Today I Am a Ma'am: and Other Musings On Life, Beauty, and Growing Older (3 page)

With hope and some trepidation, Iva and I entered Nancy’s dressing room to find a pot of wax simmering on a hot plate. We watched with a mixture of horror and fascination as Nancy carefully spread the melted green wax on her legs with a kitchen spatula. Then she laid strips of wax paper on top of the wax, making sort of a leg sandwich. She smiled at us placidly. “Now we wait a moment.”

I knew what was coming next. “I can’t watch,” I groaned.

Nancy laughed. “Oh, it doesn’t hurt at all,” she lied. Without flinching, she pulled the wax paper off her legs in strips and showed us the accursed hairs captured in the effort.

“Your turn,” she announced cheerfully.

Well, pain is relative. If you were to compare Nancy’s wax treatment to, say, having a root canal without Novocain, waxing was a breeze. Compared to falling off a cliff and smashing your head against sharp rocks, waxing was a walk in the park. But painless it was not. Iva and I staggered out of Nancy’s dressing room, our beet-red legs smarting as if we’d just applied a blowtorch. Thank God it wasn’t a matinee day.

That wasn’t the end of it, though. Even with the pain, the result seemed worth it. So Iva and I invested in our own supplies. A few weeks later, we gave ourselves a good waxing at home. Left unsupervised, we were a disaster. I guess we left it on too long, and the wax hardened into a bricklike mass and wouldn’t come off. We spent hours chipping at the wax with emery boards, but we still had the vestiges of green wax bits on our legs a week later. I joked that maybe we could donate our legs to Madam Tussaud’s Wax Museum.

To be accurate, it’s not really bad hair
days
. It’s bad hair
years
. Bad hair
decades
. Bad hair
eras
. As a member of the naturally frizzy hair club, I have spent my life seeking a reprieve from nature. When I was a girl, my mother used to tell me, “You’re so lucky to have naturally curly hair.” That was fine during the pin-curl fifties, but then the straight-haired sixties hit and my luck ran out. I tried everything imaginable to achieve the sleek look of the times. I slathered my locks with a green or lavender glop called Wave Set that plastered them to my head with the force of epoxy. I used rollers the size of coffee cans. In desperation, I once tried ironing my hair and practically set fire to my head.

As hairstyles changed, I gamely tried to keep pace. I teased and sprayed and blow-dried and even chemically straightened. Then, noticing the white hairs nestled in the curls, I started coloring. Endless hours pursuing beauty! As Lily Tomlin once asked, “If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in a library?”

Last year I guest-starred in an episode of
Sex and the City
, the sizzling HBO series. Well, forget the sex. Let’s talk about the shoes! It was like joining the Mile High Club!

Every year, the heels get higher and the podiatrists get richer. We abhor the hideous practice of foot binding but see nothing wrong with accepting a fashion mandate that is crippling.

After decades of stumbling through life on spikes, platforms, stilettos, toe-crushing pointy pumps, cutting strappy sandals, and backless mules, I have been liberated in midlife from the need to wobble. I have given up footwear by the Inquisition. Frankly, I just don’t care anymore if my calves look shapely. These days, comfort trumps style.

THEN

In the fifties and sixties we wore sleeveless dresses with impunity. It never occurred to us to do upper arm upkeep. Our arms were our arms—hefty or thin, muscular or wobbly. If you don’t believe me, check out the family photo album. I’ll bet you’ll find pictures of Mom, Grandma, and Great-Grandma sitting around the picnic table sans sleeves.

NOW

Sleevelessness has made a major comeback, just in time for my midlife jiggle. But today’s unsleeved arms are toothpick thin and hard as steel. They don’t have any of that good old-fashioned “Sorry, I knocked the lemonade pitcher off the table” swing.

THEN

The full-figured woman—as represented by Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe. These weren’t skinny little girls with blowup breasts. Their tops and bottoms actually matched. And God forbid you should see a ripple of muscle on a 1950s beauty. In
Annie Get Your Gun
, the Frank Butler song went “The girl that I marry will have to be as soft and as pink as a nursery.”

