The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance
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Writer, actress, and gorgeous stand up comedian: Introducing the Mormon Tina FeyIt's lonely being a Mormon in New York City. So once again, Elna Baker attends the New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance-a virgin in a room full of virgins doing the Macarena. Her Queen Bee costume, which involves a black funnel stuck to her butt for a stinger, isn't attracting the attention she'd anticipated. So once again, Elna is alone at the punch bowl, stocking up on generic Oreos, exactly where you'd expect to find a single Mormon who's also a Big Girl. But loneliness is nothing compared to what happens when she loses eighty pounds. . . . and falls in love with an atheist.The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance is the memoir of a girl who distresses her family when she chooses NYU over BYU. A girl who's cultivating an oxymoronic identity as a bold, educated, modern, funny, proper, abstinent, religious stand-up comic, equal parts wholesome and hot. As Elna test-drives her identity, she finds herself in the strangest scenarios including selling creepy, overpriced dolls to petulant children at FAO Schwarz and dressing a head wound with a maxi pad while on a date. Kirkus Reviews Debut memoir from a 20-something Mormon stand-up comedian. Baker was once just a funny fat girl weighing in at nearly 250 pounds. Then she rapidly shed the pounds ("In five and a half months I lost eighty pounds, which is the equivalent of pooping out a fourth grader") and emerged as a slim beauty, still funny and ready for romance-up to a point. The author writes that she was ready for some kind of amorous encounter, but as a practicing LDS believer, sex before marriage is prohibited-as is drinking. "Mormons are known for saying no," she writes. "No sex, no drugs, no alcohol and no caffeine. NO." So she relates, in unrelenting cuteness, her romantic adventures-not having sex with lots of dreamy guys, but kissing and telling all. For New York Mormon singles events, Baker concocted some truly unfortunate costumes, including a fortune cookie that got crushed and looked like a certain part of the female anatomy. She discusses her situation with The Almighty (a largely one-way discussion) and her struggles to suppress her sexuality while defending her spirituality: "I thought, he only wants to see me naked because I lost weight and I look more attractive now. And this only happened because I prayed and asked God for a miracle. Misusing my new body would be like taking a gift from God and defiling it . . . Is it right to suppress my sexuality? Or do religious choices just make me happy because I was trained to feel this way?" For the most part, Baker spins a witty girly-girl story, a romantic caper for ladies about trying to find a job, a boyfriend and, ultimately, herself. A sexy, lubricious outing by a formerly zaftig comic.
