Mama Mia

by Mia Freedman

  To my mum and dad, with endless love and gratitude

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Dedication

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PROLOGUE

  THE MIDGET MODEL AGENCY

  CLEO NERD

  WOULD YOU LIKE 8000 FREE LIPSTICKS WITH THAT?

  MISPLACING MY SELF-ESTEEM

  THE DOS AND DON’TS OF DIETS

  GREENER GRASS AND CUSTOMS DOGS

  BREAKING UP WITH BEAUTY

  USING CARAMELLO KOALAS TO OPEN DOORS

  ENTER CUPID

  DOING INTERVIEWS IN MY PYJAMAS

  AND THEN SHE CALLED ME PUSSYCAT

  LET’S NOT TALK ABOUT SEX

  THE MAGAZINE TWINS

  A SLUMBER PARTY WITH SEX TIPS

  OOPS. TWO BLUE LINES

  WOULD YOU LIKE SOME BODY INSECURITY WITH THAT?

  THE BIG BABY FREAK-OUT

  FULL HEAD TRANSPLANT

  BIRTH DAY

  AND THEN WE WERE THREE

  TRAINING WHEELS

  HOME ALONE

  UM, HAS ANYONE SEEN MY AMBITION?

  THE DAY I SAW BRAD PITT’S PENIS

  MY SECRET LIFE AS A MOTHER

  NINETEEN WEEKS

  HOSPITAL

  TWO AHA! MOMENTS

  DOING TIME IN THE HALL OF MIRRORS

  AN UNLIKELY COVERGIRL

  FEAR OF FLYING

  I WANT TO BE FAMOUS, DON’T I?

  ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A BANANA

  SEX AT THE CHECKOUT

  START YOUR ENGINES

  TWICE THE SEALED SECTIONS

  AN EMBARRASSING ADDICTION

  TOO MANY WOMEN, NOT ENOUGH PATIENCE

  DIARY OF AN ANXIOUS PREGNANCY

  A BITCH CALLED AMY

  FAMILY OF FOUR, PLUS BOOBS

  GOODBYE MAGAZINES, HELLO PUNISHMENT

  THE SLEEP WHISPERER

  CATAPULTED OUT OF MY COMFORT ZONE

  FROM SEQUINS TO SUITS

  THE SECRET IN THE GLOVE BOX

  WHEN A HOLIDAY ISN’T A HOLIDAY

  TV: JUST NOT THAT INTO ME

  AFTER NINE

  ROLE OF A LIFETIME

  SCAR TISSUE

  AND THEN WE WERE FIVE

  SMOKY EYE

  EPILOGUE

  THANKS

  ABOUT MIA

  MORE MIA

  Also by Mia Freedman

  Copyright

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This memoir is a personal account of my life with all its quirks, imperfections and mistakes as I’ve interpreted them. Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of others.

  PROLOGUE

  It’s 4 pm on a hot Thursday afternoon in December and I’m preparing to go on stage to perform with Kylie Minogue. Except it’s not really a stage; it’s the internal staircase of a restaurant. And it’s not really Kylie Minogue; it’s a drag queen impersonator.

  Along with Cosmo’s deputy editor, fashion editor, beauty editor, sub-editor and drag-Kylie (a beautiful, fine-boned, twenty-two-year-old gay boy), I’m crammed into a makeshift dressing area the size of a toilet cubicle having glittery stage make-up applied. Heavily.

  After my hair is teased and tortured into submission, I will wriggle into the costume sourced by the Cosmo fashion department: sky-high, diamante-studded prostitute shoes made of Perspex, and a Lycra frock. Very Kylie. Not very me. Mercifully, the frock is neither tight nor revealing, but it is fuchsia and extremely cheap-looking.

  Once we’re frocked up, the Cosmo girls and I will perform with drag-Kylie to real Kylie’s song ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’. The occasion is Cosmopolitan’s annual Christmas event, but because our budget hasn’t stretched to a stage, we’ll be dancing on the staircase in the middle of the restaurant, with the audience below us, hopefully not able to peer up our cheap skirts.

  I am thirty-three years old. I’m a wife and a mother. And I’m about to stand in front of an assembled crowd of media, advertising clients, celebrities, industry colleagues, my boss and my staff to perform a badly choreographed dance routine with a drag queen on some steps.