Lady Marlene leveled the playing field for us less-than-endowed dancers of the fifties. The Lady Marlene Push-up Bra was foam rubber covered in nylon fabric. Your breasts spilled out of the top.

NOW

As a ballet dancer in the “soft” fifties, I was very self-conscious about my calves of steel. You’d think I’d be delighted to welcome the era of strong, fit, muscled women. While I’m a great proponent of physical power for women, today’s version brings a whole new tyranny: “Show your muscles, girls (through your God-given fat layer), and let’s see some cleavage, too.” Let’s face it. Working, sweating, pounding off the adiposetissue while maintaining or developing breasts is a major hat trick.

THEN

You wouldn’t be caught dead with bra straps showing. (I used to pin them to my dress or blouse.)

NOW

The more underwear showing, the better. The bra as outerwear.

THEN

Full encasement in industrial-strength girdles.

NOW

Thongs. (To quote the actress Minnie Driver, “Me bum has eaten me knickers.”)

THEN

Gloves. As my mother instructed, “A lady never goes out without her gloves.”

NOW

Gloves are used only for weddings, ski trips, and home burglaries.

THEN

Ladies’ dresses, suits, stockings with seams, garter belts, hats.

NOW

Miniskirts, tank tops, sneakers, jeans, flip-flops, work boots, ten-inch heels.

I can remember that cake box like it was yesterday. The bright red Dugan’s logo. The dried frosting stuck to the cardboard sides. Dugan’s was a bakery in New Jersey that delivered pastry and cakes to our house. I was thirteen, and I was standing in the kitchen gorging myself on cake before going to dance class. I cut a slice and ate it with a glass of milk, and then another, and another. I felt a twinge because I should have been eating a healthy breakfast. Mom always cooked so sensibly—meat, potatoes, vegetables, five little lamb chops for five people. Before I knew what was happening, I had eaten another slice, and then another. I was full, but I kept on eating. I left a tiny piece so I could say I didn’t eat the whole cake. I remember thinking, oh, I’ll go burn this off in ballet class.

Dancing off five thousand calories! That was the beginning of my mental illness about food. It took the form of phantasmagoric self-delusion.

These fibs do support your habit, but they’re very funny. I went out to dinner recently with my close friend Charlotte, another bulge battler. We agreed that we were going to be “good” and really watch what we eat. But when the waiter came around, Charlotte happily reached for the bread basket. Noticing my raised eyebrows, she leaned across the table and whispered, “It’s okay. I’m eating this under an assumed name.”

When I was a young actress living in California, I tried every wild scheme making the rounds to get rid of my bubble wrap thighs. My friend Iva and I used to go see a woman affectionately known as “the Pounder in the Valley.” She was the size of a sumo wrestler. She and her daughter had thick, meaty hands—huge hands. They’d stretch you out on a table, face down and naked, and then literally pound the fat off your body. The Pounder was the rage then. All the big movie stars went to her. It was so painful that she would give you a towel to scream into so the neighbors wouldn’t call the police. I can still remember us hobbling out, black and blue from the waist down.

Finally, Iva said to me, “I can’t believe I’m paying so much money to look like I’ve been in a car wreck. These bruises can’t be good.” I agreed but moved on to the next fad—wrapping. It was guaranteed to take off inches instantly. I’d be tightly wrapped in cloth strips that had been soaked in a strange-smelling solution. I’d lie there for an hour until every drop of water was squeezed out. Voilà! Ten pounds gone—until I raced to the water fountain to rehydrate. The pounds and inches returned instantly. It was the dumbest weight loss concept ever invented.

But you see my point. Women will do anything to lose weight. Looking back, I have to laugh at some of the outrageous diets we tried. The craziest diets were those that involved eating only one or two foods for weeks on end. There was the strawberries and champagne diet, the grapefruit diet, the hard-boiled egg diet, the ice cream diet. Even ice cream can start to look sickening when it’s your main staple. I recall one diet guaranteed to take off five pounds in two days. It included steak, hard-boiled eggs, lettuce leaves, and six prunes. None of these diets ever worked for long.

