Read Online Fall to Pieces: A Memoir of Drugs, Rock 'N' Roll, and Mental Illness by Mary Forsberg Weiland, Larkin Warren - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Mary Forsberg Weiland, Larkin Warren
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near your mouth). How to smile. How not to laugh at someone, but laugh with them. Manners: Please, thank you, excuse me, no, thank you, I don’t care for seconds. That last one was hard. The more the teen hormones kicked in, the curvier I got. Cleavage not so much, but the hips, the ancestral Latina hips—it was clear early on that my heritage was going to fight me pound for pound.
Candy introduced me to a photographer in San Diego who agreed to take my pictures. We shot on the beach in Coronado. I was able to calm my nerves by focusing on the professional makeup artist who was working on my face—this was a first, and I was fascinated. When I looked in the mirror afterward, I couldn’t believe Mary Forsbergwas looking back at me. That was the first time I remember thinking, I might be pretty. Even with braces and crooked lips, maybe I had potential.
I don’t know if Barbizon actually made me more confident or taught me how to convince people that I was. Whatever the case, with my mother’s trust and Candy’s guidance, I slowly began to move into the world of my Hotel del Coronado fantasy.
Barbizon holds its annual “Model of the Year” competition in a different city each year, and each regional school chooses which of its students to bring. The year Candy took me, it was in Washington, D.C. I had never been east before—except for the disastrous trip to Tacoma, I’d never been out of San Diego—and I was excited, nervous, and scared. I knew I would fall off the runway or, worse, walk straight off the end of it. I had to do some serious slimming down, too, and my wardrobe needed adjusting, since shorts and flip-flops were not an option. “Why can’t I wear what I want in between competition events?” I asked.
“Because it’s just not a good look, Mary,” Candy said. “The whole idea is to impress and intimidate the competition when you’re off the stage as well as when you’re on it.” That had never occurred to me (I’m glad it occurred to Candy, since the Texas girls brought their A game). The flight was exciting, the images outside the car window were amazing as we rushed from the airport to the hotel, but it was hard to register the details, since everything went past like a video on fast-forward. Although I’d spent time in between homes at motels, I’d never been in a real hotel—the one in D.C. loomedat least twenty stories into the sky. I stared, gaped, and gawked so much I wouldn’t have been surprised if the soundtrack to the Beverly Hillbillies started playing in the background. When I saw some Girl Scouts standing next to a table piled high with boxes of cookies, I loosened up a little. Candy saw my eyes grow to the size of Thin Mints, and she bought some. “For later,” she cautioned. “Once the competition is over, you can eat nine boxes if you want.”
There were perhaps three hundred other girls in various rooms, in various stages of excitement and preparation. I can’t remember actually stepping onto that first runway. That fear has never gone away (full disclosure: I’ve always been relieved that I was often considered too short for runway work). I don’t recall making eye contact with the audience or the judges—I just thought about falling and not falling, and keeping my lips safely clamped down over my metal mouth. And then there were the 1980s outfits that I wore. The funniest was my “athletic look”—a one-piece electric-blue leotard with oversized white leg warmers and a white tank top tied to the side in a knot and slightly cropped. And real Reeboks, with white rolled-down socks. A Sheena Easton/Olivia Newton-John hybrid. I thought I really rocked those poses, alternately bouncing and vamping from one corner of the runway to the other. Only later, when I was a professional myself and actually judged model competitions, did I realize that a Charlie’s Angels pose did not scream high fashion.
There were three different prize categories based on height:
Candy introduced me to a photographer in San Diego who agreed to take my pictures. We shot on the beach in Coronado. I was able to calm my nerves by focusing on the professional makeup artist who was working on my face—this was a first, and I was fascinated. When I looked in the mirror afterward, I couldn’t believe Mary Forsbergwas looking back at me. That was the first time I remember thinking, I might be pretty. Even with braces and crooked lips, maybe I had potential.
I don’t know if Barbizon actually made me more confident or taught me how to convince people that I was. Whatever the case, with my mother’s trust and Candy’s guidance, I slowly began to move into the world of my Hotel del Coronado fantasy.
Barbizon holds its annual “Model of the Year” competition in a different city each year, and each regional school chooses which of its students to bring. The year Candy took me, it was in Washington, D.C. I had never been east before—except for the disastrous trip to Tacoma, I’d never been out of San Diego—and I was excited, nervous, and scared. I knew I would fall off the runway or, worse, walk straight off the end of it. I had to do some serious slimming down, too, and my wardrobe needed adjusting, since shorts and flip-flops were not an option. “Why can’t I wear what I want in between competition events?” I asked.
“Because it’s just not a good look, Mary,” Candy said. “The whole idea is to impress and intimidate the competition when you’re off the stage as well as when you’re on it.” That had never occurred to me (I’m glad it occurred to Candy, since the Texas girls brought their A game). The flight was exciting, the images outside the car window were amazing as we rushed from the airport to the hotel, but it was hard to register the details, since everything went past like a video on fast-forward. Although I’d spent time in between homes at motels, I’d never been in a real hotel—the one in D.C. loomedat least twenty stories into the sky. I stared, gaped, and gawked so much I wouldn’t have been surprised if the soundtrack to the Beverly Hillbillies started playing in the background. When I saw some Girl Scouts standing next to a table piled high with boxes of cookies, I loosened up a little. Candy saw my eyes grow to the size of Thin Mints, and she bought some. “For later,” she cautioned. “Once the competition is over, you can eat nine boxes if you want.”
There were perhaps three hundred other girls in various rooms, in various stages of excitement and preparation. I can’t remember actually stepping onto that first runway. That fear has never gone away (full disclosure: I’ve always been relieved that I was often considered too short for runway work). I don’t recall making eye contact with the audience or the judges—I just thought about falling and not falling, and keeping my lips safely clamped down over my metal mouth. And then there were the 1980s outfits that I wore. The funniest was my “athletic look”—a one-piece electric-blue leotard with oversized white leg warmers and a white tank top tied to the side in a knot and slightly cropped. And real Reeboks, with white rolled-down socks. A Sheena Easton/Olivia Newton-John hybrid. I thought I really rocked those poses, alternately bouncing and vamping from one corner of the runway to the other. Only later, when I was a professional myself and actually judged model competitions, did I realize that a Charlie’s Angels pose did not scream high fashion.
There were three different prize categories based on height:
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