If you’ve talked to me lately, I have probably bored you silly on the subject of my closet intervention, which was engineered by a very good friend. (Wow, look at the male regulars here heading for the exits. Amazing. Trust me. We are leading up to a memory. Two, in fact!) Like most women I know, I secretly wanted a makeover that would somehow involve no criticism of the self being made over. And definitely no public shaming via television show. I want Cliff and Stacey to tell me not what to wear, without having to take part in WHAT NOT TO WEAR.
At any rate, I f’loved it, including the discussion on why I feel it’s necessary to have loose travel dresses/tunics that can endure vomit. But the thing I found fascinating is that it is a deeply shaming experience even without television cameras to capture it. Why? Because it involves waste. There were clothes in my closet that still had the tags on them — and I keep a relatively lean closet. Of course, they had the tags on them because I had no desire to wear them. (An aside: I’m not one to hold onto clothes that don’t fit.) Yet I had somehow convinced myself that unworn clothes in the closet, like unwanted food forced down in hopes of joining the Clean Plate Club, were not wasted.
One thing jumped out: my shoe collection, which Facebook followers have been given glimpses of over the years, was in pretty good shape. Why was I so clear about what to put on my feet, but not what to put on my body?
Because I have no problem with my size 9.5, sometimes 10 feet. But for thirty-five years now, I’ve been waiting to morph into “Charlie,” as embodied by Shelley Hack, with Bobby Short singing my theme song as I stride down the street. Kinda cool, kinda now. Kinda young, kinda wow.* I wanted, in short — in Short — to be 5-foot-10 and 115 pounds.
Hey, I’m really close in one of those categories.
The ideal of female beauty in my youth was tall and thin. Really thin. Doing cocaine at Studio 54 thin. I remember when a college friend described to me earnestly how Cheryl Tiegs used to weigh some ungodly, horrible weight and had dieted her way back to supermodel stardom.
Cheryl Tiegs’s ungodly horrible weight was mine at the time. Thirty-something years later, I actually weigh a little less, but not much, although I am far leaner.
I’m not writing a body acceptance PSA here. (No, seriously — the guys can come back!) Things have gotten better and worse in some ways. More acceptance of different figures, but also this horrible plastic surgery aesthetic, the so-called Tits on a Stick. Yet there she is in my imagination, striding down the street, taunting me. I was sophisticated enough at fourteen to know that the perfume wouldn’t make me Charlie. But I looked for a long time for something that would.
The other memory that popped up was one of my favorite makeover scenes of all time, in VALLEY OF THE DOLLS. (Only the book, not the movie.) Neely O’Hara has a new vocal coach who wants her to burn her entire wardrobe, including a purple coat with a fox collar. She is allowed two dresses, solid wools, which cost $150* apiece. Spreading a napkin on her lap, she tells her boyfriend: One spill and half my wardrobe is out of commission.
Anyone else here ever had a makeover of any sort (wardrobe, library, home)? Or an affection for Jacqueline Susann?
*From memory, so suspect
**I’ll look this up in an inflation calculator, but it must have been a lot of money in 1948.
I know you meant Clinton and not Cliff, right? Unless he is Cliff in your memory…
Affection for Jacqueline Susann, guilty. I vividly remember Neely’s closet makeover, and where her coat came from — Orbach’s. And the navy wool dresses were from Saks. (I think.)
Wow, I haven’t thought of the Charlie jingle in forever, and now it’s the only thing in my head…
On the plus side, it drowns out the Mario Kart from the living room.
I wouldn’t say affection for Jacqueline Susann, but she certainly shaped my pubescent imagination. I’m 48, and there wasn’t any YA to speak of when I was growing up, other than classics, and Nancy Drew, and Cherry Ames. Our librarian wouldn’t let me check out adult novels, so I read Valley of the Dolls tucked in the covers of various encyclopedias in the back of the library. It was a deliciously shocking read. I don’t remember the makeover scene, though other scenes are seared into my memory–the reference to “swimming in the Red Sea,” for example.
I had two older sisters, and they morphed the Charlie song with the song for Chunky chocolate (is that what it was called?) so it became the sisterly hurtful tease: “And they called her—Chunky! Kind of fat, kind of…” I don’t remember the rest of the ad-lib, I’ll have to ask them. The jingles that impacted how I wanted to be for many, many years were the themes to “That Girl” (Diamonds, daisies, snowflakes, that girl…) and of course Mary Tyler Moore (Who can turn the world on with her smile?).
Maybe you have confounded us with this entry!?
Not sure about confounding — some topics just resonate more than others.
And, yes, I got Clinton’s name wrong, but will leave the entry as written because errors are the heart and soul of The Memory Project.
Lily, I thought that the quiet (so far) was because LL didn’t post the link on her two Facebook pages?
And, no, I wouldn’t want Cliff’s name changed after the fact. It does remind me of how our minds work with (or without) memories. Maybe Laura was thinking of Clifton Webb? He and Clinton have things in common.
Was Clifton Webb in the Cheaper by the Dozen movies? Because I had those on the brain yesterday, as it happens.
And, yes — duh: I do need to post this on FB. I don’t think the “Share on Facebook” link works since I changed by FB security to https — and I hope everyone else does the same.
Oh god, you caught me. I am a closet Valley of the Dolls fan. Love love love the wig fight in the john between Neely and Helen Lawson.
“She’s flushing it down the can!”
“Meow! Bye kitty!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfyhaXlKNts
Oh, Alafair, you should read Katherine Lanpher’s beautiful memoir Leap Year (Or was it Leap Days?). Actually, everyone should. She followed Al Franken to NYC for the start-up of Air America, moving from a big house in St. Paul to a one-bedroom apartment.
It’s a really beautiful book and a real love affair with NYC. In fact, y’all two should get together!
Yes, Clifton Webb was the father in “Cheaper by the Dozen”. He was also the movie’s Mr. Belvedere. I’m betting he was Cliff to his friends. I could be wrong…
When I pulled the trigger and moved to New York, I went from a 4 bedroom house to a city apartment and had to get rid of most of what I owned. A dear friend traveled back to my house with me and made the deep, painful cuts that I could not. I still had a Bennetton sweater from 1987. I had more serving dishes than a state dinner. I don’t miss any of that now, so much of what we own is, in a sense, wasteful. But not shoes.
I snuck out Valley of the Dolls from the library too. And it was fascinating, although the movie and the book merge into a fairly unfocused blur. But Jackie Susann was on the afternoon chat shows, seeming so smart and glamorous. (What i now understand was that as a hillbilly first generation Catholic Arab kid, I felt great affinity for New Yorkers and Jewish people and the two in a female package was irresistible. That affinity guided my choice of friends to this day once I escaped the Blue Ridge.) The words were so crisp, so quick, so unhillbilly.
But I think it was the chic clothes and jewelry and especially the Jackie Kennedy hair that made the most lasting impressions. If I clearly remember, Ms. Susann had lots of sadness, a disabled child, an odd marriage, but in retrospect she was a forerunner of the feminist movement.) She was a successful writer and a glamorous important independent woman, or so we thought.
Shelley Hack was ok, but I’m betting it is most likely that she is now jealous of Laura, who continues to make her mark into her fifties, gets quietly touted in the coolest places, like on Ferguson’s chat show and who knows where Shelley is today?
I know Jackie Kennedy’s feet were tennish, but i don’t know Ms. Susann’s size.