This air of inapproachability has long been considered attractive. In the mid-nineteenth century, Edouard Manet caused an uproar when his painting “Olympia” was presented at the 1865 Paris Salon. What was so scandalous about this painting was not that the woman was completely naked—nudes had been painted for years—but that she was making direct eye contact with the viewer. I suppose you could say she was “eye-contacting” the viewer. Such forwardness was considered lewd, vulgar, and immoral. She should have been more demure, lying there with no clothes on.
The Standard, too, wants the Box Girls to be elusive and thus alluring, but not seductive in a comely “eye-contacting” sort of way. We are supposed to seem inaccessible, just ever-so-slightly out of the ogler’s reach. In addition to no “eye-contacting,” one Box Girl rule requires “light, natural makeup.” They want us to be intriguing, but not in the lingerie, platform heels, and thick eyeliner tradition; rather, in the vein of girl-next-door-just-reading-on-her-floor. Even the uniforms, though there isn’t much to them—all white, cotton—imply some sort of purity. It’s wholesomeness, with a wink.
I wonder what Steinem would think of the box, if she would see it as something that is degrading to women. (Why do we all have to be women?) As a humanist, as well as a feminist, she might say, “Put men in there, too! Make it a true peek into human nature.” I wonder what men would be required to wear.
I also wonder if Steinem would notice the obvious (though I don’t think intentional) metaphor: a woman locked below a glass ceiling.
Interview
“They’re looking for a new blonde,” was the way my friend Clare put it to me. A new blonde Box Girl at The Standard, she explained. Clare and I had worked together at Flaunt, and before that, she was a Box Girl.
She said I had to go in for an interview.
“An interview?” I asked. “What are they going to ask me? How skilled I am at sitting?”
She told me to meet the hotel’s art director in the lobby at one o’clock.
While I waited, I looked at the empty box and tried to imagine myself inside it. I tilted my head to the side, squinted, tipped it to the other side. It was hard to imagine, but I was intrigued.
Before interviews, I am nervous. I normally prepare. But for this one, I didn’t know what to prepare for. What could she possibly throw at me? The extent of my preparation was blow-drying my hair and fishing through my closet for something slimming and hip, something I thought a Box Girl would wear when she’s out of the box.
The art director sat across from me on another couch. We talked for a few minutes about traffic, the weather, nothing. It wasn’t really an interview at all; she spoke to me as if I already had the job and was just explaining it to me. The hours, parking, that sort of thing. I’m sure she just wanted to see what I looked like and make sure I wasn’t totally insane. Toward the end of our chat, she ran through the rules, stressing, “Please wear light, natural makeup,” and emphasizing “Absolutely no eye contact” twice. She asked if I had any questions. I looked at the box, shook my head, and said, “I mean, how hard could it be?”
The Zoo
A guy in a plaid flannel shirt is waving his arms overhead, trying to get my attention. He must not know I’m not allowed to look at him. And that must, I imagine, make this whole charade even more intriguing. If you say, “Here, kitty, kitty,” and hold out your hand long enough, the animal at the zoo will at least give you a glance. She may even come over and growl, do something impressive. But I am contractually obligated to ignore you.
It’s a bit peculiar to think that, if I have children someday, I will have to tell them about this job. “Oh, like the zoo!” I can hear them saying.
“Yes,” I will be obliged to say. “Like the zoo.”
But they’ll already know all of this. They’ll be able to mine the Internet for all sorts of former versions of their mom. As a child, I used to love looking through my parents’ high school yearbooks. So involved in school activities, sports, and student government, my mom was on practically every page, smiling in her saddle shoes and Eton skirts. (As my Uncle George likes to say, she would have joined the “Tiddlywinks Club” if there were such a thing.) In my dad’s yearbook, he was voted a “Snow Man,” which he explained in the following way: “This was common slang in the sixties. A snowman was so ‘cool’ that he could produce ‘snow’ just by being himself. Girls in his vicinity were subject to being ‘snowed,’ a phenomenon that was often totally out of their control but generally not life-threatening. However, some young ladies who got thoroughly snowed often thought their life was over when the snowman did not embrace their infatuation.” This, of course, is just one man’s humble approximation of the phrase.
