Oh, that’s right, everybody in the world can blame you, because you are awful. Look, is it cool that the woman you work with wears tight things that may or may not be appropriate for work, depending on what kind of office you work in, how the clothes fit her and other things that have to do with the context of her culture, general style and, frankly, body type (thank you, Lane Bryant for making an issue out of that banned ad and its reflective bias)? Maybe, I don’t know. 

What I know is definitely uncool is for you, a young, straight man in the workplace — not a minority unless it is Opposite Day — to take umbrage with a female colleague’s apparel choices. Because, frankly, what Perla in accounting wears to work so she can cover her bits and feed her family is really none of your business — even if your erection disagrees. If she’s violating a dress code rule that she’d been briefed on at the time of her hire, somebody in H.R. will talk to her, and she’ll probably be embarrassed and start wearing a scarf. Wow, what a victory: treat yourself to an extra Michelob Ultra if and when that goes down.

As for your not being able to “focus” on your work? It’s, no offense, so down on the list of problems I’m worried about that the oil-coated ducks in the Gulf are taking their last gasps of breath just to call you a chode.

Your question starts out with a disconcerting hat tip to perceived normality (“I heard that most women don’t have orgasms, right?”) and ends up a forlorn monologue from a low-status cartoon character who walks around sulking with his enormous bald head down like Charlie Brown around Christmas, or Ziggy any time of year.

Buck up, Uncle Buck! You’ve been somewhere for six years? Even college is only four years, and most of that time is spent figuring out whether you really do like the Cure, or if that’s just something that made sense to you in high school, when you wore pajama bottoms and green nail polish out in public.

My point is that your commitment to your job thus far is a big, whopping deal, and you should reap some entitlement from that kind of loyalty and excellence. Why can’t science work on making women more entitled in general? Or at least get us to listen to those L’Oréal ads that tell us how we’re worth it? I’m, of course, joking, and that ad slogan is really just a notch above: “L’Oréal: Because you’ve got it coming to you.” But you do deserve way more than you, and a lot of women, have the courage to ask for — so make sure you know that, first of all.

Say it into a mirror, find out what it looks like in Mandarin and pay somebody in the ’90s to tattoo it on your lower back; just learn it, because men already know that they’re entitled to be treated well the way calves know how to walk minutes after they’re born. They know what they deserve and how great they are, and how if they’ve been kicking ass at a job for six years without any increase in pay to be like “WTF, broseph?” Because that’s what they call each other in comedy movies.

So, onto the rather procedural matter of how exactly to go about asking for a raise. This is what you do. You e-mail your boss in the morning and ask whether he or she has a moment to talk today. Suggest a time. Here’s the whole e-mail for you to cut and paste, Sixer (my new name for you!): “Hi there, I wondered whether you had a moment to chat with me later today. Around 2:30? Thanks in advance. Sixer.” Then your boss will say “sure,” and you go into his or her office and shut the door and you say something along the lines of, “So, as you know, I’ve been here for a while, and I’m very happy here, but I wanted to discuss whether you’d (or “the Company,” if you don’t want to put your boss on the spot) be amenable to giving me an increase in salary, being as I’ve been here for half a dozen years with no raise.”

Then, stop talking. If your boss says no, you can chalk it up to one of your myriad excuses for being too afraid to ask in the first place — the recession, for example. Don’t take it personally and don’t think “no” means you shouldn’t have asked, because it doesn’t.

However, if your boss says yes, or that a raise needs some looking into, or that he or she can’t believe that you’ve been here for half a dozen years without a pay increase, that’s your cue to come back with something like, “Great! Now, speaking of a dozen, let’s go get some doughnuts, because I’m starving, and nothing in the world is better than fried cake and/or yeast dough, with frosting on top of it.” And, I swear to God, if the two of you don’t high-five after that offer, one or both of you are robots made of scrap metal who cannot love.

