*
“Does anyone really want to be at this party?” I wondered while chewing a cube of vaguely Swiss cheese and watching a dozen or so female editors and reporters mill around the What Not to Wear studio. The series producer, a British woman named Sarah Jane, was urging two of them to step into “the dreaded three-hundred-and-sixty-degree mirror,” one of the show’s signature gimmicks, so they could see themselves from all angles. “I’ve been in once,” she said. “I thought I might die.” The event had been arranged by the publicity department to announce that the show had been picked up for another season. Good news for the cast and crew, of course, but I didn’t really see the point. Why throw a half-assed party when a half-assed press release would suffice?
Fully aware that I was expected to mix and mingle, I made my way toward a trio of women in their mid-to late twenties, all of whom were wearing dark-wash boot-cut jeans, a wardrobe staple of the time.
“Hi, I’m Clinton,” I said. They worked at a popular weekly entertainment magazine, according to their name tags.
“So . . . did we pass?” the most polished and outgoing of them asked, while the other two smiled halfheartedly. The question annoyed me then, as it does now, at least when used as a conversation starter. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer when someone introduces herself with a “Hello” or a “Nice to meet you.” Most of all, I enjoy an “Enchanté,” uttered with a languidly extended gloved hand, however hard they are to come by these days.
Everywhere I went since the show became a hit, strangers in the supermarket, on the subway, in the airport would say things like Oh my God, you’re that guy from that show! How do I look? Is this what not to wear? Get it? “What not to wear”? My mother told me I’m too fat for this dress. I think she’s a total bitch. What do you think? I quickly learned it’s easier to give people the attention they crave than explain to them that the peanut butter I’m buying, or the book I’m reading, or the flight I’m running to catch is more important to me at that particular moment in time than pointing out to a complete stranger that her ill-fitting, too-small bra is creating four bumps where there should be two and her squared-off shoes make her look like she’s got club feet.
This was a professional event, however, so I turned on the charm. “Let me see . . . ,” I said in my most affected voice and scanned the three of them from head to toe. I have created a particular facial expression for this kind of situation that conveys a winning combination of gentle playfulness, thoughtful concern, and mild disgust. “You’ve all passed. But I have a few . . . how do I say . . . concerns.”
“Well, let’s hear them,” said the leader.
I started with the plainest girl in a red jersey top. She had straight brown hair and wore no accessories. She seemed the least happy to be there, as well as the least happy to be alive in general. “So . . . your blouse is bringing out some of the imperfections in your skin. It looks like you have a little rosacea.”
“I do. A little,” she answered quietly, her jaw clenching.
“It’s no big deal. I have it too,” I said. “Don’t bleach your pillowcases and make sure your detergent is unscented! But anyway, I think you’ll look better in cooler colors like blue or green. Oh my God! Do you know what you should try?” Almost imperceptibly she shook her head. “Purple! You should try purple! See, you have really pretty green eyes. A lot of people don’t know this, but purple brings out green! Get yourself a purple blouse—like a deep aubergine—and I guarantee people will compliment your eyes. All. Day. Long.”
She seemed to perk up a smidge at the idea. “I never thought of that,” she said.
“That’s why I’m here! Now, let’s move on to you.” The next girl was the heaviest of the bunch, probably a 14, which is not obese by any stretch but a solid five sizes larger than the average female magazine editor working in New York City. “I feel like your proportions are just slightly off.”
“I don’t know what that means,” she said.
“I’ll explain. See how your tunic is coming down past your tush? That makes your torso look longer than your legs. You’ve got great legs! Let’s show them off a bit. Look for tops that hit at mid-hip. That will keep the leg line long, making you look taller and leaner.”
“Thank you,” she said. The sound of my own voice was making me ill. While everything I was saying was technically true, it still felt like complete bullshit.
“And now you . . .” I turned to the one who had asked my opinion in the first place. She stood with her right hand on her hip and her right knee slightly bent in a perfect, and most probably rehearsed, local-beauty-pageant bevel. Her closed-mouth smile told me she was confident that her outfit—expertly distressed jeans, a simple white V-neck blouse, a cropped tweed jacket with metallic threading, and snakeskin pumps—was flawless. And it was. Everything about her looked expensive, right down to her dyed-blond roots. But for some reason, I just could not tell her so. Perhaps it was because she had asked for my opinion knowing full well that she was dressed better than her colleagues. Had she only asked, “Did I pass?” I would have said, “With straight As, girl!” But she didn’t. She had used the word we and implicated two, possibly innocent, bystanders. I toyed with the idea of telling her she looked like she was trying too hard, but that would have been a lie. She looked effortlessly chic, the bitch.
Then I noticed the mole.
She had one of those puffy, three-dimensional moles—the kind that nice girls from good families with overbearing mothers have removed by a dermatologist—on her décolletage. And the diamond (real or fake, I couldn’t tell) pendant shaped like an asymmetrical heart dangling from the baby chain around her neck was stuck to it, off-kilter, when it should have been hanging straight down. I felt simultaneously relieved and saddened. The former because she was not as perfect as she projected, and I was perceptive enough to realize it. The latter because I was certain this mole was standing between her and true love. I could imagine a man saying to her, innocuously but perhaps recklessly, “Why don’t you get that taken care of?,” which she would find either controlling or shallow. And so she would break up with him, despite the fact that he was otherwise quite caring and maybe just a bit mole-phobic. It’s a little fucked up, but that’s the way my mind works. Sometimes dumb stories just pop into my head about people. For all I know I could be psychic. Or psychotic.
I must have been looking at her chest for too long or with a quizzical expression that she asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Your necklace,” I said. I couldn’t tell her it was stuck to her mole, but I had to say something. “The chain’s about an inch too long.”