  How did this happen?

  Even as I asked the question, I knew I had no one to blame but myself. It had been my idea. All of it. For the past five years, I’d orchestrated an annual Cosmo Christmas event designed specifically to create maximum media buzz.

  From the outside, like all the Cosmo events I’d hosted, this one looked like extraordinary fun. Yes, compared to working in a supermarket—which I’d done seventeen years earlier—it was. But it was also work. And as an editor, parties were one of my least favourite parts of the job.

  Magazine events always have a dual purpose. The primary aim is to create positive PR for your title via splashy media coverage. You might pull some TV crews if you’re lucky, but mostly it’s about getting photos of your glamorous guests in the newspaper. Celebrities are crucial. Associated gossip helps. A pop star pashing a model. A pretty socialite hooking up with a female fashion designer. Anything that will make your brand look hip and newsworthy by association. Anything that creates buzz.

  Less interesting—but equally important—are the advertisers and media buyers who book their ads. They will not create buzz but they will have a few champagnes, brush up against some celebrities and feel warm and fuzzy towards your magazine. Hopefully, this will prompt them to buy more ad pages in future issues.

  Against this background, it had somehow seemed logical for me to theme this year’s party with celebrity drag queens. As well as drag-Kylie, we had drag-Madonna, or Mogadonna as she called herself. At least we were in a nice restaurant. The previous year, I’d pushed the envelope perilously close to the edge of good taste by holding the party in a strip club. With pole dancers. A couple of uptight advertisers had tut-tutted and refused to attend but there was an unexpectedly robust turnout from senior male management to fill any gaps in the crowd.

  Since I didn’t want to venture any further in that direction and throw this year’s party in, say, a brothel, I’d decided we should do a U-turn and go somewhere posh. But since an upmarket, sophisticated event didn’t have much media cut-through and wasn’t in keeping with Cosmo’s reputation for controversial Christmas parties, I’d thrown in the celebrity drag queens to sex things up.

  The idea of me and a few staff acting as back-up dancers had sprung from my fond memories of dancing for an audience at ballet concerts when I was eight years old. And did I mention my tendency to show off?

  We wobble our way nervously down the stairs and launch into our routine to the surprised whoops and cheers of the audience. Drag-Kylie camps her way expertly through the song and leaves us to lose all dignity as her very average back-up dancers. We giggle, we execute our moves and we are hugely grateful when the song ends without any of us falling down the stairs or flashing our knickers to the crowd below.

  This is my last event as Cosmopolitan’s editor and there is no doubt in my mind that it is time to go. After more than seven years and one hundred issues, the struggle to reconcile my work life with my real life has become overwhelming. I need a change.

  Publicly, I’m the face of a magazine aimed predominantly at young, single girls. Girls who liked to party. Girls who read sealed sections. Girls in their teens and early twenties. Girls revelling in their Me-Years.

  Privately, my Me-Years are a dim memory. I haven’t been that type of carefree single girl for more than a decade. I am managing a staff of thirty, a budget of several million dollars and I’m responsible for steering the Australian arm of an iconic international magazine brand with fifty-eight editions around the world.

  I’ve kept my two lives apart for seven years but it’s becoming more difficult, more of a strain. I don’t want to have to hide the fact
I’m married or a mother from my readers any more, and I don’t want to be in the media defending stories about oral sex tips.

  As I stand making my speech after the performance, I can’t shake the creeping sense of fraudulence that has grown stronger over the past year or two. I feel inappropriate. I’m not the Cosmo girl any more—perhaps I never was.

  I am proud of what I’ve achieved at Cosmo but now I am more than ready to make way for someone else. I’ve never wanted to stay too long at the party, to be one of those editors working on a magazine that is years (or even decades) removed from their day-to-day life experience. It happens. You get comfortable. Your job and the associated profile come to define you until stepping away feels too scary.

  But I’m not scared at all. I am ready.

  Balancing on my stupid shoes, I thank our advertisers for their support and my staff for their hard work. I pay tribute to my boss for her faith in me and finally I introduce Cosmo’s new editor, a great girl I’ve hand-picked to replace me.