It’s a shift from 1980, the year Alan Parker’s film debuted. Back then, Broadway and film musicals like “A Chorus Line,” “All That Jazz” and “Stayin’ Alive” showed the pursuit of fame as part of the American dream. Having a name worth remembering took hope, compromise and, most of all, backbreaking work. (It also, apparently, took synthesizers.) The success of “Fame” — and the long-running TV series that followed — showed just how voraciously American audiences would lap up a story about talented, multicultural youngsters sweating through the demoralization and muscle-cramping agony of hours upon hours of practice in order to “make it.” These kids danced because they couldn’t not dance, and they lived their lives with the clarity of movie tag lines: They’d never quit until they got their one shot. In the highly quotable opening montage of the TV show, Debbie Allen, as dance teacher Lydia Grant, barks, “Fame costs! And right here is where you start paying. In sweat.”

Some may cringe at the sentimentality of striving for that “big break” and paying for anything in the currency of perspiration. And indeed there is something inherently adolescent about the earnestness needed to pursue a career in the performing arts. But I, for one, can relate: As a kid in the early ’80s, all I wanted was to play Annie. I went out for production after production of that treacly Charles Strouse musical, hoping that if my belted version of “Maybe” didn’t seal the deal, my natural red hair would. After all, who wants to put a wig on a kid without leukemia? I was not alone in my starry-eyed ambitions. Musicals experienced a renaissance in the ’80s, an era, not coincidentally, known for narcissism. Little girls begged their parents to buy them leg warmers, to sign them up for tap and jazz, to drive them to auditions in hopes of becoming the Next Big Thing.

Unlike leg warmers, kids wanting to be famous is not a phenomenon exclusive to the early ’80s. Kids are born into the world believing they hold its center; wanting a spotlight and a mob’s rapt attention is only one extension of me-first juvenilia. But the late ’70s and early ’80s rolled out a series of musical fantasies that made singing to the rafters seem like the best thing to do while your acne cleared up. The meta-musicals I mentioned earlier joined blockbusters like “Footloose” and “Flashdance” in the popular imagination. But perhaps more than any of those ambition-drenched dance movies, it was “Fame” that normalized the concept of a generation of singers, actors, dancers and musicians old enough to be famous, but too young to drink or vote. It also paved the way for the swarm of competitive reality shows, from “American Idol” to “So You Think You Can Dance,” the winner of which is the star of the new “Fame.” It turns out, she does think she can dance — and she’s right!

There have been other shifts in our fame culture since 1980, of course. The new film, like the original, features characters who want to dance ballet, compose music and hit a high B-flat, but there’s also an aspiring rapper and a teenage producer who sweetens tracks from the comfort of his bedroom on his iMac, with Pro Tools. A more critical shift, however, is that the median age of mainstream stars has plummeted in two decades — especially for women — and the expiration date on a young person’s acting or singing career is steadily rivaling that of a dancer’s or a model’s.

Twenty years ago, when adults like Sigourney Weaver and Dustin Hoffman starred in movies, actors often spent their formative years honing their craft. Hoffman trained in Method at the Actors Studio, Weaver got a master of fine arts at the Yale School of Drama, and the careers of LaGuardia alums Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Ben Vereen, to name a few, speak volumes to how studying the art of acting could pay off. But the sad truth is that, for teenagers craving fame today, it might not make sense to spend what are now the most castable years of their lives tucked away in a classroom. For better or worse, the modern training model might more closely resemble the nightmare territory of “Toddlers and Tiaras”; if you want a kid to know how to execute a perfect arabesque, you’d do best to start teaching her while she’s still in diapers. Besides, it’s absurd to think of a teenage kid “studying” acting for the sake of being a series regular on “One Tree Hill.”