Sometimes, as a child, I’d find old photos in the backs of drawers or the bottoms of file cabinets. I kept one of my parents throwing a Frisbee in a park somewhere. My mom’s hair was cut into a shaggy brown bob and she was wearing a short red romper. My dad, who I have never known without gray hair, had thick, golden-brown hair, styled into muttonchops. But the muttonchops were actually the least shocking part of the picture for me. What I really couldn’t get over were his cut-offs. I have never in my life seen my dad out in public in anything other than pleated khaki pants. I have never seen him wear a single pair of jeans, let alone ones he took a pair of kitchen scissors to.
Other times I’d uncover a whole shoebox full of old photographs—the rounded-edge matte ones from the ’70s and ’80s—of my parents on a ski trip with friends, or at the beach. I loved seeing these versions of their former selves. While sometimes in the pictures it was pretty apparent that they were hammered drunk, that was about as scandalous as they got. Because, I’m sure, if there was photographic evidence of anything more illicit, those pictures would have been thrown away, or hidden in a shoebox that was harder for a child to find.
Back then, they had that luxury. They were keepers of a carefully curated photographic history. It was a much more civilized assortment. With the Internet, no matter how much erasing or unlinking I do between now and whenever I’d have a child old enough to dig around online, it will never be enough. The illustrated history of my generation is uncontainable. It is unbridled, unregulated, relentless.
Sometimes I Play Pretend
My first husband’s name was Todd. He showed up in a T-shirt and jeans, which I thought was a touch underdressed, but he was polite and seemed like an all right husband all the same. Our child’s name was Elsie. She was six years old and told me she had a zoo in her backyard. When I asked what kind of animals, she didn’t have any specifics. Todd and I went through a lot together—a proposal, a pregnancy, and six-plus years of marriage—all in the fifteen minutes it took to audition for a Nationwide Insurance commercial.
The next time you are enjoying a relaxing stretch of TV, comfortably molded into your couch, take a moment to appreciate the hundreds of people who have made asses of themselves in the hopes of being in that commercial you’re trying to skip.
At an audition for an “active lifestyle dating service” commercial, I recited the lines, “With my busy schedule, it’s just so hard to meet people. I wish I could find someone who shares my passion for running and the outdoors”—while jogging in place. For a Cox High Speed Internet audition, I had various household items thrown at my head—an oven mitt, a ruler, a handful of markers—while an industrial-sized fan blew my hair. For a Capri Sun audition, I stood on the sideline of a make-believe field and cheered on my make-believe son, who was apparently playing soccer with other make-believe children. For a Bear Naked granola audition, I rode on the back of a German model named Rolfe while pretending we were on a hike. (Because don’t you always hike with your boyfriend piggy-back style?) And I feigned true love at a Match.com audition. Yes, I hate to be the one to tell you, but the people on the commercials did not actually meet on Match.com. They met in the lobby of a casting facility on Beverly Boulevard in West Hollywood.
For some commercials, casting directors s
end blast notices to all of the actors who are signed up for a service called LA Casting. If an actor feels he fits the specs, he can submit himself for the project. These casting notices were a relentless assault on my inbox, a new one arriving every two to three minutes: SAG Nike Commercial, Monster Energy Drink Spec Commercial, Non-Union Target Commercial, Rush Call for Hyundai (Can anyone get to Studio City by 4:30?). I finally had to switch my LA Casting account to an old Hotmail email because these notices were draining my Blackberry’s battery.
In the breakdowns, casting directors would describe the premise of the commercial and what type of actors they were looking for. I noticed they loved the word “aspirational” and always seemed to be seeking “aspirational-looking” people to cast in their commercials. How you can determine whether or not someone is “aspirational” from a headshot, I do not know. Were these actors gazing contemplatively at one corner of the headshot, like the man on the cover of The Fountainhead? Was one hand perched under their chin à la Thinking Man? I guess they just had that sparkle in their eyes.