  I won’t be leaving the magazine entirely. My new role will see me as Editor-in-Chief of Cosmopolitan, Cleo and Dolly magazines. But next time Cosmo has an event, I’ll be a background player, an elder stateswoman. I will no longer be the face and voice of Cosmo and at this prospect I feel only relief.

  After finishing my speech, I slip away to change into my real outfit for the evening, a chiffon no-name frock with bell sleeves that I found at a vintage store near the office for a hundred dollars. I had it altered from floor-length caftan to just above the knee and have paired it with some beautiful pink, feathery mules, which have languished in the back of my cupboard for years along with all the other inappropriate shoes I almost never have occasion to wear.

  I grab the nearest cocktail—a Cosmopolitan naturally—and work the room. I am saturated with that familiar mix of adrenaline, tension and the urge to run away from everyone. I have always dreaded Cosmo events because while I know I’m capable of being the bright and bubbly hostess the situation requires, I find it to be a strain. And even though I invariably get into it and enjoy myself, riding the buzz, it is always an enormous drain on my energy.

  As editor, it is my responsibility to make the advertisers and media buyers feel special, important and acknowledged. They are invited to a million magazine events like this and it is vital for me to subtly convey that the thousands of bucks they spend on ad pages in Cosmo are a sound investment. Then I have to schmooze the media. The aim is for them to leave the event with the impression that Cosmo is hot, happening and worthy of ample positive coverage. The celebrities need some TLC as well because they are the ones pulling the media coverage; also we might need them editorially some time in the future. It is a lot of plates to keep spinning at once.

  As things wind up, a group of Cosmo staff and assorted guests make plans to keep partying at a nearby bar. It is still only 8.30 pm and they are just getting started. They are mostly single, mostly under twenty-five. I’m not quite ready to go home either, but I need time off from my role as party-girl hostess. My social energy is sapped.

  I catch my husband’s eye across the room and we make our way towards each other. My anchor. ‘Let’s grab a pizza somewhere,’ I whisper. ‘I’m done.’

  Having made sure my boss and our important clients have already left and that most guests are starting to drift away, we slip away from the fray and into a pizza place a few doors down the road.

  One slice in and my phone rings. It’s the babysitter. Luca is sick. We grab the bill, ask for our pizza to be boxed up to go and are home by 9.15 pm. Less than an hour after being photographed for the social pages in my pretty new frock, I am on my hands and knees with my party dress tucked into my undies, scrubbing vomit out of the carpet in my son’s bedroom.

  While the Cosmo girls party into the night, drinking, dancing and flirting, I am in mum-mode, tag-teaming with my husband as we clean up vomit, change sheets and administer Panadol.

  Far from feeling bitter or disappointed at the way my glamorous night has ended, I feel oddly happy. Grounded. This is my real life. And it feels a whole lot more natural and appropriate than dancing with Kylie in sparkly shoes.

  I am thoroughly ready for the next phase in my career, one where I don’t have to pretend any more.

  THE MIDGET MODEL AGENCY

  Answering machine message:

  ‘Hello, Mia. This is Susan Manfred calling; I’m Lisa Wilkinson’s personal assistant. Lisa would like you to come in to meet her next week on Wednesday at 12.45. Can you please call me back to confirm that’s okay? Thanks.’

  ‘Are you here for the casting?’ asked the woman with long blonde hair who I immediately recognised as Cleo’s fashion editor.

  I was already overcome by the glamour of my immediate surroundings: five grey plastic chairs shoved against a wall opposite a door to the ladies toilets. But truthfully, I’d barely noticed the décor. I’d been too distracted by the tall, pretty girls traipsing in and out of the office with their modelling portfolios tucked under skinny arms. Models. Actual editorial models. My eyes were on stalks and I hadn’t even made it past reception.

  I had come to the fourth floor of the ACP building for an interview with Lisa Wilkinson, Cleo’s editor and my idol. Now Cleo’s fashion editor had just mistaken me for a model. Hot damn, could this day possibly get any better?

  I’d first become aware of models at the same time as I became aware of Lisa, when I picked up my first copy of Dolly aged twelve. After a few months, I knew the regular Dolly models by name even though it would be years before models of any kind became super and commanded mainstream celebrity status. These were editorial girls who were only famous to magazine groupies like me.

