Read Normal Gets You Nowhere Online
Authors: Kelly Cutrone
Normal Gets You Nowhere (5 page)
I have spent many years of my life in opposition, and I rather like the role.
Do what you feel in your heart to be right—for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.
—Eleanor Roosevelt
Part I: Ultimately, There’s No Such Thing as Coincidence or Bad Publicity
O
ne day last summer, I received a phone call from the
New
York Post
informing me that DC Comics had created a new look for Wonder Woman and asking for my opinion.
What?
I thought.
Why would they change her look?
She looks amazing!
I happen to think Wonder Woman’s look is one of the few things in the world that
shouldn’t
change. After all, there’s really nothing like a hot chick in star-spangled briefs, knee-high boots, arm cuffs, and a red and gold corset with a lasso and supernatural powers. Who doesn’t love that?
I hadn’t seen the new look yet, so I pulled it up on the Internet. I was disappointed, to say the least. This was surely a fashion “don’t.” As in,
don’t
take a really hot superhero known for saving lives in a Thierry Mugler-esque getup and reduce her to jeggings and a cropped bolero. It was pathetic! Besides, we were in the middle of a recession. How had no one thought to call some American designers to ask them to redesign her look? That would have been a good PR strategy! I told the
Post
exactly what I thought, and then later I vlogged about it on “Wake Up and Get Real,” the internet talk show I do with my best friend Justine Bateman. Wanting my comments to be alliterative, I said that Wonder Woman had gone “from Paris to Poughkeepsie.” (I consider myself something of an aficionado of mall looks in Pough-keepsie, since I spend many a Sunday strolling the Poughkeepsie Galleria near my weekend home.)
It wasn’t long after the
New York Post
piece and my vlog appeared that I started receiving calls from a guy named John W. Barry, a reporter for the
Poughkeepsie Journal
. At first I didn’t call him back. I didn’t have to be psychic to figure out he was probably calling with a feather up his ass over my comment, and I was not in the mood to defend myself over such a lame topic or to let some reporter turn me into a big Poughkeepsie hater. Especially when Poughkeepsie is a place I’ve been very connected to for years. I mean, I spend a ton of cash at the Target there every weekend. I let my love
flow
! Would I really be in the process of buying my first home just a few minutes from the town if I hated it so much?
But after his fifth phone call, I thought,
Oh God, I’ll just throw
him a bone and be nice
. Unfortunately, talking to him was a bit of a joke. My initial feelings were confirmed; he had prepared a list of journalistically prodding questions and kept pelting me with them over and over in hopes that I’d break down and admit I actually did hate the town, which in fact was simply not true. I hurried off the phone.
The next day, driving up to my country house, I stopped at my usual gas station. The attendant, who looks like a Bangladeshi Clark Kent and whom I’ve seen every weekend for the past eight years, seemed especially excited to see me.
“Ohhhh, you’re on the cover of the paper!” he said.
Oh fuck
.
In that moment, I got what it must be like when you’ve robbed a bank and you’re trying to quietly skip town. There I was, standing at the counter with two pink Snowball cupcakes that looked like big nipples, reaching for a loaf of white Wonder Bread—yes, it’s the only thing Ava will eat her grilled cheese on—while Clark Kent waved a copy of the
Poughkeepsie Journal
at me with large pictures of my face and Wonder Woman’s on it. “ ‘Wonder’ Blunder? Jab at Poughkeepsie About Comic Icon’s New Look Draws Notice,” blared the headline. The article inside noted: “Comments about Wonder Woman’s makeover have residents wondering why Poughkeepsie was the apparent target of a fashion publicist.” I’ll tell you why: it was a slow news day in upstate New York!
I know people say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but in the moment it can feel pretty bad. After all, I’d been a good sport with the
New York Post,
and the piece turned out to be quite a bit of fun. But for me, it quickly turned to sour apples when I saw myself on the cover of the
Poughkeepsie Journal
. It had been years since I’d thought about Wonder Woman. Yet while others were talking about the recession, depression, national debt, and fear and violence, I was talking about hot pants. That was my big contribution to a cover story.
What is my life coming to?
I wondered. To be honest, the whole thing made me feel kind of chippy.
