Paper Dolls

I awoke this morning to the image in my mind of paper dolls. I remembered how when I was a little girl, my mother showed me how to fan-fold a large sheet of paper into about 2” layers, and carefully cut out the silhouette of ½ of a girl. After precisely cutting out the details, I would magically unfold the paper to find- not one- but a series of whole girls, holding hands, IF I had cut them out correctly. Then, I would carefully fill in the missing details with my Crayola Crayons- finetuning the details of hair color, facial features and the details of her wardrobe. This image of the paper dolls reminds me of the role models I have held over the years. Depending on my age and station in life, these paper dolls of yesterday were like a thin transparency of the person I was supposed to be…

There is always someone we admire- someone we want to be or to be “like”. When I was in college, I was torn between the planetary pulls of two “Celebri-TAY”: Madonna and the movie “Flashdance”. In the early 80’s , the irreverent Material Girl was just coming onto The Scene. (This was before the torpedo boobs, before she took voice lessons and before she achieved spiritual Zen, or whatever it is called in the world of Kabbalism.) Back then, she was a good ole wayward Catholic, something I could totally relate to as a wayward Southern Baptist. LOL! She had bleached, funky scrunched-up hair, sloppy tattered thrift store looking clothes, a mixture of elegance and trash. Then, there was my other role model, beautiful Jennifer Beales in the movie Flashdance who danced her tattered legwarmers into our hearts but was ultimately outshined by Irene Cara in the title track “Flashdance…What a Feelin’”! Although I wasn’t much of a dancer, nor a Material Girl- I donned pearl necklaces with my sweats, leg warmers with my jeans, and did my best to give the appearance I wasn‘t trying too hard. Like Madonna and the gyrating rhythms of Flashdance, I was a girl of the “80’s. I could do it all!

Then, during the late 80’s I saw what I would now term a horrendous film, Working Girl, the breakthrough movie for Melanie Griffith. In case this names means nothing to you youngsters out there, she is married to that hunkster Antonia Banderas ( purrrr-purrrr) and no longer has to work for a living. In recent years, she has had so much Botox and collagen injections, that I doubt she recognizes herself in the mornings. Today, I deem her totally unworthy of the dashing Mr. Banderas. But then, I was three years into my career as an interior designer, and like Melanie I was a nobody from nowhere. In the movie, her hard work ethic and the ability to think on her feet finally paid off and she landed a big job on Wall Street. She ultimately achieved “big success”. I haven’t seen the movie in years, and like my bad memories of myself , a broad-shouldered gal in shoulder pads and a punk hairdo, it’s not something I am anxious to see again. But what affected me most from that movie was Melanie, at her heyday, in a trench coat. I went right out after that movie and bought myself a new London Fog Trenchcoat, in a drab olive-brown, cinched at the waist with a tie belt. I had that coat for many years but somehow, I never made it to the Big Apple.

In the early 90’s, I became a mother and became intimately acquainted with the term “Super Mother”. I remember desperately hoping to lose my freak like status and to become part of that league of mothers doing it all for my kid. I eventually tried to work part time, which meant I tried to cram 40 hours of work into 3 days, was the doting mama the other 4 days and nights. I volunteered at the school and as a Cub Scout mom. About that time, Martha Stewart began to tell us we could do it all, and I began to host elaborate birthday parties for my son. One of the most memorable was a “Star Wars Party” complete with a Star Wars obstacle course in our suburban backyard and myself dressed up as Princess Leia, complete with the long white flowing frock and Danish- eared hairdo. It’s been so long since then, I cannot remember what I used to achieve that hairdo, but as best I can recollect, it involved Pillsbury Danish rolls, or something akin to that. In hindsight, the “Super Mother” years almost killed me, and it wasn’t just when I fell jumping over that stack of hay bales or when I broke my tailbone teaching my son how to climb rocks in the mountains. No, I look back onto photos of myself at that time, and I always looked so TIRED. And I was grumpy, much more so than I am now, and once I remember being mad at my husband for something like two years…

As my son grew up and I came to realize he had not been spared the Freak Gene, I entered a no-woman’s land of “Who Am I?” For a while there, I don’t remember finding anyone or anything to be particularly inspiring to me. I was just a working wife and mother going through the daily grind. My mother became sick, first with cancer and then with Alzheimer’s Disease and I transferred much of the time that had gone into my son to her. For a long time, it seemed my paper doll was lifeless, devoid of face or clothing. I was in a place devoid of paper dolls, no legwarmers, no Trench Coat, no Ewoks…

My forties have been a time to reassess my life and the type of women I admire. I’d like to think I’ve come a long way from Madonna and Martha Stewart. As an adult, I realize that their personas were just as fake and shallow as me trying to emulate them. Martha made it look SOOOOOoo easy, but there was a whole crew of people behind her baking those cakes, wrapping her matching book covers and winding that live greenery along every inch of her Connecticut home. And she claimed she only needed two or three hours of sleep a night. That gave her time to get up and repair her own toilet… Hhhhrmph!I appreciate that she taught me about Fondant Icing, but in the end, she made me feel lousy because I just couldn’t keep up.

Most of the women I admire most today aren’t found in glossy magazines, although I fell briefly in love with Oprah til I saw her take that cross country trip with Gayle and learned she was so out of touch with the real world, she couldn’t pump her own gas! World domination is fine, but I find it hard to respect someone who can’t operate a simple gas tank or who doesn’t like to sing on a road trip. I admire weird things like The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty and Jamie Lee Curtis for keeping her hair that color.

No, most of the people I admire are people that I actually know, or feet that I know. I admire my good friends- who unlike my paper dolls of yesteryear, are all different shapes and colors. I admire how they age gracefully, how I see them grow in wisdom and beauty. I have learned to love them more as I see how them struggle and as I see them soar. I admire many of the “real voices” I know on Skirt! It’s been a place of comfort for me over the last two and a half years where I have not been afraid to be the real me. I see so many of you shine, like bright lights out there on my computer screen - Kim, Elizabeth, Heather, Renee, Kim, Carol, Barbara, Deb, Nechelle, Charlene, Demetria, Shena, Stacey, Ellen and Ginger and… well, I know I’ve missed a bunch of you but you get the point.... I admire ALL of you for teaching me to stand in my Truth by your own example and I love and respect you for that.

As I approach my fiftieth year, I feel like the view from the half-century mark, has given me the courage to get out the scissors again and cut a new image. This one is truly an original, a one of a kind. She lacks, perhaps the symmetry of yesteryear's figures, but in their place, something more solid, more authentic, and more “good”.