by Faith Salie
Copyright © 2016 by Salient Productions, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Archetype, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
Crown Archetype and colophon is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Salie, Faith, 1971–
Approval junkie / Faith Salie.—First edition.
pages cm
1. Salie, Faith, 1971– 2. Actors—United States—Biography. 3. Social acceptance—Humor. I. Title.
PN2287.S265A3 2016
791.4302'8092—dc23
[B]
2015036040
ISBN 9780553419931
eBook ISBN 9780553419948
Cover design by Jake Nicolella
Cover photograph by Eric McNatt / Getty Images
v4.1
ep
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Faith Accompli
No Bangs for the Bucks
Howler Monkey
Miss Aphrodite
Extra Vanilla
I Sing the Body Dysmorphic
The Best Hand Job Ever
The Exorcism
Face for Radio
Shrink Rapt
My Summer Fling with Bill O’Reilly (or My Fair and Unbalanced Lady)
What I Wore to My Divorce
JSAP
The Final Truffle
Ovary Achiever: An Approval Junkie’s Guide to Fertility
Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me About Batman’s Nipples
Buy Buy Hellmouth
On the Fringe: A Cautionary Tale
Book Marked
My Husband’s Dog Is Not My Kids’ Brother
Breastfeeding Sucks
A Stamp of Approval for My Daughter
Acknowledgments
For John,
who reminds me that I am always enough…
and
for Augustus and Minerva,
who teach me that I am more than I ever imagined
If you’ve come seeking advice on how not to seek approval, I’m afraid I’ll disappoint. I do not have a twelve-step program to alleviate the desire for approbation. However, I can offer you something that’s the exact opposite of a cure, because I’d hate for you to leave empty-handed:
12 Steps You Might Take to Win Approval
1. Make good grades.
2. Go to church or pay a lot for High Holidays orchestra seats.
3. Refrain from having sex to be “good”/Be good at having sex.
4. Casually, and only semiaccurately, reference Schrödinger’s cat in conversation.
5. Run in place in a dark shower for forty-five minutes at 4 a.m. every morning so you won’t gain weight on an African safari.
6. Do things to make your parents proud.
7. Do things to make your therapist proud.
8. Enlist Michael Jackson’s choreographer to plan your first wedding dance and a Broadway veteran to choreograph your first second wedding dance.
9. Say yes (e.g., “Yes, I’ll provide three dozen nut-free kosher cupcakes even though I’m not Jewish!”) when you really should say no.
10. Moderate a small, jovial panel discussion as you spend two hours pushing your baby out, so you don’t make this whole giving birth thing about you you you, even as your child rips a hole in your labia, forever ruining your chances of going into porn at the age of forty-one.
11. Stay in a relationship with someone whom you’re determined to win over.
12. Refrain from ending your sentences in a preposition.
I am an approval junkie. When I told people the name of the book I was writing, some immediately smiled and said, “Great title.” No questions asked; they got it. A few looked concerned and said, “Really? I wouldn’t have thought that of you.” At which point I put down the cake I was frosting for them while simultaneously breastfeeding my daughter and doing squats and explained that I’m not ashamed about wanting approval. It kept my high school GPA very high. It’s kept my BMI somewhat low. It’s kept me on my toes when I wasn’t already wearing heels to elongate my legs.
We all know someone who says, “I got to where I am by not giving a shit.” I believe this can be true of psychopaths and Buddhist nuns. But of everyone else, I’m a little admiring and a lot skeptical. How can you not give even a little tiny shit? Kanye West tweets, “I don’t give a fuck what people think because people don’t think.” Then he incites a Twitter war with Jimmy Kimmel after Kimmel has kids read a transcript of Kanye’s own words announcing that he is the number one rock star in the world and invented leather jogging pants. On the flip side, we have Sally Field, accepting her Oscar, beaming while crying, “…you like me, right now, you like me!” Who’s more honest—Yeezus or Gidget?
