Not everybody was in “You go, girl,” mode about the ubiquity of the Baby Phat campaign. The Monday after I got back to New York, this newspaper columnist, Ryan Reynolds, in Los Angeles wrote an editorial that ended up making national news. He said:
Every morning, in order to come to work, I’m forced to drive by a giant billboard of five hippo butt girls declaring that they “love their baby phat.” It’s a play on words: “Baby Phat” is the name of the underwear these bovine beauties are wearing. But the point is they’re happy with their cottage cheese asses, so I should be too. For the record, I’m not. If I want to see out-of-shape girls with their stomachs spilling over their thongs, then I can stand in line at the all-you-can-eat buffet at my local steak house. The idea that we’re supposed to herald overweight women as real-life beauties is the worse kind of feminist tripe.
He didn’t call any of us by name. He didn’t say, “Bee Wilson’s cellulite is a personal offense.” But it still hurt. For days, I kept walking around and hearing the phrases over and over again, “bovine beauties,” “hippo butt.”
We were dissed publicly; sliced, diced, and flambéed. Then the countermovement happened. I got flowers from Christy Turlington, the most ginormous arrangement of hydrangea and roses and lilies I have ever seen in my life. The note said, I want my daughter to be like you, Bee. It turns out all the girls got them.
15
2 Cool 2 Bee Forgotten
The president of Baby Phat had this party in our honor at a loft downtown. They even sent a limo to pick us up, and when we got to the party, there was an honest-to-goodness red carpet.
“Damn,” Melody said. “I’ve never walked the red carpet before.”
“Come on, we’re models,” Elsie said. “The one thing we know how to do is walk.”
So we did this silly sports team cheer inside the limo and then sashayed our way down the red carpet like it was something we did every day. The strangest thing is that the photographers knew all of our names. They kept calling out stuff like, “Melody, let me see you smile, baby.” And, “Over here, honey Bee.”
Inside, there were life-size portraits of us everywhere. We had to give interviews to all the local news stations, and we all kept saying the same thing over and over again:
“I’m very proud to represent real women.”
“Real women have curves.”
“I do love my Baby Phat!”
We were all standing together in the press area when a reporter from channel five asked us what we thought of Ryan Reynolds’s editorial. I looked from girl to girl, and we all had an identical frozen smile plastered on our face. Which is why we all burst out laughing when Melody, Miss Sweetness and Light of all people, turned to the camera and very innocently said, “I think it’s been a very long time since Ryan Reynolds was laid.”
Later on at the party, I was talking to a buyer from Neiman’s when Kevin approached me. “Excuse me, may I speak to you for a moment?” he said.
OMG, what was he doing here?
“I haven’t seen you in forever, Kev. What have you been up to?” I asked. “Still struggling with math for poets?”
“Well,” he said, totally humble like, which was so not him. “Ever since my video hit the number-one spot on TRL, the label’s been pressuring me to drop out of school. But I won’t do it . . .”
I was confused.
“Wait a second, you have the number-one video on TRL? I thought it was some guy named DJ Go Drop Dead.”
Kev laughed. “So you still got jokes.”
“No, seriously,” I said. “I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard people talk about this DJ Go Drop Something.”
“It’s DJ Drop and Roll,” Kevin said. “That’s me.”
“Wow!” I said, still reeling as I gave him a hug. “Way to blow up! Sorry I’ve been out of the loop.”
“That’s cool,” he said. “You’re blowing up too. See, unlike you, I keep tabs on my friends. Like this Baby Phat joint. Yo, I really like you in these ads. I like the whole lot of you girls, but you take the cake. That red hair is wild. Who would’ve thought that Miss Premed had it in her?”
“You’d be surprised,” I said.
“A lot of things surprise me,” Kevin said. “Like you not coming to my album release party.”
I was shocked. I couldn’t believe he noticed. Chela said more than five hundred people had been there.
“I was there,” I said, trying to play it off.
