The Book of Mormon Girl (6 page)

I also studied carefully Marie’s list of prescribed cosmetics, applicators, and other beauty tools, and dreamed of the day I might assemble them all neatly organized in a compartmental lucite tray on a sheet of perfumed paper in the bathroom drawer now full of my uncleaned hairbrushes, my orthodontic appliance cases, and wads of dark hair my seven-year-old brother had pulled from my head. Marie’s book laid out long lists of cosmetics: foundations, concealers, powders, eyeliners, eye pencils, caked eye shadows, cream blushes, mascaras, lip glosses, lipsticks, and lip pencils. Plus mustache wax to train wild brow hairs. Plus petroleum jelly to moisturize the eyelashes. There were also long sets of tools
and applicators: sable brushes in three different shapes for the eyes, sable brushes in two different volumes for blush and powder, makeup sponges, cotton swabs, cotton balls, tweezers, false lashes, and an eyelash curler. I had never considered curling my eyelashes. I thought of the black-caked metal contraption that I saw in the bathroom drawer at my friend Missy’s house (it belonged to her sister, a MÖtley CrÜe fan) and understood immediately why Marie urged us to clean our eyelash curlers once a week! There would be no black-caked eyelash curlers in my perfume-scented drawer!

I counted down the lists, totaling the number of items in my head. Thirty-one all together. Thirty-four, if you included a few color options among the eye shadows. Thirty-five, if you included a
nighttime
lipstick shade to alternate with the regular
daytime
color. My only source of income as a twelve-year-old was birthday gifts from my grandmother and odd babysitting jobs. There was a Mormon family in the neighborhood who would hire me to watch their two toddlers once a month so that they could make a visit to the Mormon temple in Los Angeles. On a good babysitting night—after paying my tithing—I could make almost $10. In a year, I calculated, if I worked hard and saved carefully in the glass jar under my bed, I could really begin to chip away at Marie’s list of cosmetic essentials. I might even be able to afford an eyelash curler. That is, if I could convince my mom to load my brother and sisters into the station wagon and take me down to the Drug Emporium.

But maybe moderation was a good thing. Taking it slow was really okay. After all, I learned from the
Guide
that all eight Osmond brothers agreed that nothing looked worse on a young girl than globs of makeup. Marie picked up most of her cosmetics know-how at Osmond Studios from world-famous celebrity makeup artist Way Bandy, one-time makeup director for Charles of the Ritz, who had “designed” her makeup personality three separate times. She also did some experimentation with her cameraman Bob to see what appealed to the cameras. Since I did not know a world-famous celebrity makeup artist or have a cameraman, Marie suggested that I set aside an hour or two on Saturdays to investigate the latest tips and techniques in fashion magazines. If only I could get some.

Everyone is different, Marie assured me. On some girls, colored eye shadow might open their eyes, while on others colored eye shadow would certainly close them, and those girls should instead use a hint of blush under the eyebrows.
Perhaps I was one of them?
What mattered most was that I experimented and selected and applied my eye makeup with care, minding whether or not my eyes were close-set or wide-set, too small or too large, and remembering to take care of my eyes when they were overtired and puffy. Marie confided that she once accidentally discovered that the tannic acid in tea bags was good for puffy eyes. It sure must have been an accident, a good Mormon girl having caffeinated tea bags in her dressing room. Perhaps they belonged
to Bob the cameraman or world-famous celebrity makeup artist Way Bandy.

For her hair, Marie turned to world-famous celebrity hair stylist Yusuke Suga, the Japanese-born inventor of the Dorothy Hamill wedge, master of his own salon at Bergdorf Goodman in New York City, stylist to Bianca Jagger, Gloria Vanderbilt, Cher, and Cheryl Tiegs. It was Suga whom Marie trusted to carve away her long, dark thirteen-year-old locks, unveiling then the tiny frame, strong cheekbones, and trademark Osmond smile loved by Gentiles the world over. Losing her long hair was, Marie confided, something of a shock at first, but she grew to value the versatility afforded by her new style.

I weighed her words, studying in the bathroom mirror my own shaggy shoulder-length style, a grown-out junior-high not-quite Farrah Fawcett. I wondered if a shorter style might be right for me too. I could never determine exactly whether my face was an
oval
,
square
,
heart-shaped
, or
round
. But the
Guide
did suggest that with my
small frame
and
small features
, a long style might be overpowering.

