M[aharaj]: “I am” is the ultimate fact. “Who am I?” is the ultimate question to which everybody must find an answer.
Q[uestioner]: “The same answer?”
M: The same in essence, varied in expression.
—I Am That, Nisargadatta Maharaj
After the Company shoot in Crete, I got a message from Zoli that the designer Valentino wanted to use me in an advertising campaign and I was to go to Milan on my way to Paris. The photographer would be Marco Glaviano, a famous name in the fashion world. I was excited and nervous. This would be my first big advertising job, a whole different ball game from the editorial booking for Company, which was great for my portfolio but didn’t pay much. Advertising was far more lucrative and gave models greater exposure because the ads could appear on bus stops and billboards and in magazines.
When I got to the studio in Milan, one of the crew motioned for me to sit in a chair. Several stylists began circling me, looking at my long, curly, dirty blond hair and speaking in rapid-fire Italian. All of a sudden, one of them grabbed some scissors and began chopping. He cut my hair to chin length and dried it so that it was straight as a board. I was in shock. I loved my hair. Tears were streaming down my face, though no one seemed to notice or care. I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize the woman looking back at me. Who was she? She was sophisticated and classy, perfectly crafted for the elegant Valentino brand. Here I was in Milan, a model working for a fancy Italian designer, being shot by a top photographer. Isn’t this what every model aspired to? We worked late into the night, and I began to embrace my short hair—and the new, dignified side of myself that I never even knew existed.
I had been in Paris a few months when the issue of Company magazine came out. There was my face, staring out from every newsstand in the city. It felt crazy, and even though I was proud, I also wanted to run and hide. One part of me wanted to tell everyone who walked by, “Hey! That’s me on that magazine!” Another part wanted to buy up all the issues and throw them onto a bonfire. I was relieved that many of the other models felt the same way and had conflicted feelings of accomplishment and vulnerability. Throughout my career, no matter how beautiful the makeup, how elegant the clothes, how subtle and artistic the lighting was in my pictures, I would always see the awkward girl from Indiana.
My first six months in Paris in 1981 gave me a wider view of the modeling world. The week I arrived, designers were planning their upcoming couture shows and selecting models to walk the runway. I had no idea how to “walk,” and every designer seemed to want something different. I watched other girls and tried to emulate their struts, but I wasn’t very good at it. I walked on my toes. I was self-conscious. Basically, I walked like a tomboy straight out of the cornfields.
Two designers, Azzedine Alaïa and Kenzo, took a chance on me. They were the sweetest men in the world, and I loved their clothes. Kenzo’s collection was fun and casual and he wanted his models to walk nonchalantly; Alaia’s collection was as sexy and sophisticated as you can get, and he wanted us to swagger seductively. I had no feel for the runway and I couldn’t do either walk, so those shows were the beginning and end of my catwalk career.
When I got back to New York, I had a decent portfolio. Anna Wintour, the future Vogue editor, was at the helm of New York magazine at the time and took a liking to me. She used me on several covers and in editorial spreads. I attribute much of my success to her belief in me. Cosmopolitan started to book me. My career was picking up steam, and I was making money.
With that momentum, I switched to Elite Model Management, a hipper, trendier agency known for getting its girls the best editorial jobs. I was assigned to a booker named Caroline Kramer, who took me under her wing and pushed me hard, treating every job I got as her own personal victory.
In 1983, I got a booking in Paris, and once again, my agent suggested I stay and take jobs that would update and strengthen my portfolio. I moved into a models’ apartment right around the corner from our favorite McDonald’s. I was much busier this time and started getting more prestigious jobs. Two top photographers, Claus Wickrath and Gilles Bensimon, started using me on a regular basis. Times were good. I worked like a dog.
Unlike at home, in Paris the agency weighed us regularly. They wanted me at 55 kilos—121.25 pounds—but with all the buttery croissants and McDonald’s French fries, my weight shot up to 61 kilos, or 134.48 pounds. I started obsessing. Like all the girls, I would only get on the scale first thing in the morning after emptying my bladder and bowels. I’d remove my jewelry and stand there stark naked. Most of the seven other models in our apartment purged to control their weight. I probably would have done the same except I couldn’t get my gag reflex to work. As a result, I had to be unbelievably disciplined about what I ate. One day, I even calculated the calories in a Tic Tac before popping it into my mouth.
Weight wasn’t the only challenge. My eyes were usually puffy when I woke up and would stay that way for several hours. This would provoke mini-crises on my morning shoots. I never learned to speak French or Italian, but I became very familiar with the phrases for “bags under the eyes” in both languages. My stomach would sink when I heard photographers and stylists whispering the words poches and borse.
I tried to do everything to get rid of those bags. I put tea compresses and ice and cucumbers on my eyes. I spent hundreds of dollars on creams that didn’t work. I avoided salt. I even tried to sleep sitting up so fluid wouldn’t collect under the skin. Finally, I realized that the only way that I could look rested (i.e., no bags) was by not sleeping. Of course, this was ridiculous, unsustainable, and wreaked havoc on my mood and my health. But, if sleeping sitting up—or not sleeping at all—was what it took, I was going to do it.
