Bossypants (15 page)

If your boss is a jerk, try to find someone above or around your boss who is not a jerk.* If you’re lucky, your workplace will have a neutral proving ground—like the rifle range or the car sales total board or the
SNL
read-through. If so, focus on that.

Again, don’t waste your energy trying to educate or change opinions. Go “Over! Under!

Through!” and opinions will change organically when you’re the boss. Or they won’t. Who cares?

Do your thing and don’t care if they like it.

Amazing, Gorgeous, Not Like That

People sometimes ask me, “What’s it like to do photo shoots for magazines?” “Do you enjoy that kind of thing?” Let me be completely honest here. Publicity and press junkets are just part of the job. Your work is what you really care about because your work is your craft and your craft is your art and photo shoots are THE FUNNEST!

In case you ever find yourself at a magazine cover shoot (and you might, because Snooki and I have, so anything can happen!), let me tell you what to expect.

It’s usually in some cool space called White or Smash House or Jinx Studios. Sometimes it’s at an amazing hotel. Wherever it is, it’s nicer than where you had your wedding. You take a freight elevator up to a beautiful loft where there is a coffee bar at which everything is free. Free, I say!

I suggest you show up freshly scrubbed with damp hair. Not only is this a courtesy to your hair and makeup team but also it helps to
set the bar low
. Show up looking like an uncooked chicken leg and they can’t help but be pleased with the transformation once they get all their makeup on you. I think this is what Jesse Jackson calls the “subtle genius of lowered expectations,” but I may be misquoting.

You’ll be introduced to the stylist and shown racks and racks of clothes. She has been given your sizes ahead of time and has chosen to ignore them. All the shoes will be too big and all the pants and skirts will be a 5T. The stylists like to figure out a few looks before hair and makeup begins, so you will try on twenty or thirty things. Somebody will put up a makeshift wall by holding a full-length mirror next to an open loft window, and you will strip down naked. You must not look in that mirror at your doughy legs and flat feet, for today is about dreams and illusions, and unfiltered natural daylight is the enemy of dreams.

When you inevitably can’t fit into a garment, the stylist’s assistant will be sent in to help you.

The stylist’s assistant will be a chic twenty-year-old Asian girl named Esther or Agnes or Lot’s Wife.

In a few years she’ll be running the editorial staff, but at this point in time her job is to stuff a middle-aged woman’s bare ass crack into a Prada dress and zip it up. In my case, Esther and I are always mutually frustrated when zipping up the tiny dress. Esther is disgusted by my dimply flesh and her low status. I’m annoyed that her tiny hands lack the strength to get Pandora’s plague back into the box.

“How’s it going in there?” calls the stylist passive-aggressively. Reinforcements are called in to push on both sides of my ribcage until the zipper goes up. To avoid conflict, we all blame a third party. “It’s these damn invisible zippers!” we say in unison. “I don’t know why designers use them!”

The reason none of the dresses fit is because they are “samples.” They are from the runway and they were made to fit runway models. Sometimes I can actually fit in the sample size because at five foot four I have the waist size of a seven-foot model. “You can fit in a sample size!” they tell me triumphantly, with the dress straining at the seams, two feet too long on the bottom, and the bra cups hanging right above my navel. They want this to be important to you, so go with it.

Next you are taken to the hair and makeup chair. “Do you have anything on your face?” the makeup artist will ask gently. You don’t because, as previously mentioned, you are sandbagging. The makeup artist will then delicately apply expensive moisturizer to your chicken leg while the hair stylist massages your scalp (secretly checking for bald spots).

Once you’re moisturized and have enjoyed your free cappuccino, the makeup transformation begins in earnest. They pluck your eyebrows for what seems like twenty minutes even though you have already plucked them fully the night before.

If you’re like me, you probably take ten to twelve seconds a day to put on some eyeliner and mascara. Maybe you throw in five seconds of eye shadow if it’s New Year’s Eve. The makeup artist at your photo shoot will work methodically on your eyelids with a series of tickly little brushes for a hundred minutes. It’s soothing, actually, because you must sit still and you absolutely can’t do anything else. She will do this thing before she lines your lips where she puts her finger on your top lip and rolls it back ever so gently. When she is done, you look like you have lips! Not crazy overdrawn grandma lips like
you
would do, but God-given lips.