  Alison Brahe, Sonia Klein, Renée Simonsen, Toneya Bird, Anne-Louise Gould and Sarah Nursey were the stars of Dolly and I plastered their photos on my bedroom walls and schoolbooks. Thrillingly, Sarah Nursey went to my school and I had the opportunity to observe her up close. She was several years older than me so we were never going to be friends, but I’d often find myself sitting a few metres from her in the library or a classroom during a study period. I stared at her intently. Staring is a habit I still can’t shake. When someone captures my attention, I blatantly fix my gaze on them, until they become uncomfortable or the person I’m with elbows me and hisses, ‘Mia, STOP STARING.’

  Sarah was a huge star in the Australian modelling industry during the 1980s, appearing on the cover of Dolly every few months and starring in fashion shoots almost every issue. She did TV commercials too and I couldn’t quite believe such a famous person was also part of my daily world. She was a tall, strapping Aussie beach girl: athletic with wild blonde corkscrew curls and a tan.

  I was the opposite of this: small and nondescript with mousy brown hair and no hope of becoming a model. Ever. And yet still I hoped. Twice, in fact, I more than hoped. I actually tried. Both times it was a disaster. It would be fair to say my attempts to crack the modelling industry collapsed unspectacularly before ever leaving the starting gate.

  At sixteen, I was unexpectedly talent-scouted by a booker from a reputable modelling agency while watching a friend’s deportment-school graduation parade. The scout, a chic woman in her early twenties, suggested I come into the agency the following week for a chat. ‘We have open calls on Wednesdays after 3 pm,’ she told me as I tried to look nonchalant at the prospect of my schoolgirl fantasies coming true. ‘Bring some snapshots so we can see how you photograph.’

  That weekend, after I’d covered my pimples and teased my fringe, my mum took a couple of rolls of black-and-white shots of me leaning in a doorway and sitting in a lounge chair, wearing a white T-shirt and 501s. I was the epitome of eighties style. In my mind.

  The following Wednesday, I arrived at the agency with a carefully chosen handful of shots and waited expectantly for my new life as a model to begin. ‘I never expected to make a career out of modelling,’ I imagined telling a reporter while on the set of some fabulous fashion shoot in the
south of France. ‘It just kind of happened.’

  It never happened.

  My chat with the booker lasted all of one minute. After passing a practised eye over my height (less than average), body (average) and snapshots (awful), she killed my dreams in a sentence. ‘You’re not right for editorial or for Chadwicks but you could try an agency that does commercials.’ Oh. ‘You might have better luck there.’ And I was out the door. Brushed off like dandruff from the shoulder of a black jacket.

  Three years later I gave it another shot. After I finished school I was looking for cash and glamour and nothing involving actual hard work. So I signed up with a midget model agency. Well, not technically for midgets. For short models. Or rather, girls-who-really-wanted-to-be-models-but-had-not-a-chance-in-France. It was called something stupid and patronising like ‘Low Profiles’.

  The premise was patently ridiculous because no fashion editor has ever declared, ‘You know what type of girl I want for this denim shoot? A short one!’ No fashion designer has ever called a model agency and said, ‘My vision for this season is vertically challenged. Please can you send me some shrimps?’

  Not understanding this, I forked out $1000 for some ‘professional’ photos which were ghastly and involved a bored photographer and several different looks including a fedora and a swimsuit—worn at the same time. I also paid an extra $250 for one hundred composite cards which featured the agency logo, two photos (one face and one full-length) and my measurements. I was a size ten and this was a problem.

  ‘You need to lose some weight and clear up your skin,’ instructed the agency’s owner and only visible employee, a sleazy guy called Guy. And then he asked me out for a drink. Pretending I hadn’t heard the drink bit, I mumbled my agreement about the weight and the skin but I wasn’t able to do either. Optimistically, I still went along to a handful of dodgy castings for low-budget commercials and never landed a single modelling job.

  After a couple of months, I realised it wasn’t going to happen for me. Elle Macpherson didn’t have to sleep with one eye open. I couldn’t be bothered to lose weight, I didn’t know how to clear up my skin and I discovered modelling was equal parts boring, intimidating and humiliating—and that was just the go-sees. I didn’t want to spend my days at castings, waiting in stairwells with tall, beautiful girls for no money.