on her own turf), throw the car door open for the boy, and whisk him out to the country for an afternoon of berry-picking and wild sex. Unless his mother is Jeff Gordon, this combo of cars and canoodling will enlighten him as to how Sundays should be spent. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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