Oh, there’s more to our relationship than that, Fanny, but I’m getting a headache just unpacking it. I’ll say this, though, before I move on: there’s a part of me that will love Stacy London forever, and a part of me that would be just fine if I never saw her again for the rest of my life. We had great chemistry, for sure. But just like when you combine baking soda and vinegar, after the fun part fizzles out, you’re left with a puddle of nothing in particular.
The show made me rich, so that’s nice. Not filthy rich, but I’m doing okay. I doubt I would have made as much money had I continued chugging along in my magazine editing career. I’m thankful for that, and for having a job that makes some people smile or think or both. And for the people who came into my life because of the show. Out of the three-hundred-plus “contributors” as we called them, the people who agreed to televised makeovers, I still keep in touch with about a hundred of them, some more than others, of course, and probably another fifty people who worked on the series—various producers, crew members, wardrobe assistants, makeup artists. Sometimes I can’t believe I’m the same painfully shy guy who had a total of seven friends, give or take a few based on the collective mood, in high school. Life sure is fucking weird, Fanny.
When What Not to Wear ended a few years ago, many reporters asked me about my favorite and least favorite makeovers and the worst fashion faux pas I had ever witnessed. But not a single one asked me what I had learned about women over ten years of listening to their concerns about their bodies and their clothes. I’ll tell you what has stuck with me the most, Fanny, because I think you of all people might actually be curious.
Women want to feel beautiful. I’ve never met one who said she didn’t, and believe me, I’ve asked around. (I sometimes wonder if, similarly, all men yearn to be handsome, but I’ll admit to being far less intrigued by what’s going on between the ears of the males of our species.) To my point, American society has clearly learned how to capitalize on the desire of women to be desired, with billions of dollars spent each year on diet books, cosmetics, hair products, apparel, plastic surgery, the whole shebang. I certainly don’t think any of those categories is inherently evil—not evil at all, actually. In fact, I’m a big fan.
The problem, as far as I can tell, is that women spend infinitely more time than men paying attention to, competing with, worrying about, everyone other than themselves.
Sometimes I just want to shake you by the shoulders, Fanny, and tell you to stop surrendering your power, because that’s what you’re doing. Every single time you set up a comparison between yourself and someone else, YOU LOSE, NO ONE WINS. Chrissy Teigen has beautiful hair . . . that has nothing whatsoever to do with you. Jennifer Lawrence has perfect skin . . . that does not involve you. Kim Kardashian’s ass . . . should arouse absolutely no feelings in you concerning your own ass!
And the more you keep comparing, the less your own beauty becomes self-evident. Just because you’re not a supermodel, movie star, or Instagram celebrity does not mean that your beauty is any less important than anyone else’s. Sure, it’s OK to look, even admire, just be careful when comparing apples to oranges. (Apple: You getting yourself ready for work in the morning. Orange: Woman who has paid a stylist, personal chef, trainer, lighting director, and photo editor to help her post “selfies.”)
Start focusing on you, Fanny, your power, your value, the stuff that goes way deeper than designer jeans and the perfect shade of lipstick. But also on the perfect shade of lipstick if that makes you happy. Because you deserve to be happy. I am certain of little in this world, but I am certain about that.
I’ll bring this letter to its inevitable close now. Thank you for reading this far, and for watching. I’m still no closer to knowing whether What Not to Wear was an act of Fate, a brush with Destiny, a kick in the pants from the Universe, or just a lucky break. But it’s fascinating, isn’t it, that my request to be pointed in the “right direction” led you and me together in some small, I hope not insignificant, way. I still don’t know who you are, but I’m glad you’re out there.
Stay fabulous,
Clinton
MEMORIZING PORN
When Mr. Berry, our tenth-grade biology teacher, plopped a formaldehyde-soaked fetal pig on an aluminum tray at our shared lab station, Lisa and I looked at each other with sad eyes and morbid smiles. It looked like a small hairless dog with skin the color of lunch meat. “Oy. Look at that face,” Lisa said, channeling Jackie Mason. “It’s a face only a mother could love. I was hoping he’d become a doctor. Such a disappointment. You’re dead to me.” She fake-spat on the floor.
I burst out laughing. Her old-Jewish-man shtick always cracked me up.
Lisa had moved from a nearby town into my school district in the middle of seventh grade and, because her last name began with an H and mine with a K, she was placed in my homeroom. That’s tough, I remember thinking, making new friends in junior high. Because of my parents’ divorce, I had changed schools a few times over the past four years and hated it every time. Inevitably, I would vomit before my first day of school and occasionally sob afterward.
So I looked right at the new girl and smiled. She smiled back, but not in the self-conscious or defensively bitchy style of other girls her age. It was a look I hadn’t seen before, expressing a combination of boredom, mischief, and omnipotence. Somehow she seemed both above and below it all, like she knew this whole adolescence thing was pure bullshit but found it amusing anyway. We became best friends almost immediately and here we were three years later laying a guilt trip on an unborn pig.
“You’re worse than dead to me. You’re unkosher.”
Mr. Berry, clad in black elbow-length gloves that might have been elegant had they not been made of rubber, was doling out more to-be-dissected specimens. He turned his head back toward us and said, “If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.” It was his favorite expression. His Maine accent, much different from the Long Island ones we grew up among, made almost everything he said sound hilarious to us. Except that line. He was right, and we knew it.
“Let’s name him Abercrombie,” I whispered. For some reason I had become obsessed with a commercial for laundry detergent in which a dutiful mother attempts to save a grass-stained day by breaking out a jug of All. This delights her precocious children, who see this as an opportunity to familiarize their Labrador puppy with the alphabet. “Let’s teach Abercrombie how to spell!” one of them suggests, while the other glides the dog’s paw over the letters on the bottle. “A-L-L!”
Lisa agreed that the name suited him and over the course of the next week, we cut into Abercrombie with our scalpels, learning about various organs and systems, all the while pretending he was our own flesh and blood.
“Look at our baby’s intestines,” we would say. “So curly, like his mother’s.”
“Oh, his heart is smaller than I thought, just like his daddy’s.” And every day we would teach him a new word, moving his little pig foot along imaginary letters. On Monday: “Let’s teach Abercrombie how to spell! P-E-N-I-S.”
On Tuesday: “V-A-G-I-N-A.”
On Wednesday: “T-H-R-E-E-W-A-Y.”