Mamie Van Doren and the 12 Steps to a Better Life
DUDE IF MY GRANDMOTHER LOOKED LIKE THAT, I would never stop throwing up
written by Kyle on February 28, 2025

Not too long ago, I stumbled on MamieVanDoren.com.  I don’t recall how I found it.  Maybe it’s my anthropological interest in the 1950s phenomenon of Pontoon Breast, maybe I was considering converting to gay and wanted to brush up on my kitsch; it doesn’t really matter.  What is of import here is the ghoulish funhouse of horror I found within.  Mamie Van Doren, in case you are unaware, was one of those manufactured “blonde bombshells” from the ‘50s who was drafted for shitty B-movies when Marilyn Monroe was too busy contracting AIDS from Truman Capote during a rousing game of touch football on Hyannisport.  She was in a few movies that our forum’s own Greg has surely picked up on DVD from the dumpster behind Wal-Mart and then apparently faded into that depressing Sunset Boulevard brand of delusional obscurity.  I think she might be a lesser gay icon, but I’m not too sure.  Like, below Judy Garland but above Steve Kmetko.

Anyway, here she is in her prime:

Not too bad, right?  Okay, here she is now:

Grim, to say the least.  She’s 75 years old and she doesn’t look a day over Jesus-Christ-what-the-fuck-is- that.  Her geriatric flesh stretched to near its breaking point, one can imagine that, like a poorly-knit sweater, one loose thread and the whole thing comes unraveled.  The most unsettling bit is, see that face she’s making in that picture?  That’s the face she always makes.  I’ll be so kind as not to link to any videos of the woman popping the necrotic beach balls she calls her breasts out for all the world to see, but her perpetual Nancy Pelosi grin is much more obvious there; in pictures, she might just be one of those people who makes the same goofy face for every photograph.  On film, it becomes obvious that decades of plastic surgery have pulled her face so taught that she can’t make any facial expressions except Green Goblin.

Perhaps an even more disturbing part of the site is “Bedtime Stories.”  It’s a combination of the kind of vaguely charming Old Hollywood stories Mickey Rooney or whoever might tell on Larry King and explicit, vulgar discussions of encounters with various male celebrities.  Hey, George Raft had a giant penis?  I only kind of know who that is, but thanks for that, Mamie Van Doren!

Never has disgust.jpg been so appropriate

But enough bashing the woman.  Not only have I not brushed up on my libel code in a while, but what place is it of mine to criticize her for what she’s done to herself?  She clearly thinks she’s hot and so, evidently, does her husband, Richard Kiel.  And she’s obviously surrounded herself with enough sycophants and pushovers to perpetuate that.  She’s happy, why should it interest me?   It interests me because Mamie Van Doren might be a special case, but she’s indicative of a grander cultural force.  The force I’m referring to isn’t our youth obsession—though obviously that’s an issue for a septuagenarian who feels the need to make herself look like a defective Real Doll—nor is it our culture’s sick obsession with celebrity—or, as it’s come to mean in the last few decades, the ability to hang out with Paris Hilton (or not; if you can’t even do that well, all the better, for tabloids will get a kick out of documenting your feud with her).  It’s the distinctively human curse of nostalgia.  

Van Doren desperately seeks to reclaim a past wherein she was a beautiful woman who palled around with people who “mattered.”  A huge segment of my generation seeks to reclaim a past wherein they sat around playing video games and watching shitty TV all day.  The only difference is that Mamie Van Doren can’t shoot for her past without coming off as creepy and unnatural.  Members of the ugh-I-wish-there-were-a- better-way-to-refer-to-them generations X and Y, on the other hand, are able to mask their affliction with irony and in so doing, deflect any possible criticism that they’re stuck in a state of perpetual adolescence.  

