My beauty influences were mostly drawn from the world of movies; it's not at all that there weren't attractive women in the small southern town I grew up in, but at least in the circles I ran in, there weren't many fashion risk takers. There were pretty women here and there that I admired. And there were a few odd characters as well. I remember having an art teacher in elementary school who had orange hair, wore very bright makeup including heinous blue eyeshadow and crazy lipstick, and brightly colored, child-like dresses and striped stockings. She gave the effect of a Raggedy Anne doll grown old and senile. She was wonderful. But unfortunately, people like her were few and far between. Hence, I looked to the movies.
Anjelica Huston
I'm not entirely sure what role I first saw her in, but Anjelica is probably my earliest beauty-influence memory. There's no one who looks like Anjelica Huston: she has such a commanding presence, and an unusual face. She was someone that made me understand the notion that you could have an imperfection and still be beautiful, even be made more beautiful by the imperfection.
There were times when I hated my nose. But you grow up and you start to recognize that maybe it wasn't a bad thing that you weren't born Barbie.
Though many love the original morbid mother from the black-and-white TV show, Anjelica will forever be the only Morticia Adams to me. And of course, she's funny, smart, and awesome--that doesn't hurt, though these are beauty influences and not necessarily role models.
I've never been the kind of actress whose sole interest was sex appeal, so I think that earns you some longevity. And I like character parts. It's a lot more fun and you don't have to rely on being the taste of the moment. That level of fame is probably very difficult to deal with. People screaming your name in the streets, quite honestly, isn't an audience I'm desperate to capture. I'm lucky. The people who tell me they like my work tend to be the kind of people I might be friends with anyway. I have a really nice audience.
Kate Moss
Speaking of not-necessarily role models. Hold on, hear me out on this one.
There's been a lot of hate on Kate Moss again recently (she's one of those women who causes strong reactions her entire career), that she dares to be old, or look trashy, or have blemishes, or flash her cooch getting out of vehicles, or party too hard, etc. etc. This will probably always be the case: love or hate.
Lots of fuss has been made--a lot of it rightly--about models being too skinny to be healthy images for young girls and women to see as standards of perfection. I totally agree that there is too much of an emphasis put on skinniness over healthy bodies, and that the modeling world in general keeps skewing models younger and thinner every year, and that it's pretty scary and has real, often negative effects on women and girls.
All that being said, at the time Kate Moss started pouting for the cameras, supermodels were generally much taller than the average woman (or man, for that matter), curvaceous and busty: Christy Turlington, Claudia Schiffer, Linda Evangelista. Nothing is wrong with these women being models: they're impossibly gorgeous. But, as is usually the case with the modeling world, there wasn't much variety. Growing up a super-skinny girl with small boobs, I saw no way to easily attain the sexy look of the supermodel. The very idea of a supermodel was a relatively new and extremely tantalizing idea: the thought that you could be in a pizza parlor hanging out with your friends, suddenly be discovered, and start jetting around the world at 14 no doubt had more girls than me enraptured. It's the ultimate rescue fantasy for poor little nobodies. But though I had the skinny physique and long legs, I was told by boys and even by adults that I was too thin, my tits were too small, and that my body just wasn't sufficiently womanly.
Kate Moss totally changed the popular idea of beauty, with her waifish figure and odd, almost alien-like face. She was also "short" for the modeling world at 5'6. The first time I saw her, I had that cliche heart-jumpy moment: her body looked like mine. And she was a real model, a big deal, with her pictures in a magazine. She had small boobs, and there they were, proudly displayed in a magazine as if they could possibly titillate people!
It sucks that the waif trend enveloped nearly the entire modeling world and worse, has influenced a couple decades' worth of women to think that their natural, healthy bodies are too fat. At the same time that for me, Kate was a positive, affirming influence who made me have confidence in the body I had, I also understand women who look at Kate's debut moments in the early 90s as the beginning of the downward trend of models becoming thinner and thinner. Having been a skinny person naturally and constantly enduring comments and insults about my body, to getting older and gaining weight and attempting to get back to former numbers by way of eating disorder, I've know what it's like to feel like your body isn't beautiful.
But it's a simple as this: sometimes, some women are naturally skinny. Sometimes, some women are naturally larger and curvier than others. Sometimes, a lot of women fall anywhere in between. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and people prefer some body types over others, but none should be pointed to as the standard of perfection, or worse, be pointed to as the standard for "womanliness."
At the time, and still, there are some people who think that the way to deal with the obvious, real problem of only having one type of woman (thin) represented in advertising is to insult thin women, accuse them of having eating disorders, and talk about how their bodies are disgusting and child-like, how they don't look like women, and are totally gross non-sexual creatures who should be ashamed of themselves for showing their bony bodies.
"It was just the time. It was a swing from more buxom girls like Cindy Crawford and people were shocked to see what they called a 'waif'. What can you say? How many times can you say 'I'm not anorexic'?"I am no longer hovering around 100 pounds, and don't think I'll be getting back there anytime soon or ever, but I will never disparage skinny bodies as unhealthy or unwomanly. Oh and the rib thing---I weigh almost 150 pounds and my top few ribs still show, some women just never have any fat there, so get over it already.
Gena Davis in Beetlejuice
Whether she's pulling her face off to frighten a family out of their house or shriveling up into an old lady before our eyes, she was definitely the character I identified with in the movie.
I know you're probably thinking, "But wha? Your muse from Beetlejuice is Gena Davis and not Lydia freakin' Deetz??" Don't get me wrong, Lydia was cool, mostly the red wedding dress.
Winona Ryder
She was the loveliest thing in Edward Scissorhand's kooky town. I haven't gone blonde much in my days (too much maintenance), but she was very influential with her soft, pale-all-over totally-unattainable-girl-next-door look in this film.
One night, my mom inexplicably brought home Bram Stoker's Dracula and let us watch it with her. What a fucking fantastic movie, but for this blog's purposes, it was where I fell further in love with Winona, and got my first glimpse of Monica Bellucci (to be featured later).
Oh, period films. How much I love them, with their sumptuous lighting and incredible costumes. Also, Lucy was awesome.
Jem and the Holograms
Why Jem would appeal to young girls is pretty obvious: the plot screams I AM A PRETTY PRINCESS but in a much cooler way. Your dead dad leaves you a record company, a ton of money, and an awesome computer-assistant-futuristic-hologram thingy named Synergy. Synergy can change you into a kick-ass rock star with pink hair and magic earrings. So yeah.
Also, you have a super-hot boyfriend with purple hair. His name is Rio.
However, it must be said, the Misfits songs were, as they do say in the theme song, better. This cartoon was pretty much the pinnacle of the 80s fashion-wise: I loved the girls' harsh, geometric, almost warpaint-like blush and eyeshadow, which is a bit harder for non-animated humans to pull off successfully.
More influential beauties in Part Deux!
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