A few weeks later, when Becky the neighborhood haircut lady set up shop in our kitchen and all the Mormon families in the neighborhood sent their kids over for bang trims and bowl cuts, I decided to take a chance. I asked for a short new style, straight at the nape, with a permanent crown of curls on top. A hairdo just like the one in the photograph of Marie looking pensive in her private-label
jeans outside the Brigham Young University student center in
Provo, Utah!

Becky smiled and chatted excitedly with my mom. The chemicals burned at my nape and nostrils. The rollers were removed, my head rinsed in the kitchen sink, my hair cut and dried. Becky passed me her handheld mirror. What I beheld was not the hair of Marie, but a style rather like my own mother’s. I felt a pit in my belly. I felt the miles between me and
Provo, Utah!
grow longer, and more impossible. But then I composed myself. In time—just like Marie—I too would grow to value the versatility of my short new style. Given time, I would get there.

•   •   •

My next step was to adopt Marie’s own 62-minute schedule as my own early morning routine. Before I went to bed, I studied its seventeen numbered and precisely timed steps, from calisthenics (10 minutes) to eyedrops (1 minute) to hairstyle (4 minutes) to wardrobe (4 minutes) and breakfast (10 minutes). I had never timed my morning routine before, but it rarely took more than 20 minutes from the time I left my bed until the time I reached the kitchen for breakfast: 62 minutes! I absorbed the challenge of the routine and relished its transformative promise, then placed the book on the nightstand, pulled up my covers, said my prayers, and closed my eyes.

The clock radio went off at
6:00 a.m.
I turned it off, then reached for my
Marie Osmond’s Guide to Beauty, Health & Style
. First came
calisthenics. Propping the guide up on my windowsill so I could see the pictures, I planted my feet 18 inches apart, stretched out my arms, and flattened my palms. Fifteen circles forward, fifteen circles backward. Palms up! Repeat! I glanced at the clock:
6:02 a.m.
I turned my eyes back to the penciled sketch of the lithe, long-haired girl in a belted workout ensemble. She appeared to be wearing blush, even though makeup was step seven. I raised my arms over my head and leaned left and right four times, keeping my palms turned inward. Palms in! Repeat!
6:03 a.m.
On schedule. I dropped to the brown carpeting for push-ups. The girl in the picture did hers plank-straight, her brushed hair falling neatly over one shoulder. Two or three plank-straight push-ups, this I could do, before surrendering to my knees.
Soon
, I thought, looking at the girl on the page.
Soon enough
. Fifteen push-ups. Repeat!
6:05 a.m.
My twelve-year-old body, so confusing to me in its extended lurch between childhood and puberty, felt good and clean and purposeful when I was lying on the brown carpet in my bedroom, doing my Marie calisthenics by the early-morning light of the bedside clock radio.

I paused, then flipped forward through the pages. There were eight exercises left: three kinds of leg lifts, two kinds of sit-ups. With only five minutes left in this segment of the schedule, I resolved to double my pace. It was
6:12 a.m.
by the time I completed two sets of the final exercise, the “windmill,” which, Marie promised, would strengthen and
lengthen my waist. Since I stood 4’10”, lengthening seemed an especially welcome outcome. I directed a final glance toward the lithe, long-haired girl on the page, her brushed hair sweeping the ground as she completed the exercise.
6:13 a.m.
I tried not to worry about the lost three minutes as I carried the book into the bathroom. Perhaps I could win some time back by brushing my teeth in ninety seconds and skipping the mouthwash—there was none in the bathroom cabinet—or by dialing back my shower from five minutes to four. I stood under the shower spray, making calculations and mental adjustments. I could just omit step nine, “touch-up nail polish,” since my nails were bitten too short to polish, or step ten, “remove hot rollers,” given my now permanent crown of curls. I stepped out of the shower, wrapped a towel about my flat chest and narrow hips, towel-dried my hair, and turned to the makeup section of the
Guide
. Surely I would save time here too, given the fact that I owned only five of the thirty-one makeup essentials. I laid the book flat on the bathroom counter and glanced at it for guidance as I dabbed a chalky yellowish tube of concealer on a pimple, rimmed my eyes with a blue eyeliner pencil, and used a tiny synthetic brush to bring some color to my cheeks. I ran my eyes over Marie’s two-page essay on blush and rouge, then scrutinized the pictures of Marie with her long-handled sable-hair blush brush and tried to follow her motions, starting at the apples of the cheeks and moving upward toward my temples. I stood back and looked at my
image in the mirror under fluorescent lights. Did I look like “I’d taken a long walk in the country,” as Marie recommended, or like I was wearing “war paint”? Did the pinkish-rusty shade of my blush harmonize with the electric blue of the eyeliner? No matter—it was
6:43 a.m.
Time to get dressed.

