Birdie Rhodes was only thirteen when legendary modeling agent Harriet Goldman discovered her in a department store and transformed her into one of Harriet\u2019s Girls. What followed felt like the start of something incredible, a chance for shy Birdie to express herself in front of the camera. But two years later, she meets a thirty-one-year-old rock star, and her teenage heart falls hard as he leads her into a new life, despite Harriet\u2019s warnings. Then, as abruptly as it began, it\u2019s over, like a lipstick-smeared fever dream. Birdie tries hard to forget that time\u2014starting over in Paris, in the dying embers of the LA punk scene, in Boston at the height of the AIDS crisis. She\u2019s not that person anymore. At least, that\u2019s what she\u2019s been telling herself.<\/p>\n
Decades later,\u00a0Birdie lives a quiet life. She works modest gigs, takes Pilates and mostly keeps to herself. Maybe it\u2019s not the glamor she once envisioned, but it\u2019s peaceful. Comfortable. Then a letter arrives, inviting Birdie to celebrate Harriet\u2019s fifty-year career. Except Birdie hasn\u2019t spoken to her in nearly thirty years\u2014with good reason.<\/p>\n
Almost famous, almost destroyed, Birdie can only make her own future if she reckons with her past\u2014the fame, the trauma, the opportunities she gave up for a man who brought her into a life she wasn\u2019t ready for. Just like she\u2019s not ready now. But the painful truth waits for nobody. Not even Birdie Rhodes.<\/p>\n
The ad is for a multivitamin. Three postmenopausal women friends, doing postmenopausal women yoga, because they get the nutrients they need to stay premenopausal vibrant from this vitamin.<\/p>\n
I know already the yoga will be funny. We are always laughing in these ads, with our fifty-is-the-new-forty humor, unless it\u2019s an ad for erectile dysfunction medication. Those might include laughter too, laughter as foreplay, but there\u2019s at least a 50 percent chance I\u2019ll get to smolder\u2014tastefully, in beige\u2014instead.<\/p>\n
If only it were possible to be signed to an exclusive Cialis contract\u2014those kitchens, bathtubs, cars.<\/p>\n
But today, it is vitamins. Routine hair, routine makeup, routine expensive yoga clothes and accessories. Routine until I see my postmenopausal women friends. One of them I recognize<\/p>\n
from auditions. The other I\u2019m certain I\u2019ve never met until she does a double take. \u201cOh, my god, Birdie Rhodes! Is that you?\u201d<\/p>\n
That name from a stranger\u2019s mouth moves through me like the chill of a ghost. I try to correct her: Elizabeth. She doesn\u2019t hear me.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s me! Sunny! I haven\u2019t seen you since New Orleans\u2014that was, what, forty years ago? My god! Remember those days? I had no idea you were still around too.\u201d<\/p>\n
My first thought is that her too is carrying a lot of weight.<\/p>\n
My second: that I have two choices. I can let this be uncomfortable for me or I can make it uncomfortable for everyone.<\/p>\n
If I focus, if I close my eyes and really think about it, I could probably make myself conjure the job in question. I could make myself remember when.<\/p>\n
But I choose not to. It\u2019s how I\u2019m still here. Forgetting is not always an accident.<\/p>\n
Perhaps I should be more prepared for such things. Perhaps it\u2019s only surprising that it hasn\u2019t happened sooner. But a career like this is not exactly the standard. There are some women who start famous and stay famous, like Brooke Shields, but there are many more who retire into motherhood or pursue other interests, other careers with more stability and that don\u2019t involve the same level of body maintenance and constant rejection. It is a small world, yes, but one that we are constantly dropping ourselves off the face of.<\/p>\n
Sunny turns to the other postmenopausal friend, who does not look very post- and could in fact very well pass for peri-. \u201cWe did this shoot in New Orleans when we were teenagers!<\/p>\n
That photographer was the worst. But those pictures\u2014we had these ridiculous coats. I might be able to find a photo somewhere\u2014you\u2019ve got to see it. And Birdie completely saved the day, she called her\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
See also<\/p>\n
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