“You weren’t there,” he said. “But nice try.”
He took out a Sharpie marker and I burst out laughing.
“Are you going to give me your autograph, DJ Drop and Roll?”
“No, I changed my number,” he said. He wrote his phone number on the palm of my hand.
Then he said, “Give me your phone.” So I handed it to him. He programmed his number into my phone.
“Now you have my number in two places. Don’t start saying you lost it.”
When I got home that night, there was a message from Chela. She’d left me a bunch of messages, and with all the Baby Phat stuff, I just didn’t get a chance to return them. I called her back.
“Oh my God,” I said. “You missed the BEST party tonight.”
“Really,” she said. “How could I miss it when I wasn’t invited?”
“Well, it was kind of a work thing,” I said.
“You’re the star of the Baby Phat campaign and you couldn’t score one invite for your best friend?” she asked. Her voice was hot, and I could tell she was getting ready to go into angry Latina mode. I’d seen her whip it out on other people but never on me.
“When Kevin had his album release, he got a VIP invite for you,” she said.
“I know, but—”
“But what?” she snapped.
I’m not good at making excuses. Really, I’m not. But I didn’t see Chela as part of my modeling life. Did she really have the right to blow a gasket?
“Who was the person who convinced you to go into that first audition in the first place?” she said. “Who’s never, ever been jealous while you make all that money and fly to exotic places while I wait tables for tips so I can pay my tuition and my room and board?”
“You,” I whispered.
“I used to feel kind of sorry for you,” Chela said. “It was like you had so much beauty, but you didn’t even know it. That’s why I kept telling you to ‘do you.’ But you know what? If I had known that the real you was such an inconsiderate bitch, then I would have kept my mouth shut.”
Did she call me a bitch? Was she right? More importantly, how was I going to fix it? I could feel myself shaking, I was so nervous. It was like breaking up with Brian. Chela was dumping me as her best friend.
“Let me make it up to you,” I said. “Let’s go out to dinner tomorrow night. Asia de Cuba, my treat.”
Chela’s been talking about going to Asia de Cuba ever since I met her.
There was silence on the phone.
“Okay,” she said. “You better make a reservation ’cause I don’t want any drama at the door.”
A few hours later, Leslie called with more news. The Baby Phat girls—that’s what they were calling us—were going to appear on the Today show. I called my father to let him know.
“Do you know that one of your billboards is right in front of my office?”
“That must be strange, Dad.”
“A little bit. I could’ve knocked that Ryan Reynolds guy upside the head talking about my little girl that way.”
“Don’t sweat it, Dad. He’s a loser.”
“Loser? I just met her.”
This, you should know, is one of Dad’s favorite jokes.
“Hey, Bee, could you do your old man a favor? A couple of the women from my office asked me if I could get them autographed pictures of you. I hate to ask . . .”
“Dad, please! Autographed pictures are easy.”
“My little girl is a star. Can you believe it?”
“I know, Da
d.”
“How’s school?”
“I think I’m going to make dean’s list this semester,” I said, fibbing just a little bit. I’d just gotten a C on a pop quiz in physics, but I was going to pull it together.
“Brainy,” my dad said, unaware that I’d lied to him for the very first time. “That’s my Bee.”
16
Bee Stings Back
The next morning, we were sitting in the green room of the Today show, Prageeta, Melody, Elsie, and me.
“My agent told me that he was approached by a record company,” Elsie said. “Someone wants to offer us a deal, put us out as the ‘Baby Phat Girls.’”
Melody said, “I heard the same thing.”
“But that doesn’t make sense; they haven’t even heard us sing,” I said.
Melody said, “Like singing has anything to do with getting a record deal.”
Prageeta said, “Anyway, right after the show, I’m off to London. Hanif won the Booker.”
Hanif was Prageeta’s fiancé. I said, “Booker? I barely know her.”
Prageeta said, “What?”
I said, “It’s one of my dad’s favorite jokes.”