•   •   •

Turning next to the Style section of the
Guide
, I set out to discern my fashion personality. Was I was “the country girl” who likes casual, sporty clothes or a “very feminine young lady” who likes frills and lace, or “the sophisticated type,” the trend-setter in the latest fashions? No, I sensed, reaching deep inside myself, I was none of these, but rather like Marie herself, someone who aimed to be not trendy but rather classy and chic, someone who liked “simple lines” without looking “matronly.”

In order to build the wardrobe of my dreams, I would need to start from the basics, conducting first a searching inventory of my current holdings. Marie had included in the
Guide
a six-column inventory grid. Each column was labeled with its own genre of clothing: blouses, shirts, sweaters, jackets, pants, and skirts. But where in this grid, I wondered, should I catalog the plaid-wool Bermuda shorts my grandmother and I sewed especially for the first day of seventh grade? Counting through my worn Levi’s and striped T-shirts, the immensity of the wardrobe project began to
envelop me. I soon saw so many holes in my wardrobe grid, so many “wardrobe basics” missing.

I had none of the twelve essential components—the trousers and dress pants, the tailored shirts and blouses, the shirt-jacket, the velvet blazer—that Marie assured me constituted the foundation of any wardrobe and which would take me in their infinite variations, seamlessly, through the seasons, from winter to spring and fall. Her list itself only opened so many more questions: What was crepe de chine, and did they make trousers from that fabric in a children’s size 12? Given my
small frame
, could I really carry off a shirt jacket? Or a blouson? Perhaps not, given my
short neck
and
small bust
, for which the
Guide
prescribed the flattering illusion of a boat-neck sweater. And although (being intellectually mature for twelve years old) I appreciated the idea of a velvet blazer layered over a jersey-blend skirt, I could not figure out where I would wear such an outfit: to watch my sisters’ games at the softball field (asthma kept me from playing)? to piano lessons? to hang out in the basketball gym at church? Without money of my own, without a driver’s license, stranded in my suburban bedroom miles from the nearest retail store, all I could do was dream of a wardrobe like Marie’s: “three dozen looks from one dozen fashion selections,” an infinitely expansive grid blooming not only with wardrobe possibility but with the glamorous promise of a life so unlike my own.

I dreamed of a life in
Provo, Utah!
where I might wear the outfits she prescribed to their assigned activities. Wool
trousers for
ice-skating with friends
. Velvet blazers to
important business appointments
. Challis skirts to
dinner dates
. Blouson—with a vest perhaps—to
a romantic occasion
. And though I had none of these, still, I did not allow despair to set in, for like Marie, I was a resourceful girl, the descendant of Mormon pioneers, who during winter times made bread from the roots of desert lilies, and did they ever complain? No. If I could get by on hardtack and tea boiled from chaparral, certainly I could scare up a few accessories around the house; for example, a knitted cap still in its gift box from the back of my mother’s closet, or a floral challis scarf filched from her underwear drawer, or a silk flower to slip behind my ear and glamorize any outfit. Yes, I could make do.

But for me, the most cherished moments in the Marie Osmond
Guide
were those when through her perfectly wardrobed prose shone the outlines of the great secret we shared in common: our Mormonism, our candle burning brightly under the bushel of our bodies. For what was most important was asking ourselves, “Who am I?” and not being pressured to follow the in crowd and lose our precious individuality. To keep my individuality, Marie knowingly warned, I might have to stand apart from the crowd. I might be lonely for a while.
How did she know? I already was!
But with a little motivation and effort, I could develop my beauty and my “inner assets,” by starting with the basics like hair and makeup, or even by developing a talent, like music, dance, or drama. And taking up a good hobby—for Marie, it was
needlepoint—would help me clear my head when feelings of depression set in.