Because I had worked on the agency end of things, I knew all the euphemisms. If the description said “Urban,” it meant “black” and “sort of gangster.” (See: Ludacris in Crash.) “Ethnically Ambiguous” was another one they tossed around frequently. Commercial casting directors loved ethnically ambiguous actors because they appealed to multiple markets. If they couldn’t quite put their finger on what you were, all the better. I also knew that if I saw a casting notice for a “Dianetics Industrial,” it was a commercial for the Church of Scientology.
Casting directors’ wardrobe descriptions were equally entertaining. The oxymoron “Upscale Casual” was a favorite, along with the backhanded compliments: “attractive, yet approachable,” or “attractive, but not a model.”
“You’re perfect,” I could imagine a casting director saying to a young actress. “You’re good-looking but not that good-looking.”
I have seen the wardrobe description “Dog Park Cute” as well as “Carnival Date Casual,” and I have also seen the request, “Seeking Pamela Anderson/Maxim types, but no one with a history of porn.” For liquor and beer commercials, actors had to be “Legally Over 25 – WILL I.D. AT AUDITION.” I almost submitted myself for a Heineken commercial once, before I read the full description of my role: “Has the ability to remain underwater for prolonged periods of time while wearing a mermaid tail.”
In addition to commercials, I’d also receive casting notices for live events. This one was for an unnamed boot company: “We are looking for someone to wear a short dress or skirt or other appropriate outfit to highlight the boots. Duties include walking the show floor with an energized enthusiastic attitude to generate interest and excitement for the boots. MUST BE A SIZE 6 to 7. If you are a 5.5 or a 7.5 DO NOT SUMBIT!!!!” I did not submit. My feet were too big. Plus, I wasn’t sure I could generate the kind of excitement for the boots they were looking for.
I clicked on a male hand modeling notice once, out of morbid curiosity. I had to wonder if the guys who submitted themselves for this role had some serious complexes: “Adult hand model with child-sized hands. Hands should look like that of a 5- to 7-year-old boy.”
I once submitted myself for a Joe’s Crab Shack “Female Lunch Patron” audition and got called in. I was instructed to dress “nice casual,” like I was “out to lunch with some friends.” As soon as I got to the audition, it occurred to me that the other girls went out to lunch at different places than I did. Most of them were in four-inch heels. Who eats at a chain seafood restaurant in four-inch heels? I was in a pair of gold flats and a navy-and-white-nautical striped dress. If my outfit didn’t say “casual lunch at a maritime-themed restaurant,” I don’t know what did. For the audition, there were Fritos scattered on a table, which we had to pretend were crabs and eat with enthusiasm. We then had to pretend we were getting attacked by a very aggressive seagull. Unfortunately, my seafaring attire didn’t compensate for the fact that I have absolutely no acting skills. I did not book the job.
The fact that I rarely booked any commercials didn’t deter me from submitting myself anyway and Google-mapping my way across Los Angeles to go to the auditions. Because, if the casting notices were amusing, then the waiting rooms at these casting facilities were an absolute bonanza.
On the morning of my Nationwide audition, instead of commuting from my bed to my desk to play the role of “Writer” in the wardrobe of “Pajama Pants, T-shirt, and Slippers,” I took a detour to the bathroom to take a shower, put on makeup, and blow-dry my hair. The assistant at the agency called me with the specifics the night before. Role: wife. Age Range: 25-35. Description: attractive yet approachable, not too model-y. Wardrobe: Upscale Casual.
It was hot that day, and the air conditioning was broken in my car. By broken I mean it had never actually worked. This left me with two unappealing options: 1) roll down all the windows to stay cool, which would whip my hair into a chaotic nest, or 2) keep the windows up and keep the hair in place, then arrive at the audition looking like I’d just left the steam room. When I left my apartment, freshly showered and deodorized, my hair slightly spritzed into its on-camera position, I looked like someone who could at least fake it as an actor, someone presentable enough to be in an insurance company commercial. But by the time I arrived at the audition I looked like exactly what I was: someone who didn’t have health insurance.
