How To Drink Diet Coke (Like a Celebrity)
Whatever you do, don't drink it from a plastic bottle.
by ALEX RYAN
ARTWORK BY DAVID PAYTON
A movie star, a musician, a writer, or a television actor sits on a sofa in a luxurious hotel in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, or Tokyo. This celebrity is being interviewed by a glossy magazine to promote his or her new book, movie, or whatever. As the fourth question rolls around, the celebrity reaches forward to a hip, Donald Judd-inspired coffee table and picks up a silver can embroidered with iconic black and red writing. The celebrity opens the tin container with a pop and a hiss, and takes a sip of the sugary, tinted water. As anyone’s does when they take that initial drink of a Diet Coke, the celebrity’s face blooms in pure euphoria.
Since 1982, Diet Coke has been the essence of fame, and with slogans such as “Do what feels good!” the beverage is easily confused with the popular cocaine diet of the same decade. Diet Coke not only screams “Do what feels good!” but also “I’m so fabulous I don’t need calories!” Everyone from Victoria Beckham to John Edwards downs the soda with enthusiasm and conviction.
Teenage girls take millions of ridiculous pictures of themselves to put on Myspace. Even if they possess absolutely no musical talent, college guys start crappy bands between class and binge drinking sessions. Yet neither of these groups are, with the exception of Cory Kennedy and Radiohead, considered famous. Obviously Diet Coke is what’s missing from the equation. Imbibing the substance, and imbibing it right, are essential to achieving this image of glamour and success pursued by so many easily impressionable young adults.
Like the amount of money you spent on your car, the type of Diet Coke you drink defines your personality. Diet Coke with Lime says you’re stylish, individualistic, and edgy: you wear Tillmann Lauterbach and always vote democrat. Diet Coke with Cherry announces to the world you’re fairly conventional, but you know how to have fun: think polos and the Sunday newspaper. The classic version of the soda in your manicured hand might as well be a syringe full of heroin in your arm; you don’t drink straight-up Diet Coke unless you’re an addict. A classy and sexy addict.
Buy your preferred type of Diet Coke, and buy it in large quantities from your local grocery store. Even better, have someone else buy it (your assistant, your spouse, your mother), and make sure this person loudly mentions it is for you. This will give the impression that you are too good, too fabulous to go to the store and buy it yourself. Always have a can within arm’s reach, and walk to class and work with it in your hand. Bring one to church services, to dinner parties, to bat mitzvahs. Bring one to funerals.
Fuck Tiffiany’s. The silver-aluminum can is the ultimate bling. Celebrities are perceived as being somewhat conceited. Drinking Diet Coke out of a plastic bottle will result in an uncomfortably warm afterlife. The plastic of the bottle, no matter how fabulous the contents, emphasizes your own fake image – your own placticicity. I would mention that plastic bottles are worse than cans for the environment, but I, like most celebrities, really don’t care (none of that Angelina and Brad bullshit, please).
If you are a girl, feel free to drink Diet Coke with a straw. It’ll keep your teeth from getting brown so you can keep damaging corneas with your lustrous white smile. As for the men out there, being caught drinking any soda with a straw is like being caught plucking your eyebrows in the men’s lockeroom after a workout.
Stay away from caffeine-free Diet Coke. It’s for overworked men in their late forties who mix it with cheap whiskey.
Never mind the aspartame that could give you cancer or that you’re paying money for brown, carbonated water. Next time the waiter at that hip bistro or sushi joint asks you what you’d like to drink, remember the advice I’ve so graciously given you, and say, “I’ll take a can of caffeine, and skip the calories. I’m a celebrity for God’s sake!”
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