Difficult

I’m thinking about these two incidents, these two photo shoots. Damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situations. One shoot where I went-along-to-get-along and ate the results. And one where I pressed against it all, made an uncomfortable situation, but got dynamite results. OK, the first photo shoot. NYC, makeup on. Terrible. Conventional. Not who I am. Not me. Some idea of me. I hate it. I hate it. Been here before. Different people, who knows who, putting makeup on me. An NBC special years before that, at the beginning. I’m so young. Makeup on and it’s big and it’s orange, the foundation, on my face, like pantyhose stretched across my face, suffocating my skin. It’s orange. One-shade-fits-all foundation for all the NBC stars? Hate it. Go to my dressing room. I’m so young . . . Can I do this? There are so many actors here, they won’t notice, they probably won’t be able to notice, there are too many actors here. Rub it off. Rub the orange off and look at it on the tissue. Brighter orange on the white tissue than on my face. So orange. Rub it off. Better. Take down the eyes. Better. Go out, go back out. Too many actors to notice. Avoid the makeup artists, don’t walk near and they won’t notice.

So, I had been there, that feeling. Of someone spraying, applying, some reality on you, some personality they decided was YOU or that suited whatever they’d wanted to have on their network special or in their magazine. You. Who are you? It doesn’t matter. It’s not part of the equation. NOW KEEP THE PEACE. Hanging over you, always, always, cautionary tales of other actresses, in the past, who were “trouble,” who were labeled as “difficult.” You didn’t want that. That was the worst one. The end. The label that was the end; couldn’t get any worse. “Difficult.” So, you say nothing. You’re 20. You don’t know shit. You don’t know the truth, that everyone in power, or who you assume has power, is afraid of you. Afraid of the youth, assumes the Power of the Youth. You don’t know that. You won’t know that until you’re older, too late to use that knowledge.

So, you sit there, at the photo shoot. Hate the makeup. Conventional, boring, beige, oatmeal, no edge. Oh God, the hair. The hair is turning into a ’do. Conventional, conservative. Spraying the reality of a senator’s wife “look” on you. You are inside, you are inside, alive. Like a buried body, a person who’s been buried alive in this spraying of someone else’s idea of you on you, all over you. You are inside and you can’t speak up. SAY SOMETHING. You’re screaming at yourself to say something. Speak up. Say something. Like those dreams where you can’t scream for help. You open your mouth and the sound won’t come. Or those psychological thrillers where someone’s been given an injection of whatever so that they are alive, conscious, but paralyzed, unable to move at all, while totally conscious of every horror happening to them, watching it. Like that. Lame, right? I mean, I’m talking. I am talking to the makeup people. Shooting the shit, making conversation. I am talking. But no, I say nothing. I say nothing useful, nothing useful for me. I fold into the spraying, I fold into the reality they are making for me, the molding of what I seem to be, appear to be, I guess, to everyone else. I am a victim? They are “doing it to me”? No, I can’t get off that easy. I AM THERE.

Now, the second one. The second photo shoot starts. Big magazine. Profile piece. I don’t know the makeup and hair people. Easier if you’ve worked with them before. Sometimes you get that. That makes it better. But, I don’t know them. We don’t “connect.” AND HERE WE GO AGAIN. On with the makeup, the spraying. Shit, shit, the same thing. The conventional, the “nice,” make her look “nice.” They don’t know me, didn’t try to, didn’t even read any interviews beforehand or ask me what I’d like, with the makeup and hair. Shit. Going the same way as so many photo shoots and TV specials from before. I can’t. I can’t take the risk. Can I? To dive into the “difficult” area? OH, CHRIST. Every day, someone, everyone deciding who I am, because of the Fame. Projecting, categorizing, deciding my box. Everyone who comes up to me, even in interviews, someone else deciding how I’m going to come off. Deciding for me, HAVING THE LAST SAY, the final edit. Deciding that I said that “snippily.” Deciding that my own quotes weren’t “quite right” for the angle they’d already decided BEFORE they interviewed me. The angle they’d already decided that the article, the interview with me, was going to have.

