On a rainy weekend morning, I’m in the mood for a good girly movie. I’ve always been a fan of the glitzy glamor flicks featuring “icon” chicks: Charismatic creatures who lived fast, fiery, fabulous lives, and died young.
No, the story isn’t ever 100% who the women really were, but who cares? The entertainment escape and visual delciousness is what it’s all about. Here are the ingredients for my ideal siren starlet cinematic souffle:
Fashion & Style:
This element is a must in nearly every film – it’s virtual glamor porn for girls, right up there with window shopping and browsing the makeup counter.
Take Miss Marie, for example. Between her initial inability to inspire Louis in the sheets and subsequent steamy affair, Marie Antoinette enjoyed some serious shopping excursions. Her fashion and style went nearly hand in hand, as she had her flamboyant equivalent of the gay hairdresser on one arm to fix her elevated locks, and a couture designer to fashion her frocks.
On the other hand, the Sedgwick signature stripes and black tights were indeed a fashion innovation of Miss Edie, but her wild hair crop, bat wing lashes, chandelierings, and crazy eyebrows were a style she popularized.
Fame
It’s not about “hero worship”, but let’s face it: They wouldn’t be icons and there wouldn’t be movies about them if they hadn’t been hanging out with Andy Warhol, plastered over beauty magazines, etc. Socialites, movie stars, famous models, and the Queen of France alike are all interesting as movie material if all the right features come together aesthetically.
Glamor
Between the time Marilyn Monroe went from her dressing room to the actual set, the majority of her coworkers conceded that a vast transformation ensued. While she was arguably a beautiful woman anyway, plethoras of platinum and pretty blondes willing to “spend time on their knees to get famous” (as she herself put it) were a dime a dozen in her day (and now for that matter).
However, between the magic in the makeup and the persona she put on, it translated brilliantly on screen, in photographs, and during public appearances. “My Week With Marilyn” did a spot-on job at conveying this truth.
Celebratory Socialite
Along with the wardrobe scenes, celebratory montages are what it’s all about in these movies. From the eccentric dancing and shoot-up shindigs at The Factory to Marie’s coke, cake, and card parties.
France’s Queen would still be in the history books if she had been a dull recluse, but an extroverted and social side is what made her exciting enough for the film to be a success.
Tragic Flaw
However, as with the other “forever-young” icons, the downfall is generally said to have been their own doing.
Drug addiction led to the demise of Edie, Marilyn, and Gia, while Marie Antoine’s affinity for acquisitions (alongside poor publicity and rumors) drove her and Louis out of Versailles. It’s a real life Shakespearean tragedy – the rise, flaw, and fall of the dime-godesses we worship, but in whom we also secretly wish to find flaw, because it either makes us feel better about ourselves, or it makes them more…
…Relate-able
Fame or not, these are women just like you or I.
Without the sultry facade, Marilyn spent hours crying, suffering intense endometriosis pain, insomnia, depression, and repression of past sexual abuse. Gia smiled prettily for the camera, but suffered addiction to everything including love; she had no qualms about chasing down the love of her life completely naked in public to the elevator. Marie had everything to lose if she couldn’t give Louis an heir, but had to keep it together while maintaining a cool exterior, tolerating false “friends-to-her-face”, and assimilating strange customs in a strange new land. Every girl in New York and Jersey wanted to be “Girl of the Year”, Edie, while she personally just wanted to escape herself and her past.
While a starlet’s work may be acting in front of a lens, it really is no different than the smile I try to feign for work, although I may cry nearly nightly, and sometimes even the entire trek home. We all have our demons. And the fact that others have it worse than we do, doesn’t help assuage our suffering.
Being able to relate with these ladies and their glamorous exteriors, however, might a little. It isn’t necessarily “hero worship”, so much as an ephemeral flee from reality, and sometimes that proper prod to persevere. It’s “lights, camera, action” after we clock in, and “eyeroll” after we clock out.
After the fashion, style, beauty, and visual delight, the fact that we can relate to these women is probably the most alluring of the factors. It’s what keeps those magazines in print with the “Just Like Us” sections about pop stars, models, and the generally famous for their elegance we emulate on a budget.
My top favorite movies are a fun mental vacation; but we’re all our own icon protagonist in our own life movies – regardless of whether our “film set” is work or any daily general human interaction. The style and care we take for our exterior and interior alike is all well and good and important. However, at the end of the day, glamor isn’t in the getup, but how you comport yourself (regardless of how you feel) between that time when the world says “action!” and “cut!”
Sometimes, to be a goddess, you just have to sport a synthetic smile while spotlight is on you.
xoxo
<3~A