When I was a kid and wanted to be Annie, yearning for fame was a flight of fancy typically limited to the gay kids and theater geeks. But that’s not the case anymore. President Obama’s message for kids to aspire to be “doctors and teachers, not just ballers and rappers” speaks to what’s become the prevailing ambition of kids across the country. A desire for fame — to be known, to be remembered — is perhaps part of what compels kids to post anything that crosses their minds to YouTube and Facebook, whether it’s brilliant or insipid. Inherent to the attraction of the Internet is the fleeting buzz of being known, even on a micro level. Every teenager wants to be special, and what’s more special than being famous?

How odd that, while teenagers regard pretty much everything in the world with sarcasm, the idea of pursuing the dream of “making it” as a singer, actor or dancer is still sacrosanct. Of course, the avenues for fame have exploded since 1980. Instead of schlepping to New York City to audition for Juilliard, a master violinist today might audition in his hometown for “America’s Got Talent,” hoping to nab the slot between the juggler and the “Stomp”-style bucket drummer. Prime-time TV has become vaudeville for young and old aspirants — though the emotionally fraught, adolescent-grade sincerity of performers makes them all seem like teenagers. In fact, the essence of reality TV relies on everyone behaving like high schoolers, from the new-moneyed 40-somethings on “Real Housewives,” who exclude one another from parties like mean girls, to the contestants on “Survivor,” who form clique-like alliances and stab each other in the back whenever they get the chance.

All of which makes actual kids studying at actual performing arts school seem mature by comparison — even dignified. Imagine that: The kid who knows all the words to “Pippin” is dignified. It only took a sea change in our pop culture — the one that made it so you and I both know who Kim Kardashian is — to make fame, as a goal in and of itself, something associated not with ability but with shamelessness. The name of the movie has never been “Talent” — only now are the two concepts more disparate than ever.

Unlike in the new “Fame” — which strives with no paucity of effort for street cred with its “Step Up” zazziness and its thumping hip-hop theme song — kids who hone their craft, who wait nervously in the wings of the theater, who actually bother to be excellent at what they do, are practically old-fashioned.

I contacted the LaGuardia High School and arranged an interview with a few acting students for this piece. I was hoping they’d contribute something that proved they were dedicated to their craft, that they had their eyes on a bigger prize than the flash-in-the-pan kind of stardom that’s, evidently, only describable with clichés. But, at the very minute our interview was scheduled, I got a call from one of the teachers: Sorry, they had to cancel, he explained. A big audition was coming up, and they were too busy rehearsing. 

The “Skinny Bitch” empire has proven so popular, in fact, that soon men will be part of the franchise, with Freedman and Barnouin’s guy-targeted sequel, “Skinny Bastard,” slated for release in 2009 (no word on whether Vincent Gallo will be the cover model).

Veganism — the practice of shunning not only meat but also foods that contain any animal products, like milk, eggs and honey — has been enjoying a boom. In part that’s due to increasing awareness of antibiotics and hormones used to treat food animals as well as the green movement sparking concern about the smaller carbon footprint of tofu compared to steak. But it was a photograph of pop star Victoria Beckham, aka Posh Spice, holding a copy of the 2005 title “Skinny Bitch” that jettisoned the book sales to bestseller status. There’s no proof that Posh, who’s admitted to never having read a book in her life, broke her record by cracking this one; I imagine the classification of soda as “liquid satan” from Freedman and Barnouin would be hard to reconcile with Beckham’s claim that she only drinks Diet Coke, because she hates the taste of water.

Dieters hoping the authors of “Skinny Bitch” have more nutritional savvy than Posh might be more comforted by the jacket photo of Freedman and Barnouin looking lean, rather than their food science credentials. Barnouin left her modeling career to get a degree in holistic nutrition at what the New York Times called, in deadpan, an “unaccredited school for alternative health,” and Freedman, a former modeling agent, describes herself as a “self-taught know-it-all” in her bio.

