Isabella Rossellini

ACTOR; FORMER LANCÔME SPOKESPERSON AND MODEL

BEAUTY.

The most beautiful woman in the room.

The most beautiful woman in the world.

Close your legs, Isabella.

Don’t wear that, Isabella.

One more like that, Isabella.

Beauty—it says you want to make love.

I don’t say no. It won’t take long.

A few minutes, I’ll get on with my life.

Like bathing my dogs.

They hold still for that moment when I soap and scrub.

They stand absolutely strangely still.

And then, when it’s done

they shake

and they shake

and they’re gone.

I hold still for him, like the dogs.

It doesn’t occur to me that I’m a part of this.

No. It is my beauty, it is my beauty

that brings it on.

I wasn’t meek in the photographs, no.

I knew how to express assertiveness.

I knew the glamour of strong women

who did what they wanted to do.

Like Kahlo, Magnani, like Callas.

I could do that in the photographs.

The corporation accepted it until I got stronger than the creme they were selling to make women better.

The creme is the star, they said, not Isabella Rossellini.

They sent me so many flowers on my fortieth birthday.

I knew I was dead.

They said, “Be grateful, Isabella.

Be grateful you lasted so long in the business.”

I didn’t say no.

I must have meant yes.

They asked me to take responsibility.

They said making a fuss would damage my career.

But they had already ended it.

I didn’t speak up.

It didn’t occur to me that

I was part of it.

No, it was my beauty, my beauty that brought it on.

So now, please, let me say it. Here.

I was forty.

I was at my best.

I knew who I was.

Women wanted that more than the

lipstick or eye shadow or creme.

They fired me

because I was strong.

They told me not to talk.

I am talking. I am talking.