Here’s the irony of the thin-is-in mentality, which is still pervasive: One hundred years ago, the ideal body for a woman was curvaceous. Women wanted to have meat on their bones. Lillian Russell, the turn-of-the-century femme fatale, weighed 210 pounds. Best-selling diet books had titles such as
How to Be Plump
. At that time, having meat on your bones was considered healthy.

Those were the days!

After agonizing about my weight most of my life, I wasn’t exactly thrilled to hear the news about midlife spread. Our bodies are saying, “I’m going to add a little bit of padding around your waist and hips to keep you warm in winter.” And even though we say, “Don’t worry. I’ve got a good winter coat,” our bodies don’t pay attention.

Take thigh bumps. To what purpose thigh bumps? Neither hip nor butt, this extra padding is located on the side of each thigh, like a protective shield. It’s like having shoulder pads on your thighs, designed to save you if you’re suddenly thrown against a wall. Our bodies are always trying to save us, but we don’t want to be saved. When all else fails, thank God there are cover-ups.

I’m an expert at hiding fat. At some point in my life, I faced the awful truth that my hips weren’t going anywhere, so my only hope was artifice. In the 1970s, I chose empire dresses with scooped necks, which either hid a multitude of sins or made me look like Valerie-the-hot-air-balloon, depending on which way the wind was blowing. With time and practice, I became a master illusionist.

I was also a proponent of corrective underwear. During our Broadway dancer days, Iva and I favored the “tube of steel” girdle. This was a girdle so tight you needed an extra twenty minutes and a can of baby powder to get it on, and then it was a challenge to walk. It literally sealed your thighs together.

“If we’re attacked we won’t be able to run,” I said to Iva as we headed out one evening.

“So what if he catches us,” she laughed. “He’ll never get this girdle off.”

When I was a young dancer, one of my best friends was Gene Varrone. I met Gene in 1959 when we were in the chorus of the Broadway musical comedy
Take Me Along
, starring Jackie Gleason. Gene and I were pals, confidants, and food buddies. On matinee days, we’d sneak off together to the Acropolis Diner on Eighth Avenue in New York City. They had wonderful lemon soup with rice, moussaka, baklava—the works. The waiters were tall and swarthy, and Gene claimed they were all in love with me, but I think they just saw two compulsive eaters walking in and said, “Hey, big check coming.” Elderly Greek men in fedoras and short-sleeved shirts would sit around playing cards in the corner and drinking ouzo while Gene and I shared enormous portions and the stories of our lives.

I’ll never forget once Gene told me about a conversation he’d had with his psychiatrist about his weight problem. He’d been in therapy for four years, and he finally asked the doctor, “Do you think I’m really sick?” “No,” she said, “you just like to eat.”

Sometimes Gene and I would go on diets together, but we were both such cheaters. We’d be out to lunch, and we’d tell the waitress emphatically, “No fries, please.” Then the plates showed up piled with fries.

“It’s God’s will,” I’d whisper.

Once we were on a really strict diet and were doing quite well. Gene came over for dinner one night and I served salad with no dressing and dried apricots for dessert.

At three o’clock in the morning I called Gene. “Look, I’m cooking spaghetti. You want to come over?” He jumped in a cab.

So, what’s the shame about eating? There’s a line in Henry Jaglom’s wonderful film,
Eating:
“Food is to women today what sex was in the fifties.”

Forbidden pleasure. How many women are secret eaters?

In 1967 when my first husband, Dick, was filming
The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!
I got to know Jonathan Winters. I’ll never forget being out to dinner with Jonathan when he started to argue with himself about ordering dessert: “No, no, you won’t have that cake, you’re fat as a pig—
I’ll eat what I want
—Listen, I’ve had about enough of you—
Shut up, I’m ordering
—Fatty, fatty, two by four—
I’ll eat cake and I’ll eat it with ice cream!
”