The connection between Mamie Van Doren and the “old=lol” mentality that has become an outright lifestyle in the last decade or so may seem tenuous at first, but in fact, they are quite closely related.  Firstly, Mamie Van Doren is old (lol), but more importantly, she serves as a striking analogue to the detriment that sort of mentality has on our culture.  She’s grasping at straws, trying to recall a time when what she loved was relevant, assuming that if she packages her attempts at getting back to that time in a sort of detached, ironic modernity (“I had a nightmare I was a brunette!”  “You’re only as old as you feel and I feel horny as hell!”), it will seem normal and charming when in fact, it just comes off as embarrassing and rather creepy.  This is the exact same thinking that’s behind the “I Love the ‘80s” school of thought that so pervades our culture right now.  And her unnatural, almost gargoylesque appearance serves as a chilling representation of what an obsession with the past can do to us: it can turn someone into a warped, damaged shell of what a normal, mature person of a certain age should be.  We’re an entire generation stricken with Peter Pan Syndrome, and it shows no sign of letting up.

So, what then?  Boycott VH1?  Carpet-bomb Michael Ian Black’s house?  Both very attractive options, but unnecessary.  You see, I have prepared a 12-step program to save you from the demons of cultural nostalgia that threaten to overtake modern society.  Together, we can beat this thing.

1. Admit that you have become powerless over nostalgia - that your life has become unmanageable.

Has your Nintendo playing gotten out of control?  Call in sick to work because the Murder, She Wrote marathon was on?  Have you woken up in the middle of a night choking on a stuffed Beaker doll that fell from its precarious position atop your brimming Muppet hammock?  The first step is just to admit that you’re living in the past.

2. Concede that “nostalgia culture” is not superior in any way, shape, or form to the popular media of today.

A lot of people, myself included, have bemoaned the rise of reality TV and, by implication, the decline in scripted programming.  Fuck that, find me a reality TV show worse than Baby Talk and I’ll buy you all the Urkel dolls in the world.  The U.S. may be on the verge of a cultural and political dark age wherein liberalism is all but quashed, but no matter how many stem cells are liberated into foster homes, take comfort in the fact that never again will there be a show on television as bad as Aliens in the Family.

3. Admit to God, to yourself, and to another human being the exact nature of your wrongs.

This is probably best to do over the Internet.  I don’t want to look someone in the eyes as he tells me about the time he told his mom he hates her because she taped over his copy of Mother Goose Rock ‘n’ Rhyme any more than he wants to talk about it.  Fortunately, I think SmarterChild counts as another human being, at least for these purposes.

4. Make a list of all persons you harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all.

Ever get in a fistfight defending the hetero-ness of Sunset Riders (or, alternately, as a result of calling it “so gay”)?  It’s time to make things right.

5. Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

This may involve working through some tricky, Chad’s-mom-says-he’s-not-home-but-you-know-he-just- doesn’t-want-to-talk-to-you phone systems, but it’s necessary.  

6. Continue to take personal inventory and when you were wrong, promptly admit it.

Dude, “Headed For a Heartbreak” was by Winger; pay up, bro!  If Chad does not accept your admission that you were in the wrong, there is nothing more you can do.  Know that you have absolved yourself and that the ball is now in Chad’s court.

7. Fuck that Chuck Norris shit.

Ya heard.

8. Be entirely ready to have God remove all your defects of cultural character.

Note: George Burns does not count as God just because you’ve worn out your tape of Oh God! You Devil from the countless times you’ve watched it “just to make fun of it.”

9. Humbly ask Him to remove your shortcomings.

See #8.

10. Make a searching and fearless inventory of your nostalgia culture collection.

Hey, sweet Crystal Pepsi poster.  Guess you’ve given up on ever getting laid again?

11. Dispose of that collection.

Burn it, lest you have naught to look forward to but a grim post-apocalyptic distant future wherein the planet has become overrun by Donal Logues who harvest their energy from smarminess and ‘80s cultural flotsam.  Do you guys remember that commercial for Polly Pocket?  It totally sucked!  

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, try to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all your affairs.

You'll be all aroun' in the dark, You'll be ever'where- wherever a fella looks. Wherever they's a fight over which Atari game was the “lamest,” you'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy in NARC, you'll be there...you'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad at their moms fer turnin’ off the SNES - you'll be in the way twenty-somethings laugh when they remember who Mr. T was. An' when our folks start watchin’ age-appropriate movies an' live in the houses they bought with money from a real job – why, you'll be there. See?  

So as you can see, it’s not that hard to save yourself from the curse of pop-cultural nostalgia, it just takes a bit of dedication; with a little commitment, you can pull yourself out of the blight of our generation.  It’s either that or it’s this:  

I trust you’ll choose wisely.