Famous people I’ve interviewed—powerful people, brilliant people, people whom you look at and think, Seriously, do you not have pores?—have turned to me after interviews and asked, “Was I okay? I hope I was okay.” Even Jesus wanted to make his mother happy at the wedding in Cana with that water/wine mindfreak.
Approval may not be your raison d’être, but it never sucks to feel it. It connects you to your audience, which is the human race. Approval makes the world go round even if many of us want to transcend our hunger for it.
Wanting approval is a naked thing. It says Listen to me, love me, understand me. Those are vulnerable requests. A junkie keeps requesting.
Being a true approval junkie does not quite equal being a perfectionist. A perfectionist won’t try for fear of falling short. An approval junkie stumbles, trips, and falls again, each time taking a bow for trying. A perfectionist won’t leave the house without her face on. An approval junkie leaves the house to face the next challenge. She knows no one ever created something applause-worthy—something new or compelling or hilarious—by playing it safe.
While a junkie laps up smiles, it’s also too simple to label her a people pleaser. Pleasing people can feel deeply gratifying when it doesn’t involve, say, letting someone pee on you (more on that later, unfortunately). But caring too much about people liking you will confine you forever to mediocrity and second-guessing yourself and may force you to engage in meaningful conversation about following one’s dreams with your Uber driver so he’ll give you a five-star rating. One doesn’t want to become a short-order cook of a pleaser, catering to countless individual likes and dislikes. Nor does one want to sling a bland offering meant to appeal to a mass palate. An approval junkie knows, “You can please some of the people all of the time and you can please all of the people some of the time, but you’d have to spend an awful lot of time figuring out what pleases the people, which is time you could be spending on getting your candy striper uniform altered so it fits more flatteringly.” I mean, just for example. Ultimately, an approval junkie desires most to please her toughest critic, which is herself.
An approval junkie appreciates being noticed but isn’t a wanton attention whore. One craves attention for the right things, like instant improvisational skills or long eyelashes. I personally do not want attention at any price. For example, I was never one of those Goth teens (although I played one for a season on a sitcom that TV Guide named number 30 on its “50 Worst Shows of All Time”). And now—while I’m delighted when people occasionally recognize me on the street or when I’m buying support hose to fly while bulbously pregnant to interview an NBA player about his unibrow—it’s a double-edged sword. I almost wish they wouldn’t recognize me and would rather murmur to their partner, “Doesn’t that
lady who’s inexplicably humming show tunes look like a tired version of that gal on CBS News Sunday Morning?” Or the kids at the Apple Genius bar who recognize my voice from Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!—I feel sad for them that they must be thinking, She doesn’t sound like someone who wears clogs with sweatpants.
Women are blessed with lots and lots of extra ways to win or lose validation. If you’re a woman, you’ll be judged on your beauty and your wit and how often you smile. You’ll be judged on how much hair you have in some places and not in others. You’ll be judged on whether you can get away with that outfit. You’ll be judged on whether you’re funny or just think you’re funny. You’ll be judged on the color of your wedding dress and whether you have an opinion that matters or a husband or children. Speaking of, you’ll be judged on when you want children and how you have them. You’ll be judged on who helps take care of your children in a way your husband or butch wife is not. Culturally, traditionally, historically, no matter how far we’ve come, most of us still put ourselves on pedestals to receive (or not receive) tiaras and wedding proposals.
Some books will tell you to accept yourself and all your flaws. To embrace your curves. You should probably do that if you can. That kind of ridiculous, enlightened talk never got me where I wanted to go unless where I wanted to go was my refrigerator to binge on Reddi-wip straight into my mouth and then to the couch to binge on Benedict Cumberbatch. (Curves are great on other people. Me—I’d like to look like a flapper with a touch of dysentery. Sorry for the digression; that’s the stevia talking.) This is a book that tells you you’re okay just the way you are if the way you are is someone with a palm that doesn’t mind being smacked with a high five.