While this is going on, someone gives you a manicure and a pedicure. At really fancy shoots, a celebrity fecalist will study your bowel movements and adjust your humours.

The leg massage and the warm lights of the makeup mirror feel so cozy that you could almost believe that
this
is your actual life instead of that endless degrading “looking for the checkbook” and

“boiling macaroni” shit you live with at home.

At some point in the morning, one of the stylists or publicists or fecalists will declare that the free coffee is “not working for me,” and some intern is sent out to get other coffee. Or bubble tea. Or gum, Advil, Red Bull, and egg white omelets that are destined to be forgotten about and left on a windowsill.

Only when your makeup is done will they start to do your hair. You hair will be blown straight, then set on large rollers. The hairdresser’s assistant hands him rollers and pins on command like an OR

nurse. These fashionable young assistants are a fun window into what the rest of us will be wearing three years from now. From what I’ve seen lately, we can look forward to the return of prairie skirts and the male shag. (The prairie skirts will be on men and the male shag will be on women.) Once your hair is straightened, it will be curled, then shown to the photographer, who will stare at it with his or her head cocked to one side. Then it will be restraightened.

Depending on the concept for the shoot and the health of your natural hair, you may be asked to wear hair extensions. It’s okay. A controlled, photo shoot environment is where extensions belong.

Places that are less ideal for hair extensions: the grocery store, women’s prison, a water park.

Once your hair and makeup are done, you’ll slip into your first look. It will most definitely be one of the dresses that didn’t even come close to fitting you, so Lot’s Wife will bridge the gap with a thick piece of white elastic and some safety pins. Don’t ever feel inadequate when you look at magazines. Just remember that every person you see on a cover has a bra and underwear hanging out a gaping hole in the back. Everyone. Heidi Klum, the Olsen Twins, David Beckham, everybody.

Et voilà! Just two to three hours after your arrival, you are ready to be taken to the photographer and shot.

There are different types of fancy photographers. Some are big, fun personalities like Mario Testino, who once told me, “Lift your chin, darling, you are not eighteen.” I enjoyed his honesty. Also, I’m pretty sure he says that to models who are nineteen.

Some photographers plan out every detail of the shot, then plug you into it. For example, with Annie Leibovitz, you might have advance fittings for several custom Tinkerbell costumes. On the day of the shoot, Annie will pick one of the costumes, then obscure it with a large harness. Afterward, she’ll remove the harness with Photoshop, change the color of the costume, and shrink you down to the size of a pea anyway.

There are the nonchalant “cool guy” photographers who shoot for
Rolling Stone
and
GQ.
Watch out for these guys, because their offhand manner can trick you and the next thing you know, you’re posing with your pants off. Or worse, with your shoes off.

I’m a firm believer in our constitutional right to wear shoes, and I believe more people should take advantage of it. I never go barefoot during a photo shoot. Even if they say your feet are “out of frame,” don’t believe them. I know what you’re thinking and no, I don’t have horrible messed-up feet.

Maybe my feet are so amazing that I want to shelter them so they can live a normal life. I don’t want them to be the Suri Cruise of feet. Did you ever think about that?

The photographer will ask you what kind of music you want to play during the shoot. Remember that whatever you choose will be blasted through the loft and heard by an entire crew of people who are all so cool that the Board of Ed. officially closed school.

Just murmur, “Hip-hop,” or make up the name of a hipster-sounding band and then act superior when they’ve never heard of it. “Do you guys have any Asphalt of Pinking? *disappointed+ Really?

[shrug] Whatever
you
want, then.”

Sometimes they ask if you want to hook up
your iPod
for background music. Do not do this. It’s a trap. They’ll put it on shuffle, and no matter how much Beastie Boys or Velvet Underground you have on there, the following four tracks will play in a row: “We’d Like to Thank You Herbert Hoover” from
Annie,

“Hold On” by Wilson Phillips, “That’s What Friends Are For,” Various Artists, and “We’d Like to Thank You Herbert Hoover” from
Annie.