Inside the casting facility, a giant flat screen read: “Quaker Oats: Room 1. Alltel: Room 2. Budweiser: Room 3. Nationwide: Room 4.” I took a seat outside room four and filled out my Size Card: name, agency, height, weight, bust, hips, waist, inseam, glove size, hat size. The last two—glove and hat size—I never knew and sometimes just wrote “regular” or “proportional.”
I pulled out my book and pretended to read. At the far end of the waiting room were the Alltel guys—all in their mid-thirties, all dressed in suits, all with brown hair, all holding the same piece of paper. Some sat and read silently while others paced, pantomiming their lines. They became increasingly distracted, I noticed, as the room began to bustle with busty blondes arriving for their Budweiser auditions. I swear some guys only go to castings to pick up girls. And if they don’t, they should. It’s like a buffet. Everyone is skinny and pretty and between the ages of twenty and thirty, and there are fifty or sixty of them in one waiting room, all in nearly identical outfits.
The Budweiser candidate to my right—platinum blonde hair, jeans, heels, low-cut top—seemed to be having some sort of dispute with a salon receptionist. “Well then can you at least squeeze me in for a pedicure?” she said, into her phone. The Budweiser candidate to my left—golden blonde hair, jeans, heels, low-cut top—recognized another girl—dirty blonde hair, jeans, heels, low-cut top—and greeted her with, “Heyyyyyyyyy. How are youuuuuuu?” The words dragged out like a wind-up doll that needed to be wound. The dirty blonde replied, “Oh my god I left my cell phone at home and I am like totally freaking out.” The golden blonde responded, “Oh my god, that suuuuuuucks.”
As I eyed these girls’ perfectly curled and coifed locks, I tore my fingers through my hair, attempting to untangle its nautical-sized knots. I adjusted the collar on my shirt. I was wearing a blouse and slacks—two words I rarely use and two clothing items I rarely choose—but I was going for the conservative and responsible look. The insurance commercial look.
A few minutes later, the casting director emerged to inform me I would be auditioning twice since they had, at the moment, a shortage of women for the role of “wife” and a surplus of “husbands” and “children.” He then explained that the Nationwide commercial would show three major snapshots of my life: the marriage proposal, the pregnancy, and then, cut to five years later, a portrait of my new little family.
Husband Todd entered, and we exchanged awkward hellos. For the first shot, we were told to sit on the couch and pretend we were watching TV, but we were really watching another chair across the room. Husband Todd was then instructed
to—ever so casually—put his arm around me and dangle an imaginary engagement ring on an imaginary string, so it would lightly graze my right shoulder. I was told to notice this imaginary ring and gasp and smile and scream and look at this complete stranger, saying with orgasmic enthusiasm, “Yes! Yes I will marry you!” And then we were to embrace in a jubilant hug.
For the next shot, I was told to stand in our pretend-living room, holding papers from the doctor’s office that apparently informed me I was pregnant, while rubbing my belly and smiling into the distance. Husband Todd would then walk in, as if getting home from work, and see me smiling gleefully and rubbing my belly and just know, exclaiming, “Yeah?! Really, hon?! That’s great! This is so great!” The casting director chimed in, “This is something you have both been hoping for, for a long time. Be sure to look as excited as your wife, husband.”
For the final shot, the child actor joined us. Child actors always sort of scare me. So much bravado at such a young age. It’s as if, at any moment, they might bust out a tap dance rendition of Fiddler on the Roof. It’s unnerving. At any rate, Todd was told to pick up Elsie, and I was told to stand next to them, my arms around both, and smile like we were taking a family portrait at the softer side of Sears.
Todd and Elsie left and in came my next husband and child, Wes and Haley. Now, if there is anything more awkward than pretending to get married and have a baby with a complete stranger, it’s pretending to get married and have a baby with someone you know.
“Lilibet? Is that you?” Wes was very confused. He was represented by the agency I used to work for, the agency that now represented me.
“Yes, it’s me, hi!” I said.
“Oh my god, what are you doing here?” he said, leaning in for a one-armed hug. “I thought you were working at a magazine or something? Are you an actor now?”
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