I always find it amazing that people can take simple advice that should have been learned by age 15, put it into book form and market it.

Yes, slap a catchy title on the front of a snazzy cover, pump so much Generation-X attitude into the writing that book publishing can be featured in next year’s X-Games and you’ve got a winner.

Don’t forget to exploit the stupidity and insecurities of your audience while you’re at it, a la “Skinny Bitch,” the bestselling diet book. In their wonderfully profound and insightful writings, former model Kim Barnouin and former model agent Rory Freedman suggest, among other quips, these little gems:

“Don’t be a fat pig anymore.”

“Stop being a moron and start getting skinny.”

I’m glad that a book one could find in the self-help section uses name-calling as a major tactic. I hear all that self-esteem goes straight to your ass.

Thankfully, we don’t have to look to this dynamic duo for all of our questions on life. For those confused on love, we have “Why You’re Still Single: Things Your Friends Would Tell You If You Promised Not to Get Mad” and the popular — and admittedly softer and occasionally encouraging — “He’s Just Not That Into You,” the latter of which is co-authored by Greg Behrendt, who will be our Veishea comedian Tuesday night at 8 p.m. in the Memorial Union’s Great Hall.

Oh, come now, don’t look at me like that. The timing of this writing is purely coincidental, I assure you.

Maybe it’s just this weird little quirk of mine, but I like myself, and I didn’t need to be berated into that position. I don’t need two professionals from a field known for its high levels of eating disorders — the Model Health Inquiry of 2007 suggested as many as 40 percent of models suffer from some kind of eating disorder — telling me how to eat.

Likewise, I don’t need someone who was a writer and consultant for a vastly overrated television show focused on five vastly underdeveloped females that amounted to nothing more than two-dimensional character stereotypes. Carrie Bradshaw and her four stick-thin — that’s physically, emotionally and mentally, by the way — friends and their shallow obsessions with sex and fashion can go jump in Lake LaVerne.

Don’t eat a lot of sugar? Thanks, I learned that when I was seven.

Don’t chase a guy who only wants me as a booty call? Good advice. I wasn’t so sure about my romantic future before, but now … man, crystal clear. Here I thought everyone was an individual and should be treated as such, but Behrendt’s got a point: generalizing is so much easier. If I approach a situation keeping in mind that guys and girls have “rules,” I just might turn myself around. Duh!

In explaining one rule of manly man-ness, the “why-he-must-call-you rule” — my title — and why women must absolutely not call first, Behrendt says to one female writer, “Some guys might like it, but they’re just lazy. And who wants to go out with Lazy Guy?”

Date someone with flaws? My God, what an awful concept. And for any girl that’s done the asking and gotten the guy? Behrendt’s got some good news for you. According to his book, you just might be “the chosen one.”

I’m tired of this. I’m tired of this utter crap, and you ought to be, too. When did our generation lose its backbone and respect for itself? When did we decide self-confidence was an unnecessary luxury? When did we think that we need to become emotional masochists and kick ourselves into proper shape?

People, everyone has questions about life. Everyone has struggles and difficulties. And everyone deals with them differently. That’s normal.

Imagine that. People as individuals, not generalized groups created by people looking to market a product.

Well, Sophie, you may be saying, it’s not like you have any better advice. And you know what? You’re absolutely right. I don’t have any advice for you beyond the general concept of “loving yourself equals good.” I don’t have specifics. Know why?

I’m not you. And neither is Barnouin, Freedman or Behrendt. We can’t know you, and we can’t possibly give you the kind of help you need, if you even need help in the first place. Even if we could, you’d be nothing more than our puppet, playing by our rules and operating via our instructions, not your own unique soul.

You know who you should look to when seeking self-help? Yourself, because you’re worth seeking help from. You’re worth respect and love. You don’t need to purchase a book written by a stranger telling you how to live. You’re an educated human being — you’re capable of critical thinking and problem solving. Trust me. You can solve your problems.

And yes, I fully realize the irony of criticizing self-help books while spouting paragraphs like that one.

Oh, and a message to the “skinny bitches,” Behrendt and their ilk: when a columnist sits down and dedicates her writing entirely to criticisms of your so-called “advice?”

She’s just not that into you.

 — Sophie Prell is a junior in pre-journalism and mass communication from Alta.