Luckily, sometimes what seems at first like an annoyance, a setback, or a really huge mistake can actually be part of something much larger. I’ve told you many times that I do not believe in coincidences. I do believe every moment is engineered by our soul and the Divine. In fact, some experiences, both good and bad, are meant to teach us what we need to know at a certain time. Look at it this way: Our soul and the Divine are conductors in the rock opera of our lives, and though I didn’t know it at the time, the summer of 2010 would be, for me, a song with a great motherfucking hook. Can you believe that Cutrone’s cutting comments (there I go with the alliteration again) about Poughkeepsie would lead to an invitation to visit Eleanor Roosevelt’s estate? Or that, once there, I’d receive a crash course in human rights and the urgent need for us all to accept and embrace our Universal Motherhood, which would change my whole outlook on life just as I was starting to think about this book?
See, you just never know what’s around the corner. The
Poughkeepsie Journal
article inspired a woman named Barbara Henszey to e-mail my dear friend Kenny Zimmerman—one of my tribal elders and a fashion legend—for help getting in touch with me. Just days after the article appeared, Kenny forwarded me this e-mail:
From: Barbara Henszey
Date: July 13, 2010 8:55:22 PM EDT
To: Kenneth Zimmerman
Subject: Eleanor Roosevelt Center
Kenny,
The Eleanor Roosevelt Center in Hyde Park celebrates all the remarkable elements of ER’s legacy, but its overall visibility is weak.
Kenny, I know you are a good friend of Kelly Cutrone. It struck me the other day that she and Eleanor Roosevelt might have been great friends. Kelly’s book is full of poignant inspiration and activist wisdom, the hallmarks of ER’s journey. Do you think Kelly might have an interest in contributing to the Center? I would appreciate any input—from brainstorming to assistance in planning an event. Perhaps when Kelly is at her weekend home, we could meet for an hour at Eleanor’s Val-Kill home in Hyde Park.
If Kelly is not able to help at this time, I would love to give her and her daughter, Ava (and you and Arlene) a tour through the grounds. It’s a most magical place.
Best,
Barbara
Reading this, I felt as though I’d been hit on the head with a coconut. I mean, Eleanor Roosevelt and Kelly Cutrone?
Whaaaaaaaaat?!
I was simultaneously curious and elated that anyone would think Eleanor and I would have been friends, even though I knew almost nothing about her or what she accomplished in her life (but it certainly sounded fancy). I accepted the invitation partly because I was flattered, and partly because this woman Barbara seemed like she was stabbing around in the dark and needed some help. Maybe I could at least get her some free publicity for the estate.
Ava and I decided to visit Val-Kill the day before I was scheduled to fly to Toronto for a retreat with the Indian-born guru Sri Devi Amritanandamayi Ma, commonly called Amma, for whom I’d been consulting on media and branding. (To be honest, I don’t really think Amma needs my help with anything, but she knows I love to work more than meditate, so she’s been nice enough to throw me a bone.) This should have been my first clue that this would be no ordinary weekend in the country. The morning started off simply enough. When we awoke at my country house, my daughter and I walked down to the lake for a swim. It was one of those perfect Norman Rockwell scenes when you see the promise of life blooming in vibrant relief all around you.
I remember looking at Ava as she skipped up the path ahead of me after our swim, sun streaming through her hair.
There won’t be many more summers when she’s going to walk like a little girl,
I thought
, and when she’s going to want to go for a swim with me.
Right before my eyes, there she was, growing up. I felt like an old sage in the forest, aware as I took in all her beauty and her youth that these days, and
my
days, were more than limited. My days as the mother of a young girl and then a teenager, and my days as a woman on this planet. I would be dead soon; there was no avoiding this thing called death. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not planning on dying in five years or anything—and if I do, I guess I’ll seem really psychic!—but as I gazed at my daughter through a prism of different perspectives, both short and long, I felt my awareness of everything heighten. If
cherish
and
psychically imprinted
had sex, they would be the parents of this feeling. Before I knew it, tears were streaming down my face.
This seems like a good time to set something straight. I know I called my first book
If You Have to Cry, Go Outside,
but what I meant was, it’s not professional to let your emotions get the best of you in the workplace. I actually believe that if you’re crying from gratitude, you can do it anywhere (though it’s still better to not do it at the office). That day, watching Ava, I knew I was in a state of grace. I’ve never taken acid, but everything around me seemed tinged; I felt with every pore of my body the sheer amount of beauty, tenderness, and abundance in every breath and every interaction on this earth. The thing about states of grace is that they tend to announce themselves suddenly, with the backing of an angelic choir or maybe in a thunderbolt. It’s usually pretty clear that something special’s happening. Most of the time these moments are triggered by really simple things, as mine was, and maybe the moment itself is the entire teaching. The Divine could’ve just been reminding me to cherish having a child like Ava, for whom I’d manifested a country house as a single mother, so that she and I could have a more intimate relationship with nature.
