Ah, what a lovely day. Another afternoon of delicious sun and Underground Garage and cool bottled water , relaxing outside and reading the latest issue of InStyle magazine. I like InStyle, because they don’t make me feel crappy for not being a ubercoolsuperwoman – they just show me lots of cool clothes and beauty consumables on shiny slick paper. As Andrew Loog Oldham in Colombia via satellite radio reads me excerpts from a book about Allen Ginsburg in India over surf instrumental music, I read about wedge heels and mineral makeup and how to get beachy tousled hair. On page 163, in a section entitled “Life, etc.” I come across the famous supermodel Iman. I looked at her there on the page for a moment, lovely as always, reclining in a black leather chair in a slinky black evening gown and I read the quote from her above it: “Every afternoon I stop to eat some chocolate candy. I need my daily Twix! Or something else with caramel that is way too sweet.”
Iman eats regular supermarket candy bars?? Iman, glamorous jet-setter, married to the possibly even-more-glamorous David Bowie, eats TWIX? Well, how about that. I certainly would have thought that she would only eat little handmade truffles from some decadent chocolatier in New York or London with hazlenuts, peonies, and platinum dust or something like that. Look at me, all wronging. I got to thinking, hey, Iman is probably somewhere around my age and I like chocolate and David Bowie…maybe she and I have more things in common! So using the InStyle article and Wikipedia, I decided to do a little comparison:
Iman is seven years older than I am, and 4 1/2” taller. We both wear a Size 8 shoe. She wears a size smaller dress and I have bigger mams. She was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, and I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – Mogadishu and Milwaukee both start with the letter “M” and have 9 letters. She has three children (one a step) and I have three children (all personally delivered by me). She has an 8-year-old daughter who likes to draw flowers, and I have a 6-year-old daughter who likes to draw flowers. She is professionally mononymous, and so am I, sort of, if I were professional. She is Muslim and I am atheist. Iman speaks five languages fluently (Arabic, English, French, Italian, and Somali) and I speak English and toddler-level Spanish.
Hmm. Hmmmmmmm. I think I will now look at some of the InStyle questions, and see how she and I match up there:
You always travel a lot and you take…
Iman: Flip-flops…Brooks Brothers men’s PJ’s…and I love caftans…
Marianne: Flip-flops hurt my toes, and I drown in men’s PJ’s and caftans. I pack five thousand pairs of similar-looking jeans, a hoodie, and an extra suitcase in case I want to buy more jeans.
But normally…
Iman: Everything is tailored within an inch of its life! I never want to look like one of the boys, so my clothes are always form-fitting. My husband likes it too.
Marianne: I never wear anything tailored, and do not even know a tailor. My clothes are “form-fitting” because they are usually just tight, and maybe sometimes look like a disturbingly-curvy boy. I don’t know if David Bowie likes that.
What are you proudest of?
Iman: Besides my family, my Global Chic line for the Home Shopping Network.
Marianne: Besides my family, my Diarrhea Island line for Carnival Cruise Lines.
What’s surprising about you?
Iman: I’m a very good homemaker.
Marianne: I’m a very terrible homemaker.
What music is on at home?
Iman: We enjoy Arcade Fire, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone – and Rufus Wainwright is just delicious.
Marianne: Garage rock from mid-‘60s Thailand, White Denim, Wilco, Dinosaur Jr., Tiny Masters Of Today, and if Iman is really supercool I could sell her my Rufus concert tickets for November.
If you could be in any movie, what would it be?
Iman: George Cukor’s The Women. Those girls were marvelous. Or How To Marry A Millionaire, just to have the clothes.
Marianne: The Red Balloon, so I could save the balloon and kick the asses of all those French bullies.
So what did I learn here? Well, I did reconfirm that I am not a beautiful model with a rock star husband, that I am a crappy hausfrau and linguistically-bereft, and that I am short, lacking in femininity, and no entrepreneur. But hey – Iman and I still both like chocolate and David Bowie AND we could share shoes! I think that is a really good start to a nice friendship.
Coffee, Iman? I’ll score you a Twix bar too, and won’t ever bring up “The Laughing Gnome.”
© Copyright 2008- Marianne Spellman