I headed back to New York at the end of the year with a killer portfolio of European tear sheets and started to shoot for magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar and Glamour with brilliant photographers including James Moore and Albert Watson. I bought an apartment on West Broadway. It was a wild, fast time in New York. Models were always on the invitation lists to the coolest nightclubs: Studio 54, Area, Limelight, and the Mudd Club. Drugs were everywhere—particularly cocaine. I had sworn off heroin, but I did occasionally smoke pot or do a line of cocaine when I went out.
One day, I was sent on a go-see with the legendary photographer Richard Avedon, who had photographed everyone—including the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Jackie Onassis, Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol, and Audrey Hepburn.
When I walked into his studio, Avedon was in the middle of a shoot for Vogue with a model named Gia Carangi, whose beauty literally took my breath away. She was raw and outrageous, but also shy and vulnerable. Everyone in the studio loved her. Gia was openly bisexual and flirted with me. I was flustered and flattered, and I could also see in her eyes and body language that she was high. One part of me wanted to do heroin with her—to curl up in her arms and let her know that I understood—but I didn’t.
Sadly, Gia died of AIDS in 1986 when she was only twenty-six. She was one of the most beautiful women in the world and in a different league from me as a model. I always wished I’d known her better. As Maya Angelou said: “You remember people not by what they do, but by how they make you feel.” Gia made me feel special.
• • •
Over the years, yoga has helped me find perspective on many of the things I went through in the modeling world. Occasionally, I’m asked to speak to groups of young models. I tell them that if they want peace of mind, they need to develop what I would now call a yogic mind-set so that when things happen they’ll be able to take them less personally. Of course, it’s pretty challenging when a person’s professional value is based entirely on her physical body; eventually, models start to believe that we are these “shells”—the specifications on our model cards. Along with the photo, mine was printed with these words: Height 5' 91/2"; Bust 34, Waist 24, Hips 34; Shoes 9; Dress Size 4; Hair, honey-blond; Eyes, blue-green. One card added, “Excellent legs.”
For a long time, I lived on an emotional seesaw, exhilarated if I got a booking and despondent if I didn’t. I was obsessed with getting a Guess! jeans campaign—I don’t know why I wanted it so badly, but I’d go to the annual casting and come home and recite Hail Marys as I listened to the messages on my answering machine. I never did get a Guess! campaign.
Another time I was on a modeling job in New Orleans and was angry that I was getting the shitty light and the shitty clothes compared to the other models on the shoot. I was sitting in the trailer eating peanut M&Ms and feeling sorry for myself. At one point I went into a bathroom in a nearby bar (I hated the tiny bathrooms in the motor home) and noticed a bumper sticker on the wall that said, “Life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you respond to it.” It was like getting hit with the stick by the Zen master: If I was wallowing in self-pity, then that was my choice.
Life is full of acceptance and rejection. Unfortunately, many of us focus on the rejection. Yoga tells us it’s more useful to practice swaha, the idea of which is do the best you can, and let go of the rest. Tibetan Buddhists often translate swaha as “so be it.” Swaha is the rudder that can help us maintain equilibrium.
• • •
By 1987, I had reached the advanced age of twenty-eight. I was aging out of the “middle” level at my agency, but I wasn’t quite ready for the “elite” division. One day, the agency asked me to come into the office for a meeting. After I sat down, I was very matter-of-factly told that it would be a good idea for me to get breast implants and to get my teeth capped so they would be whiter and bigger.
Models almost always do what we’re told. The agency made an appointment for me with a dentist. As he explained the teeth-capping procedure—he was going to file my teeth down to small stubs and place permanent caps over them—I flashed back to Mom and Dad sitting at the dining-room table figuring out which bills to pay. My braces had been one of the expenses that took priority, and my mom had been incredibly proud of my teeth.
That was it. I didn’t get my teeth or my tits done. Instead, I switched agencies and eventually found my way to the Ford Modeling Agency, which wasn’t as sexy or trendy and didn’t focus as much on the hip editorial jobs. At Ford, with my new bookers Jill Perlman and Patty Sinclair, I was proud to be reborn as a “catalogue queen.”
And that’s what I became best known for. Over the past thirty years I’ve worked for Chadwicks of Boston, Talbots, Sundance, Avon Fashion, Brownstone Studio, Spiegel, Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, J. Jill, Roaman’s, and Lane Bryant, among others. I always approached the jobs with the same respect and professionalism as I had for the top fashion magazines. Truthfully, I’m most proud of the work I did between the ages of forty-eight and fifty-two, which included nearly every Eileen Fisher campaign. In a culture that worships youth, I admire Eileen for embracing beauty in women my age. It sends a powerful message to the world. Eileen is a yogi herself. She told me she booked me because I was “in my body” and I “knew who I was.”