To get through the actual shooting process, there are three skills you need to master.

1) Posing

Posing for a successful glamour portrait is very simple. Start with the basics. Turn sideways. Lean back against a wall. Move your chin forward to elongate your neck. Relax your shoulders. Make angles wherever possible. If you’re over twenty-four, smile at all times. Keep your arms slightly away from your sides so as not to smush them and make them look larger. Suck your stomach up and in, and wrap your buttocks toward the back, Pilates-style. Be yourself. When you look into the lens, imagine you are looking at a dear friend, but not a friend who would laugh at you for jutting out your chin while arching your back against a fake wall.

Know your weaknesses. For example, I have what can be described as “dead shark eyes.” But if I try too hard to look alert, I look batshit crazy, like the runaway bride. If a bout of “creepy face” sets in, the trick is to look away from the camera between shots and turn back only when necessary. This also limits how much of your soul the camera can steal.

2) Dealing with What Is Being Said to You

Most photographers have some kind of verbal patter going on when they shoot: “Great. Turn to me. Big smile. Less shark eyes. Have fun with it. Not like that.”

Some photographers are compulsively effusive. “Beautiful. Amazing. Gorgeous! Ugh, so gorgeous!” they yell at shutter speed. If you are anything less than insane, you will realize this is not sincere. It’s hard to take because it’s more positive feedback than you’ve received in your entire life thrown at you in fifteen seconds. It would be like going jogging while someone rode next to you in a slow-moving car, yelling, “Yes! You are Carl Lewis! You’re breaking a world record right now. Amazing!

You are fast. You’re going very fast, yes!”

With the wind blowing on your long extensions, you feel like Beyoncé. The moment the wind machine stops, you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and wonder, “Why is the mother from
Coal
Miner’s Daughter
here?”

Your impulse will be to wilt with embarrassment. Do not! Before you look up for the bucket of pig’s blood, remember, your third and most difficult task is “Trying to Enjoy It.”

3) Trying to Enjoy It (Proceed as if You Look Awesome.)

This requires a level of delusion/egomania usually reserved for popes and drag queens, but you can do it. It’s like being a little kid again, parading around in a nightgown tucked into your underpants, believing it looks terrific. Your “right mind” knows that you look ridiculous in a half-open dress and giant shoes, but you must put yourself back in third grade, slipping on your mom’s quilted caftan and drinking cream soda out of a champagne glass while watching
The Love Boat.
You have never been more glamorous.

“Believe you are worthy of the cover,” as Mario Testino might say to a tense, shark-eyed forty year old.

After about seventeen minutes of shooting, they call lunch. The catered lunch makes you feel like you’re finally the person you always wanted to be. Vegetable tartlets. Arugula salad with figs, quinoa, fish that is somehow more flavorful and delicious than a Wendy’s hamburger. Miniature lemon meringue pies. Hibiscus iced tea. You fantasize about how wonderful your life would be if you had this food delivered every day. Oh, the energy you would have! Your stools would be museum quality. You could finally impress the fecalist.

At this point someone from your real job or home life will call to check in. Pretend you’re exhausted and that this whole photo shoot thing is a big inconvenience. Say you’ll be done by six and that you’ll be sure to get home in time to help organize the basement storage unit. Then hang up! Do not let those people kill your buzz!

Your afternoon will fly by as you get more and more confident posing like an old Virginia Slims ad.

And then you’re done. You get back into this morning’s sweatpants, brush out your hair, which by now looks like you’ve been standing on a tarmac all day, and that’s it.

You don’t get to keep the clothes, by the way. Some people say that the
really
famous people get to keep the clothes, but I suspect it’s just the
pushiest, most deluded
people who get to keep the clothes because they steal them and no one says anything. Your only keepsakes are the individual false eyelashes that you later find stuck to your boob in the shower.

(Someone should do a study of the human brain and how quickly it can adjust to luxury. You could take a homeless person who has been living on the street for twenty years, and if you let them do three magazine photo shoots, by the fourth one they’d be saying, “Louboutins don’t really work on me.