Still, it’s fair to call myself a recovering junkie. I (finally) married a man who loves me the way I am. This is a dubious choice on his part, but I’m going with it. Not trying to get him to love me frees up a lot of hours in the day that I used to spend trying to dominate in yoga class after eating fat-free ice cream in my car during my first marriage. Also, I got older. Increasingly, people making decisions about my talent are my age or younger, and seeking approval from someone who can’t sing The Facts of Life theme song is not a good use of my time.* And then, not easily, I became a mother. If you seek approval from someone who thinks it’s hilarious to do downward dogs in his diaper while he farts, you are an approval masochist.
I don’t think hitting rock bottom as an approval junkie means you stop questing for the big O[vation]. I was on my hands and knees, quite literally, when I hit rock bottom, the realization that I could never truly please my first husband (now wasband) having left me gulping for air, because I finally stopped gasping for love. Hitting rock bottom means you stop trying too hard, too often, and for the wrong person. There is a point when groveling for validation is dangerous. The extremes—such as questing for physical perfection or absorbing emotional abuse—can hurt you. Yet if you harness a fraction of that needy energy, you can prove something to yourself, rather than seeking the approval of others.
But if you’ve tasted any success, you still want to chase the dragon. I, for one, don’t want to totally re-cover. Because I like staying somewhat exposed, a little raw. It means I stay open, to be wounded, yes, but also touched. It means I get to surprise myself by becoming more than I am. I’m wary of total self-acceptance. I’d rather fail dramatically than risk complacency.
Let’s be honest, an approval junkie can get pretty tedious if she’s constantly asking for appreciation but not dancing like a monkey to earn it. She’d be a busker with no instrument. You’re not going to put money in her guitar case unless she’s strumming something.
So here’s my song. These are my stories. Maybe some of them will speak to you, even if you didn’t welcome two different national news crews to follow you to your egg retrieval or crowdsource what to wear to your divorce. While I’m pretty sure you didn’t ask your gay brother for a demonstration of how to give a killer hand job, I do feel certain that you, too, have occasionally yearned to be loved or applauded or laughed at in the very best way. And that you’ve striven to be more than you are before learning that approval of your own life is called gratitude.
I hope you enjoy this. Obviously.
* * *
* As a tiny approval junkie, I was a tragically obedient child. So much so that when The Facts of Life premiered, and my parents told me I couldn’t watch it, I didn’t. Even though they were out of the house, enjoying their disco lesson. Somehow, though, soon after that, I did start watching The Facts of Life. Obviously there was nothing to worry about since it took me thirty-three years to realize that it was Cousin Geri who was the lesbian and not Jo.
“Why aren’t you as pretty as I want you to be?”
I once paid someone $130 to ask me that.
She was this acting guru named Lesly Kahn, and my pilot season auditions were sucking, and I was told she was THE person to work with me. Now first let me explain what sucking means. Sucking is when you go to an audition, and the person going in before you is Mallory Keaton, née Justine Bateman, who has gone for a bold, unkempt Miss Havisham look with her eyebrows. I’m sorry if that sounds mean, because I totally wanted to look like her in the ’80s, due to her unparalleled ability to rock narrow-wale cords.
Then you notice who’s slated to go in right after you. Who? Oh, nobody but TRACI FUCKING LORDS, YES “FUCKING,” BECAUSE SHE STARTED HER CAREER AS AN UNDERAGE PORN STAR. So you begin to realize that in the eyes of Hollywood or your agent or Dr. T. J. Eckleburg, that you, “the Faith Salie type,” fall somewhere on the spectrum between a hirsute former sitcom star and a porn-celebrity-turned-method actor, which is to say that no one in show business knows what he wants, and you really, REALLY should have stayed in grad school one more year instead of hightailing it to LA before you got “too old” for sitcoms at age twenty-five.
