O-mama - Opinionated Moms

• Bridie Clark • 10 Comments
• Tagged in: For Moms

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Everyone loves a good make-over.  Cinderella was always my favorite—literally rising out of the ashes of the fireplace to trounce over her bitchy stepsisters with her fab glass slippers.  My mom tells me I would “play” Cinderella as a child, but ALWAYS started out with my nightie and some old apron and a broom at least for a few minutes because the KEY to the game was the transformation.  I always played this game alone by the way, even though I had 3 sisters who could have played the other parts VERY well, but weren’t always willing to play the gross, ugly and mean parts—shocker.

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy was one of the early makeover shows—they make over the guy and his apartment—they “juge” his hair with lots of product, show him how to shave “with the grain.”  Whiten his teeth with the Crest strips.  Carson made fun of their flannel filled closets and then took them on little sprees where they layered shirts for the first time and wore studded belts.

Now, TV channels are filled with make-over shows—whether it’s a person or a house or an entire personality like Tough Love on VH1—which is not a bad show—I promise it’s better than Rock of Love.  (O.k., for the record, I usually watch these shows at the gym where I don’t control the channels—but, I have been known to stay on the elliptical for longer than intended to see how the house/guy/girl/relationship turns out at the end of the show.)

Short of surgery (unless you have a super jacked-up nose or were in a disfiguring accident or something), I am all about people looking as fab as they possibly can –my dad calls it doing “max. with min.”  And that’s what the whole make-over deal is about—remember the ugly duckling?  The idea is/was (if you remember that story) everyone already has the swan inside somewhere—sometimes we just need help drawing him/her out.  That show, The Swan, took the whole thing a little too far though, in my opinion.  You want to look good, but not look like an entirely different person, right?  I don’t know; I’m just speaking for myself, but I think perfection angers the Gods.  The best looking, sexiest women and men on the planet, always have some sort of funky feature or at least something that sets them apart—Cindy Crawford’s mole, for example; though I’ve always thought she should have that removed.   And of course, the actual story of the Ugly Duckling is a terrible lesson for our kids.  Everyone hates you if you are ugly and everyone loves you if you are beautiful like a swan, nice, eh?  Real beauty is always interesting though.  I’m much more likely to stare at a photo or series of photos of Meryl Streep than Elizabeth Hurley.  And for the record, Meryl is one of the very few actresses who has REALLY not had botox, etc. and that’s one of the reasons she’s still a great actress—because HER FACE MOVES and you can still see emotion in her eyes.

So, I think the concept really started with Pygmalion and then My Fair Lady…who can forget the darling Audrey Hepburn with her cockney accent turning into the classiest of society girls and, of course, utterly entrancing the guy who transformed her.  The Devil Wears Prada was a more recent “transformation” movie, and even though I completely related to Anne Hathaway pre-makeover and her high-brow literary disdain for all things “Runway,” I have to admit that I was completely dazzled by the “Vouge-ized” Hathaway and the montage of perfectly accessorized outfits and hair.  

The Overnight Socialite is a classic makeover book—it’s sort-of Devil Wears Prada meets Trading Places—the hilarious Dan Akroyd/Eddie Murphy movie from ages ago in which 2 old Wall Street men pluck a “down on his luck” guy from the street (Murphy) to trade places with Akroyd and assume the man’s upper echelon trader lifestyle.  Of course, they do this mindlessly with no thought to anyone’s feelings, but in an effort to determine the answer to the age-old nature vs. nurture question.  Are certain people successful and fabulous because it is in their genes—“born to it” if you will?  Or, can anyone be ushered into the “fabulous life” and eventually be trained and tutored to act as though it were “second nature?”

In The Overnight Socialite (which I’m sure has already had film rights optioned), Wyatt Hayes with a phD in anthropology from Harvard and more importantly—money and a pedigree from the upper reaches of New York society, attempts to prove or disprove this same theory with Lucy Jo from Minnesota who is not only NOT from New York or anywhere near high society, but to a certain degree, utterly opposed to the whole concept.  She’s in it for the money—which she only needs to start her own fashion design company and she figures this may be a way in.  She’s desperate, obviously.   The plotline is extremely predictable, but not wholly “chick lit.”  It’s not Anna Karenina, but it’s not Confessions of a Shopaholic either.

The whole New York Society deal is very mysterious and intriguing to me.  I knew kids from this secret skyline world in college.  You would never have known—they dressed down and smoked funny cigarettes with the rest of us.  But then you’d go home for break and read your mom’s Town and Country and they’d be featured as the December socialites or whatever.  Amazing.  You do get that feeling when you visit New York though.  You need lots of money to have a great time, but you sense that there is a scene—an entire world—that exists, and you aren’t allowed in it.  And you can’t buy your way in—maybe you can now, but there was a time when you had to be born to it.  I’m glad I grew up in California where everyone is a little nuts, because the rebel side of me would not have done well with New York society or any kind of Upper East side rules or expectations.  I would definitely have been the debutante gone bad—the one doing tequila shots and crazy hootchie cootchie dances on the balcony with the banished smokers.  That being said, I think the older matrons of the upper East side might be a tad disappointed in the younger debs and socialites these days who seem to be famous only for being on Page 6 and not involved in ANY kind-of philanthropy or good works—which the Astors and that crowd were always very much a part of—founding hospitals and homes for the needy, etc.—not just another rich girl designing another line of handbags.

This is not my usual genre of book, but it is utterly readable and a little trashy and salacious—with loads of name dropping etc. which makes it fun.  I did like Devil Wears Prada and the Nanny Diaries books, and this one popped up on Amazon, so I thought I’d try it.  (If you liked…then you’ll like…!  Other people who bought the items in your cart also bought….!)  Plus, the whole nature/nurture concept—on a broad scale really does interest me—both as a person/citizen/student of life, etc. but, also as a mother.  You could spend your whole life believing in nurture over nature and then pop 2 kids out of the same uterus who are so wholly opposite—so diametrically opposed in every way that you are forced to rethink your entire paradigm.

It’s good reading for post holidays tired brains.  We’ll ramp up the prestige/literary factor next month!  No need to be too ambitious too early in 2010.