My Body(22)
I knew what she meant. I also wanted to be someone men like that couldn’t dismiss. While I wasn’t at all interested in becoming a girlboss type, I figured it would be stupid to use my body to promote some rich guy’s bikini line instead of my own.
One of my favorite pieces of art is by a woman named Hannah Black. She’s mostly a writer, but she occasionally creates work that is political, and the one that I love is an audio recording. You can hear it online—it’s accessible to everyone. The whole piece is comprised of famous women singers, mainly black, singing the words “my body” over and over. Rihanna, Beyoncé, Whitney. The two-second clips play on a loop: “My body. My body! My bow-day!”
“My body!” I sang out loud in my best Rihanna voice, thinking of Hannah Black’s piece as I stepped into the water, adjusting my wet bikini bottom to wedge it farther up my ass. The image of Halle Berry emerging from the surf in Die Another Day came to mind. Halle Berry was hot, I thought, yet she only managed to win an Oscar by making herself look ugly, in Monster’s Ball. I remembered what my agent had told me. “If you want people to think of you as a good actress, you’re going to need to get ugly.” She’d said it as if it were obvious. I felt a sudden urge to cover myself up.
Just a month earlier, Jessica had sent me a quote of Halle’s via DM. “My looks haven’t spared me one hardship,” it read.
“The funny thing abt this is at first it really pissed me off bc he-llo HALLE BERRY!?” Jessica had written. “But then I started thinking about your life and how I’d assumed you had everything I could ever want bc of the way you look. But obviously I now know that’s not true. It’s not true for any woman! Even if you’re Halle fucking Berry. As a woman I’m always thinking if only my ass was a little tighter or my nose was a little smaller my whole life would be different if only I made myself more appealing to men.”
Bc he-llo HALLE BERRY, I repeated in my head. Did this vacation perfectly disprove Halle’s point? But then why did I feel so uneasy? The contract I’d signed with the hotel lurked in the back of my mind. I was dizzy—from the alcohol or the sun, I wasn’t sure.
Back in my chair, I opened Instagram to a new post from a young actor. She was wearing a turtleneck dress, with her brown hair parted neatly to the side like a 1940s movie star, a diamond stud in her ear. She was beautiful, this girl, Rachel. I’d known her for several years, from way back when she was blond. We’d met on the set of a catalog job for a big clothing company.
I liked her right away, even though I found her attitude a bit too chirpy. Work was work to me, not fun, even if the shoot was glamorous, but she was energetic and chatty, trying hard to charm the client and the other models. She sipped Evian through a straw as she told me all about her stepfather, a man thirty years her mother’s senior and one of the biggest actors of my parents’ generation. When she went to the bathroom, the hairdresser tsk-tsked, curling my hair around a hot iron and muttering acidly, to me or maybe to himself, “Of course Daddy is famous.” I watched Rachel in the reflection of the mirror as she returned, meeting my eyes, her full lips parted in a smile.
I next saw her at a fancy Hollywood party. We sat together for a moment at the edge of the dance floor, as she talked about her burgeoning acting career. “I mean, it sucks, anyone who googles me, the first thing they see are my tits in a bikini photoshoot from, like, four years ago.” Rachel seemed shockingly childlike at times, prone to spurts of animated excitement—the way she bounced around the party asking anyone and everyone how her hair looked. At other moments, she seemed older and more composed, never missing a beat with social cues, her smile and cadence perfectly timed and delivered.
Her eyes scanned the party as she continued, “I mean you’re lucky, with your whole political thing, being outspoken and supporting Bernie, all that stuff, I think people take you more seriously,” she went on, generously.
No one takes me seriously, I wanted to whisper, but she was up and off again, screaming and sprinting toward an arriving guest.
I watched Rachel’s transformation over the years via Instagram. The turtleneck dress seemed like a culmination: no more sexy stuff for her. Is that the way to be taken seriously? I wondered. Covering up your body and dressing like you’re going to see the Queen of England? Would this ensure a career with longevity? Maybe, but it didn’t seem fair that she should have to start wearing sweaters and dyeing her hair brown to be considered serious.
A large group approached from the left side of the long white beach. Four women, all dressed in long-sleeved black tops and pants and skirts and headscarves, talked among themselves, gazing down at their feet in the sand. They walked behind a group of men who were smoking and drinking out of big glasses like mine; they were shirtless and in short swimming trunks. The women stopped at the water’s edge and sat in a row in the surf, their clothing instantly heavy with the weight of the water. The black fabric pooled around them. I watched their silhouettes against the bright sand and the big blue sky. They had their backs to me, gesturing to one another and only occasionally glancing toward the men, who were now at the bar. I wondered what they were talking about, there at the place where the land meets the sea.
I refreshed my post. “One million likes and counting.” I turned to S, smiling a goofy grin.
He laughed and shook his head, then returned to his science fiction book.