And so you go in to read for a stony-faced casting director and a couple of producers, and you try very hard to convince them you’re what they want: you’re the funniest, prettiest, skinniest, hottest, archest, winsome-est, whatever-est. But trying is never a good thing in acting, and, when it comes to auditions, you are way better at trying than being. Then, as you are leaving the audition, you see Victoria Jackson, sporting short, stonewashed jean overalls, with her game face on for the same role, and you will truly turn anywhere for guidance.
Like to Lesly Kahn.
My manager at the time, having noticed I was getting cast less often than Justine Bateman shapes her brows, suggested a thirty-minute “private” with Lesly Kahn to help me get a job. Or at least a callback. For $130 a half hour (and a half hour was twenty-five minutes on the Kahn klock), I was hoping for more—like maybe oral sex or dark chocolate—but the least I expected was to walk out of our session feeling prepared for my next audition. Perhaps she charged that much in order to buy a vowel, because I have never seen “Lesly” spelled that way. At any rate, I drove from my apartment in Santa Monica to her school in Hollywood one night. The fact that her devotees call it “The Khanstitute” made me hope Ricardo Montalbán would be waiting for me, ready to run lines, all open shirted and silver foxy mulleted.
Lesly Kahn sat in the back of a serene candlelit room and exuded peacefulness. She barely spoke above a whisper. A trim brunette, she fell somewhere in the late forties to early sixties age range—it’s so hard to tell in the Land of Shiny and Smooth. She was surprisingly nurturing for the leader of the Khanstitute. I read my sides with her. (“Sides” are what they call your lines for an audition. I have no idea why but you feel cool when you first move to LA and get to flex this lexicon.) There was a long pause when I was done, and she was studying me so intently that I actually dared to hope she was about to say something like, “I don’t know why you’re not a massive star.” Instead, she squinted her eyes, cocked her head sincerely, and, with compassionate bewilderment, uttered those words:
“Why aren’t you as pretty as I want you to be?”
I’ve answered a
lot of unusual questions in my life. Once I was asked in an interview, “If I told you there is a pink elephant in this room, how would you prove me wrong?” When I was twenty-six, and my mother was struggling through her final days with cancer, she asked me if I could let her go. And, on my first honeymoon, my wasband gazed at me over a romantic dinner in Barcelona and queried, “Did you ever break your nose?”
Lesly Kahn’s was a shocking question, but by no means unanswerable. First of all, I agreed with her—I wasn’t as pretty as I wanted me to be, and on top of that, I felt very bad that I was letting down Lesly Kahn, whose valuable time I was stealing from other actors with more facial symmetry.
“Your features are sharp; there’s a softness missing.”
This was true, both literally and metaphorically. I was desperately unhappy and unhappily desperate—disillusioned and competitive. Should I answer her by explaining that for me, at the time, life was a zero-sum game? That whenever someone got anything I wanted—a job, say, or a baby—I experienced it as a personal loss, as if the ledger of the cosmos were taunting me? Should I tell her I’d recently come really close to getting a part on the new TV show my wasband was producing? That he’d actually created a role for me—a character named Hope, no less…and I didn’t get it? That the head of the network didn’t want me? Meaning I wasn’t good enough to play myself. Or maybe I wasn’t pretty enough to play myself.
Was it worth detailing how one actress who did land a role on my wasband’s show was someone I used to babysit? And another was someone from the children’s musical theater group I performed with back when I was a teenager and she was in her single digits? We three were not up for the same role, mind you—oh no, the seven years I had on them left me auditioning in the mother-to-middle-schoolers carpool lane while they were cast on the ingenue fast track. On the afternoon my wasband and I set aside to choose his wedding ring, he had to negotiate this girl’s contract because another network also wanted her. Parked in front of the jewelry store, he paced outside the car on his cell phone, urgently but capably ensuring this little lady with whom I once danced jazz squares would star in his show. I sat inside the car, age thirty-four, appalled I’d allowed myself to get so old.