Melody said, “That’s our Bee, patron saint of cheese.”
Sitting on the Today show stage with the host, Cadence Connelly, I had to resist the urge to wave into the camera and say, “Hi, Dad! Hi, Zo!” Instead I tried to remember what Leslie had told me: “The segment will be four minutes tops. Pay attention. Keep a closed-mouth smile on your face; you never know when the camera is on you. Jump right in and say something. There are five of you; think too long and you won’t get a word in edgewise.”
The cameraman counted down the seconds from the commercial break, then Cadence introduced our segment. “You can’t have missed them. They’re on TV, on the radio, in magazines, and on billboards. Five scantily clad plus-size models, all beautiful, all declaring ‘I love my Baby Phat.’ They’ve garnered praise and criticism. Now they’re here in the studio with us.”
Then she turned to us and said, “I have to tell you, you’re some beautiful girls. If you’re what plus looks like, then I might just go ahead and have dessert at lunch today.”
“We’re tall, we’re healthy, we’re in proportion, yet most fashion magazines won’t book us,” Melody said.
“Do you consider yourselves role models?” Cadence asked.
“We have to,” I said, jumping in. “At my high school, they had to replace the pipes in the girls’ bathroom.”
“Why is that?” Cadence asked.
“Because so many girls were throwing up. Over time, the acid in the vomit eats away at the pipes.”
Cadence said, “Wow. It’s a good thing I eat breakfast early in the morning. That was a little graphic. I have two daughters; how do I raise them to love their baby fat?”
“Get them into sports,” Elsie said. “I played soccer all through high school. I knew that I needed to be strong to get that ball across the field. I knew that being a winner meant building my body up, not trying to whittle it down to fit into a pair of size-four jeans.”
“The Ryan Reynolds editorial,” Cadence said, bringing up the topic I’d hoped she would skip. “Did it hurt your feelings?”
“Of course it hurt,” Prageeta said. “It always hurts when someone calls you a name.”
Elsie said, “Didn’t hurt my feelings. I’m laughing all the way to the bank.”
Cadence smiled. “That’s what I say whenever someone writes something mean about me. So what’s next for the Baby Phat girls? Is it true that you’re cutting an album?”
“Not true,” I said at the same time that Melody said, “Absolutely true.”
She had musical ambitions, but the rest of us couldn’t carry a tune.
Cadence laughed. “I’ll take that as a maybe.”
Then before you knew it, the interview was done. Cadence shook hands with each of us, and then she was on to the next segment.
Prageeta jumped in a car to meet her fiancé, who was flying in from London; Melody had a go-see, but then she asked if Elsie and I wanted to meet her afterward for some celebrational shopping and then dinner. Prageeta said she’d join us for dinner. We were so psyched about our first major talk show appearance that we couldn’t wait to hang out and go over everything a million times.
Melody and Elsie were roommates in a really fancy building right off of Gramercy Park. This was my first time actually seeing it. A doorman had to call up before I could get on the elevator. When I got inside, it was so beautiful, so lux, it was like the Beyoncé episode of MTV Cribs. There was a huge wall of windows, and you could see the Hudson River from each and every one. Prageeta was wearing this cool Marc Jacobs dress that had just been on the cover of Vogue. I wanted to ask her how she’d gotten it in our size but then decided that might be rude. Then she told me, “I have a friend who works in the Jacobs studio. She can always get something done special. I’ll introduce you to her.”
Elsie came out and looked equally gorgeous in this ivory Stella McCartney flared jacket with a black turtleneck underneath. I know it sounds like I’ve become a total label whore, but when you work in fashion, you start to notice everything. At any given photo shoot, I might try on thirty different outfits. And when you spend four hours a day in hair and makeup, you read a lot of fashion magazines.
I’d tried to look “downtown” and cute by wearing this Luella Bartley striped jersey top and a Kangol newsboy cap, but now I felt like I should be delivering the paper rather than staying for dinner. “I look a mess,” I said apologetically.
