{ugly} Say Hello To My Little Cheetah Friend

My friend Michelle from the salty site Thursday Night Smackdown (she curses like a stevedore!) is having an ugly potholder contest. When I first read about the contest, I thought immediately of my cheetah mitt, but someone else said they submitted a mitt from a prison and I didn’t think it can compete with a prison mitt. But then I really looked at it closely. It’s extremely ugly. I always think of it as cheetah print, but in fact there are multiple cheetah heads on it. The part where you put your thumb is a disembodied cheetah head. Right under that, there are just some perpendicular whiskers and a nose that’s not on a face. It’s pretty creepy.

On the back, the cheetah’s head is ringed by a cowboy rope pattern, like a noose, which isn’t found anywhere else on the mitt. The head is cut off in such a way that it looks like he’s bald and that his right eye is missing or rolled back into his head, perhaps a result of the noose. It’s highly unsettling to see a disfigured one-eyed cheetah being hanged as you pull a pan of brownies out of the oven.

I ironically admired it this mitt at my friend Sasha’s house and he said “oh GOD I hate that thing, it’s so tacky, PLEASE take it home with you.” It doesn’t even work. It’s too thin and always burns me. But I think the worst thing about it is that cheetahs and cheetah prints just really don’t go in a kitchen aesthetic. I can’t think of a single person’s kitchen that wouldn’t totally clash with the black, the putrid peachy orange, the animal print and faces. It’s totally incongruous with food, cooking, and eating.

I won’t throw it away, I don’t know why. I didn’t buy it and it wasn’t a gift, it was a reject. I hate it but I can’t quit it. Why can’t I quit it?