By Mariel Howsepian West Dressed
“DO YOU THINK MODELS WILL EVER be more normal looking?” my friend Apinya asked, biting into an egg salad sandwich. Shorter? More voluptuous?
“No.” Of this I am certain. We were having lunch at the 18th Street Café just a couple of days after Apinya’s photo shoot for Japanese fashion mag “Oggi.”
Every month, “Oggi” features “real” women living in Paris, Milan, New York, and Los Angeles. Aki, the journalist who interviewed Apinya, told me that a “real” woman must have four things: “A beautiful home, a beautiful face, a wonderful career,” and enough spare time to let Aki, her photographer Suzuki, and Suzuki’s assistant into the real woman’s beautiful home.
With one year to go before getting her Ph.D. in mathematics, Apinya dropped out of school to become a fiction writer and yoga instructor. She owns a duplex, has a dog named Mango, takes ballroom dancing lessons, edits an online literary journal, knits scarves, reads, rock climbs, and in the March issue of “Oggi,” Apinya will be just your average L.A. woman.
Suzuki and her assistant were setting up lighting equipment in Apinya’s living room when Aki arrived. Apinya answered the door, hair and make-up done, barefoot, in skinny black pants and a deep V-necked red top.
“Do you have anything more... ” Aki waved her hand over her décolleté, looking at the pi symbol tattooed on Apinya’s left breast. Aki finally came up with the carefully chosen adjective. “Our readers are very ‘conservative.’”
Apinya put her hand against her chest, apologizing, telling Aki she could change. “I didn’t know what you... ”
It’s hard to explain to people who don’t live in L.A. how normal it is that a person can go to their regular chiropractor appointment, and end up being photographed for a spread in a magazine. One minute, Apinya is having her spine adjusted, and the next minute she’s buttoning the top button on a white Oxford shirt.
“Better?” Apinya asked Aki, hoping her cream-colored sweater vest pulled over the Oxford shirt screamed “conservative.”
“Your eyes are still visible,” I told her. Apinya has an eye tattooed on each wrist, and the sleeves on the Oxford shirt were three-quarters length.
“I can put my hands like this,” she said, trying to position herself so the tatts wouldn’t show. “I can change.”
It’s so hard being real. Aki explained that it’s difficult to find a “real” woman living in Los Angeles. A girl in her 20s might have a beautiful face, a waitressing job, and a studio apartment furnished with particleboard. A woman in her mid-30s, who seemingly has it all, is too busy with her wonderful career to sit pretty and hide her ink. Before Aki left, she asked if I would be interested in being in “Oggi.”
I said I would get back to her. I might. This summer, I was sitting outside Peet’s Coffee on Main Street, reading a book. It was lunchtime, and all of the tables were occupied. A tall, slender woman asked me if she and her friend could share my table. By all means, I said. The two sat down with their little takeaway salads and began munching and chatting. Just like real women.
I was surprised when I looked up to see that model and actress Amber Valletta was sitting across from me, talking about trying to juggle being a wife and mother and having a career. I was also surprised to see that she had a zit. She didn’t have a makeup artist cover it up, or a graphic design team airbrush it away. She just went out normal-looking, to have lunch with a friend.
It’s January and every magazine cover promises to help us real women keep our weight-loss resolutions. I didn’t make one. And I don’t regret 2007’s lunches with friends, or the wine with mom, or the paklava at grandma’s. Unofficially, in 2008, I would like to use my gym membership more than once a month. (I’m trying to keep it real.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 4, 2008. Read the original PDF.