“Shut up, you look cute!” Elsie said. “Isn’t that Luella for Target?”
Needless to say, this made me feel much better. Not.
I had been expecting salad from a bag and some Brianna’s dressing, but Melody and Elsie had actually ordered food in from Nobu.
“I didn’t know they delivered,” I said to Melody in the kitchen as we pulled out plates and forks. Prageeta had stepped away to text her boyfriend, who had literally just won the Pulitzer Prize or something.
Melody shrugged. “Technically, they don’t. But you know, where there’s a will, there’s a way . . .”
Melody was wearing this awesome Chloë top that I’d been lusting over for weeks.
“That shirt!” I said as we kissed each other hello. “To die.”
I know what you’re thinking. When did I become downtown model-y girl? When did I become obsessed with clothes and start throwing around phrases like “to die?” Well, it’s like this. I imagine, though I don’t know for sure, that when you get a bunch of computer programmers together, they start geeking out and talking about codes and systems. It’s the same way with models. Except we geek out about makeup, perfume, clothes, and shoes.
Elsie was wearing an amazing pair of Christian Louboutin wedges. We all took a moment to admire them.
“It’s really about the craftsmanship,” Melody said.
“His sense of color is so French, so whimsical,” Prageeta said.
“If you’re good to your feet, they’ll be good to you,” I added.
Everybody stopped and stared at me.
“What?” I asked. “That’s what my dad always says. He said expensive shoes are worth it because you’ve got to take care of your feet.”
Elsie laughed. “I don’t think these bad boys are what your daddy had in mind.”
Over dinner, we talked about the Baby Phat campaign. Prageeta said, “Every time I see a picture of myself with the slogan ‘I love my Baby Phat,’ I have to ask myself, is that the truth?”
Elsie jumped in. “I’m proud of my curves. They’ll buy me a house in the Hamptons someday.”
“We’ve got to accept that we’re different sizes,” Melody said. “I mean, look at flowers. What if there was only one kind of flower? Wouldn’t it get boring looking at tulips all the time?”
We all rolled our eyes.
“We’re also making good money,” Elsie said. “If someone
offered you a chance to be a size two but you’d have to return every dime you made modeling, would you do it?”
Prageeta hesitated. “A size two forever?”
“Yes,” Elsie said. “A size two forever.” We all took a minute to think about it. All of the Baby Phat girls were so gorgeous, but I don’t think one of us could say we hadn’t had a moment, or two, or three, or ten million, when we wished we were thinner.
Elsie said, “Well, I can tell you right now that I wouldn’t do it. Plus is where my business is. I got my mind on my money. And my money on my mind.”
Melody turned to me. “What about you, Bee?”
What about me? I’d never been that skinny. I had a hundred grand in the bank, I’d gotten a posh trip to Italy, and I was on a billboard in Times Square. Being a plus-size model gave me a life, and one day, going to medical school would give me a life after modeling.
“I’d rather be plus,” I said.
But Prageeta wasn’t going to let me off the hook so easily.
“So you feel good about being a size fourteen? Don’t you ever look at skinny girls and want to be like them?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I look at you and I wish I had skin like yours, but I don’t. I wish I had naturally blond hair like Elsie’s, but I don’t.”
“Which brings me back to the flower argument,” Melody said.
“Being a plus model made me see myself as beautiful for the first time ever. I know it’s the cheesy beauty pageant answer, but I’d love it if girls saw us in ads and thought, I look like that, so I must be beautiful too.”
“Don’t you ever wish you were a real model?” Prageeta asked.
“A real model?” Elsie said. “I am a real model.”
“No, you’re a model for chubby girls,” Prageeta said.
“I’m not hating. I’m one too.”
“Come on, P,” Melody said. She and Prageeta had clearly been down this path before. “Give it a rest. You’ve got a great life. You’re a top model. You’ve got this super-smart famous fiancé. You’re in a major national ad campaign. No one is going to shed any tears for you.”
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