Competitive eating is gross. And, by extension, so are competitive eaters. These are people who train to stretch the stomach muscle and choke back their own vomit, not to mention lethal amounts of foods that you could sort of see eating in large quantities (until you actually see it done) and foods that make you barf in your mouth just thinking of them, like beef tongue, cow brains, and mayonnaise. What drives a person to achieve that? Why in the world would you take the pleasure away from eating only to replace it with...a stopwatch? What does being the world champ of pounding cabbage, like, do for you? The whole thing is just weird.
I'm willing to rethink my position on this, however, because of one "gurgitator" -- even that moniker makes me gag -- who's relatively new on the scene. Her name is Juliet Lee (pictured above and below, with Takeru Kobayashi), she's only been competing since December 2006, and she scarfed down 23 DOZEN CLAMS in six minutes this past Memorial Day to set a new clam-eating world record (yes, there is such a thing).
Oh, and she's HOT. And I, like everybody else, am unfairly fascinated by gross stuff that hot chicks do (in that way, I'm a dude). She has the face of Michelle Yeoh and a hatefully-teensy waist -- she weighs in at 105 lbs. -- despite her, um, sport. I don't even mind that she always seems to be wearing a midriff-baring top like some slutty tween girl who wants to be the first in line to bone a Jonas Brother. I'm sure I'd even find her farts charming.
And Juliet seems kinda normal. She has a college degree in geology from her native China, she owns a hair salon, and she has two adorable daughters. (She also lives in the same Maryland town as Michelle Malkin -- love to see that eating contest go down.) Did I mention she's 42 years old?! She could almost make me forget how demented her sport is, how grotesquely contorted competitive eaters' faces get when they jam 10 hot dogs in their mouths at once, and how, you know, they eat their own puke. Almost.