I didn’t know I was being prepared for a much larger teaching, one that would last for weeks. When Mira Alfassa, or The Mother—my longtime teacher and guru—was in her body, she sent certain students to other gurus to learn lessons they needed at certain times. Recently, I’ve felt that Amma is like one of The Mother’s sisters who came to get me for the weekend—a very long weekend that has lasted over two years. The Mother and her spiritual partner, Sri Aurobindo, were very focused on transforming the self from the inside out—changing mind, life, and body into channels of Divine consciousness—and Amma is also focused on this, but in a more outwardly collaborative way. (I believe she and The Mother are just differentiated aspects of the same Divine being—that the Universal Mother has many faces.) Amma’s currently one of the greatest living examples of the Divine feminine force in full effect. In addition to being a great humanitarian, she has toured the planet for more than thirty-five years hugging millions upon millions of people (over 30 million to date). In fact, she sometimes spends up to twenty hours sitting in one place without so much as a meal or a bathroom break, receiving anyone who wants to see her.
I would no sooner arrive on the grounds of Val-Kill than I’d realize I was in a sacred space. And by end of the weekend it would be fair to say that Eleanor Roosevelt, Amma, The Mother, and Wonder Woman—all great teachers—had had their way with me.
Part II: Dear Eleanor Roosevelt, I Think I Love You
Val-Kill looks like a proper estate. It is breathtaking and majestic, an American take on an impressionist painting. Of course, all of the grace I’d felt walking to the lake that morning was soon shattered when I showed up my normal fifteen minutes late and proceeded to plow my SUV into several orange cones in the parking lot, infuriating two female-ish (and that’s a compliment) park rangers. Luckily, Barbara was there to receive Ava and me, because otherwise we probably would’ve been turned away. (I should really give you a tip here about first impressions, but I’m not the one to speak to those.) Before our tour, we were ushered into a screening room to watch a documentary about Eleanor’s life.
This is when it all started to come together. As the film rolled, it hit me that Eleanor Roosevelt was a feminine force of superhigh consciousness and compassion, the counterpart to her husband’s famous political consciousness and ambitions. Although most other First Ladies in history have sat behind their husbands, Eleanor and Franklin were really something (in addition to being cousins). In fact, to me they were a great example of Shiva Shakti, or the tantric balance of masculine and feminine dimensions collaborating to create tremendous life energy and transcendental awareness. I began to firmly believe that Amma and The Mother sent me to Val-Kill for a reason. They wanted me to meet their sister Eleanor.
One of my first symbiotic touch points with Eleanor was the opening scene of the documentary, when she stated that every powerful woman needs a home in the country to retreat to, a beautiful cottage where she can hear the sound of a brook. I knew this all too well, as I too have a beautiful cottage where I can hear the sound of a very cold spring. (Once you make some money, I highly recommend that you also buy or at least rent a country home where you can shower off the city each weekend; I think I’d be in jail by now if I didn’t have one.) Actually, my home was just twelve miles from Eleanor’s! And we had way more in common than that; like many powerful women in her time and ours, her sexuality was called into question. To be honest, I don’t really know who she slept with, and I don’t care. After learning more about her life, God bless her if she had time to sleep with anyone!
Eleanor Roosevelt was a woman ahead of her time. The First Lady is at least expected to live at the White House, which Eleanor couldn’t be bothered with. She didn’t give a fuck about sleeping with her husband; she had better things to do! It got to the point that it was actually
news
when she showed up. This was probably because, despite the fact that she bore President Roosevelt six children, her husband maintained a lover throughout their marriage—who also happened to be her best friend. But Eleanor was beyond all that. She and Franklin were actually a very modern couple by the time they hit the White House. I mean, they had a handful of kids, he was banging her best friend, and somehow they still found a way to work together for four terms! Even when they were no longer intimate, they remained close, with Eleanor functioning as Franklin’s social conscience and generally keeping him in check. While he ran the country, she lived at Val-Kill, holding frequent press conferences on the issues of the day and writing a daily syndicated newspaper column called “My Day,” which she used often to disagree with the president. She’d write the column every night at midnight from her room, no matter where she was.