OK. So much of this. So much of this, but there’s this photo shoot with me there, me participating. I’m not buried alive. I’m not paralyzed, only watching the horror around me and unable to say anything, to stop it. I’m not unable to stop it. I JUST HAVE TO BE WILLING TO BE CALLED “DIFFICULT.” I take the risk. The “risk.” I mean, I dive in. I know this is not a risk that they will think I’m “difficult.” No, I know they will think it. They will say it. They will spread it. They will say I am “difficult.” They will. It’s not a risk; I know. OK. AWKWARD. It’s awkward, but I plow in. The hair’s not working. I say it. They try something else. Not working. An impasse. Awkward. I get some water. I go to the sink, I have a spray bottle; I don’t remember which. I have the water on my hands and then I cover my hair with it. My hair is wet. Wet. I wet all their work, erase it. The makeup. The makeup isn’t bad. It can stay. THE FUCKING CLOTHES are terrible. Conventional, “nice,” “Make her look nice.” Trying their best, sure. Not their fault, I guess. The awkwardness. I grab something, something I can just hold against myself. I will make do, I will make it look like I want it to look. It will look like ME.

Too far in now to return. Tense, the photo shoot is tense. I PRESSED AGAINST SOMEONE’S “GOOD IDEA,” the idea they sold the magazine on. The magazine had this shoot scheduled, this assignment of me. Shoot Justine Bateman, nice profile next to the photo. And the photographer is picked, AN IDEA OF ME IS CHOSEN, or no. I don’t know. They decide on a look, an angle, a setting, a theme. The clothes are picked like that, to support that. Or no. Maybe winging it. Maybe they don’t know what to do, the photographer, the stylist, maybe they don’t know what to do, so they must present this non-idea with firm confidence so that people, everyone, thinks they know what the fuck they’re doing. They’re not bad people. Maybe they shoot a starlet a week, a starlet a day. They’re just doing their best. They’re not bad people. But me. I made a tense photo shoot. Everyone, probably glad when it was over. I was on my own in there. I was on my own, not wanting to make it tense, awkward, but I couldn’t be buried alive again, under their spraying of a reality I didn’t recognize. But, the picture was great. Yeah, great. Great picture.

* * *

The stupid thing is that the first shoot I told you about was a magazine cover. The photo shoot where I didn’t say anything and let a horrible picture be made was a cover. I had to look at that picture of me-not-saying-anything, of letting them spray their reality all over me, for a full month. Walking by, driving by the newsstand, in an airport, at the grocery store, at the manicurist, the doctor’s office. For a month, had to look at that picture, that perfect treasure trail back to that shitty, shitty feeling of having people-pleased my way right through that photo shoot. That picture of me throwing myself under the bus so that I could avoid the risk of anyone calling me “difficult.” Right under the bus. You can see it now. I still have it. It’s here in the book. And the other picture too. The good one. The picture of me making a tense, awkward photo shoot, but a great picture. That’s here too.

So many photo shoots. I find them online now, shoots I’d forgotten about. Shoots you were supposed to do because you were famous. Agreeing to settings and props and sitting on BMX bikes (I don’t remember), posing with a miniature horse (SHOULD remember, but don’t remember), in an antique convertible (DO remember that. Hated copying some ’50s theme), blah, blah, blah. Too many. Not representational of me. Too many, no time to get a handle on the different ways you’re being presented, misrepresented. You try to get ahold of it, try to influence it. It gets better. It gets better later, but in the beginning, it’s flying out of control. You can’t keep up, you don’t have the spine to grab hold of an image, a clear image of yourself and insist on it. You’re 16, 17, 18, 19, 20; you don’t know shit. It’s all happening too fast, too fast to do anything about. You’re doing school, the show, then this Fame. Much too fast. Unmanageable. Can only lie down in the canoe and let the rapids pull you downstream. Just lie down so you don’t get hurt in the violently fast, churning, vibrating water. And the rocks. Just lie down and let it all blow past.