Many women, hoping to get saucy advice from two stunners about staying slim, have felt duped by the offerings of what the authors proudly tout as a “manifesto.” Aspiring Bergdorf blondes buy copies of “Skinny Bitch” at L.A. boutiques, only to be blindsided with accounts of live cows skinned alive on the assembly line. At least when a Hare Krishna gives you a vegetarian cookbook in the airport, you know — thanks to their flower-wielding characterizations in Zucker brothers movies — that they are cultish wack jobs. But Barnouin and Freedman, under the ruse of weight loss expertise, alternate concern for animal abuse with reader abuse.

The relentless bullying peppered throughout the authors’ advice accounts for much of the book’s humor, including quips like “you need to exercise, you lazy shit,” “coffee is for pussies” and “don’t be a fat pig anymore.” It was a formerly anorexic friend of mine who nailed it when she read excerpts from the book. “When you have an eating disorder,” she told me, “that’s the voice you hear in your head all the time.”

Thanks to “Skinny Bitch,” women who hate their bodies no longer need rely on their own self-loathing to stoke the flames of what seems like motivation but is actually self-flagellation — penance for the sin of being too fat. Now dieters can have the convenience of a former model (Barnouin) and a former modeling agent (Freedman) putting their transgressions in the black-and-white terms of right and wrong. “If you eat crap,” they chirp, “you are crap.”

It’s a heavily agenda’d method of preying on the dieter, whose mind is weak from starvation and preoccupation with nothing but food. Have you tried to hold a conversation with somebody on a diet? The first 10 pounds they lose are mostly brain. Christian diet books like Gwen Shamblin’s “Weigh Down Diet” and “What Would Jesus Eat?” (a real cookbook by Don Colbert, no relation to the comedian) sell copies based on the same reasoning.

There are good intentions behind many people’s conversion to veganism, including an admirable devotion to the well-being of animals and a justified skepticism about the crap the USDA allows manufacturers to put in our food. But it’s hard to ignore the often sanctimonious nature of what some nutritionists view as an “extremist” way of eating.

If you go off the “Skinny Bitch” “diet” and eat a scoop of ice cream instead of a Rice Dream frozen dessert, not only are you off-track, you’re morally abhorrent. You’re contributing to cruelty against animals, you fat piece of shit. And Freedman and Barnouin don’t seem to mind whether the frozen dessert has more calories or more ingredients with unpronounceable chemical suffixes than the real thing.

In fact, toward the end of the book, the authors of “Skinny Bitch” admit that teaching you how to be skinny isn’t their concern. They list their favorite vegan junk food, which they promise you can find if you “drag your cankles to a health food store.” They mischievously confide that they gave their book its title just to sell copies, which is why there are zero references to their veganism on the cover as well. (They’re deceptive, not stupid: They know that veganism sells hacky sacks, not blockbuster paperbacks.) In other words, these women don’t seem to have any viable weight loss advice beyond offering unsustainable daily menus of less than 1,000 calories a day and advising you to repeat Deepak Chopra mantras that assure you, “Every day in every way, [your] ass is getting smaller.” They wrote this book to let you know how disgusting eggs are, and how shitty you are to want a piece of fish.

There are more salient ways to learn how to eat healthy for those who wish to slim down while avoiding animal products. Nobody will call you a pussy in a Weight Watchers meeting, where vegans can thrive on-program next to carnivores. And Michael Pollan‘s superb chapter on the ethics of eating animals in his blockbuster “Omnivore’s Dilemma” offers a thoughtful meditation on the alternatives to killing for calories.

As far as Freedman and Barnouin are concerned, however, there is no wrong way to get girls to “go veegs,” even if it does require a little bit of sneaky marketing and the kind of hate-fueled body criticism they learned from the modeling industry back in the day. And just as Freedman can’t “wrap [her] mind around” women who “spent $14 on a book that was not what they thought, but [who aren't] mad that chickens are having beaks chopped off their faces,” it’s tough to reconcile the terms “cruelty-free” with women who seem dead-set on remaking scores of dieting women in their own image — as the skinniest, nastiest bitches around.