I ate it before I shot the scene. I ate that muffin with its salt and calories and wheat and butter and all of the other bloating ingredients.
I hated everything about the underwear scene. I hated that in just a few episodes, I’d gone from playing a high-powered attorney to a woman desperately trying to get her boss to sleep with her. I hated that I’d have to play a love-interest character from now on, and I especially hated what I wore. I chose black lingerie with tiny red and pink hearts sewn onto it. It was ridiculously uncharacteristic for Nelle, who would have worn a more conservative style, perhaps something in navy blue—small, lacy, and revealing yet dignified, and worn with an air of supreme confidence in the goods the underwear displayed. The lingerie I chose was trashy with a stripper vibe. If ever I was to take care of my own needs before worrying about acting, it was in choosing the most flattering underwear. Here was my thinking: I would wear the largest, fullest cut with the most distracting colors to deemphasize my hips and thighs as much as possible. I would pad up my bra to offset the roundness of my stomach and look more proportional from head to toe. I chose a dress that I could remove in one easy motion so I wouldn’t have to bend over and risk rolls of fat creasing on top of each other as I removed a tight skirt or a difficult blouse. I chose the highest of heels, because we all know that the taller you are, the more weight you can carry, and I wore my hair down, shaken all around, in an effort to lift the viewer’s eye north of my abdomen and away from my thighs.
I shot the scene and awaited the verdict. I didn’t have to wait long as it aired within a few weeks. Of course, when shooting a scene like that, some of the feedback is immediate. The energy of the crew changes, and no matter how professional you are, you still feel exposed, cheapened, paid to show your body. Or at least that’s how I felt. And in that scene I was no longer a brilliant attorney who could make the firm more money than it had ever seen. I was stripped of that ability and the respect that comes with it when I stripped down to my heart-covered bra and panties. I was just another blond actress playing a vulnerable woman who has sex with her boss, in the costume of an efficient, crafty attorney. I was just an actress playing a lawyer, which, after dropping out of law school, was the only kind of lawyer I’d ever be. I don’t know why I thought I’d be any more respected for simply pretending to be that which I didn’t have the stamina to become.
By the time the episode aired, my life had changed. For many reasons, I’d decided to move out of the place in Santa Monica that I shared with my brother; the place that I’d shared with my husband. I moved away from the life I’d known since coming to Los Angeles and into an apartment in Hancock Park. I was on my own. Kali had moved back to Pasadena anyway, and my other friend, Ann, a girl who made difficult, emotional conversations easy, had moved to New York. Ann is the friend that everyone wishes they could have. She pries the truth out of you in a nurturing way and then stays around to clean up the tears. Ann’s departure was one of the reasons I moved. But mainly I moved away because of paparazzi. Granted, there was only one photographer who had found my house, but the pictures of me sitting on my front steps, hair in curlers and smoking a cigarette, made me feel ambushed, watched, hunted almost. That one photographer made me feel like any of my private moments could be captured at any given time—unseen, unknown. I felt like I had a peeping Tom and every time I did something that I wouldn’t want anyone else to see, my thoughts escalated into paranoid panic—not only over the present moment, but over those that predated the smoking picture. Retroactive paranoia.
There was nothing fun about seeing my picture in the Star. It served as a warning that I’d better watch myself or I could embarrass my family. I’d better watch myself or I could ruin my career. The photo of me smoking upset my mother. She’d much prefer it if people didn’t think I did that, and now there was proof. Was there proof of my homosexuality yet? (Did I even have proof of it yet?) I wondered if the paparazzo was crouched behind the fence, overhearing my side of phone conversations with Ann when I would sit outside and smoke and talk to her about my therapy sessions. I talked to Ann about therapy and other important life-changing things. Ann had recommended I go to therapy and had also recommended the therapist. Ann listened to my panic and my confusion and to most of my dramatic statements like, “If I get into a relationship, if I even try, then people will find out I’m gay!” She replied, “What’s so bad about that?” Which was ridiculous, of course. Everything was bad about that.
The episode with the scene of me in my underwear aired in New York three hours before it would air in LA. So I told Ann to watch it and call me immediately.
“Hey.”
“What did you think?”
“I thought the show was great. You weren’t in it as much this week.”
“Ann! What did you think of the scene? How do you think I looked?”
“Great.”
“What do you mean, ‘great’?”
“Sexy. You know, great.”
“Did I look thin?”
“I thought you looked like a normal, healthy woman.”
Normal. Healthy. Woman.
My mother told me a long time ago that “healthy” was a euphemism for “fat.” She’d say to me, “Don’t you just hate it when you see someone at the supermarket and they tell you, ‘You look healthy’? They clearly are just trying to tell you that they think you look fat.” She’d tell me how she’d handle the backhanded compliment by smiling and pretending she was receiving a genuine compliment all the while ignoring their attempt to be insulting. After all, it’s in the way an insult is received that makes it an insult. You can’t really give offense unless someone takes it.
All of the words Ann used were euphemisms for fat. Normal just meant that I was fat. Since when did anyone ever go to the doctor’s and feel good about being in the weight range that’s considered normal? A normal size for women in this country is a size 12. Models aren’t “normal.” Actresses aren’t “normal.” She may as well have told me that I’d just embarrassed myself in front of 15 million people. If she didn’t want me to think that, she would’ve used words like “overworked” instead of “healthy,” and “girl” instead of “woman.” How could the image of a woman, with her big voluptuous hips and round thighs and big, heavy breasts be applied to me if I was the skinny, straight-up-and-down, shapeless girl I was starving myself to be?
Message received loud and clear, friend.
You can’t give offense unless somebody takes it.
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