Barbi Does Miami

mostly from my oxymoronic years between Miami and Milford

Monthly Archives: February 2010


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the synopsis

barbi does cosmo

Why, after writing three hundred pages and 65,000 words of a complete novel is it impossible to say what its about in a few hundred words? The synopsis is due and I am procrastinating. My bio too. Also hard. Like who am I? Who do I want to be? Which part is appealing, which picture, which part of my life will draw editors and readers to me instead of evoke who-does-she-think-she-is disgust?

Really!

Don’t people hate ex-models? Aren’t models supposed to be seen and not heard? Apparently Tyra Banks’ agent said, when Tyra first pitched Americas Next Top Model, let face it models are just not very sympathetic characters thats why people don’t want to know about them. Well wasn’t he wrong. Turns out people love to see pretty wannabe models be humiliated, cry and then bitch about it. But thats beside my point. Actually it isn’t. I’m fascinated by the whole beauty culture. I was submerged in it for ages, so deep that I had no perspective.

Now that I’m older and live on the fashion periphery I see.

mama barbi

More clearly.

For instance I see the whole anti-aging mania. I had lunch with a woman last Friday, an ex-model,  who said that she represented the anti-aging institute here in Miami.  How cool, I tought, an institute that supports aging in a positive way. WRONG! It was a botox, lift, nip and tuck center, and might as well be called the How To Hide That You’re Aging Institute. See thats my point. Our culture is not as much about being young as it’s about apppearing young when you’re not anymore. I was right smack in the middle of it this. Yet I never  grasped ( I was a stupid model)  the reasoning and consequences  of each youthful, laughing, leaping with happyness at the sheer pretty-ness of my existence photograph I took, to sell products by pretending that I was onto something that other women were not but might be if they bought into what I was wearing, drinking, smoking etc. Not a clue. I just smiled and leapt and took the fat check home. As for being sexy in those pictures, well you may be happy to hear that it never got me any sex. I’ll debunk this while I’m at it. Men were terrified of the Cosmo cover girl. I could stand alone at parties with hundreds of hot guys and the only ones trying to pick me up were greasy midgets with Greek shipping magnate names like Spiros. But I’m not getting to the synopsis. Not at all. In fact I’m still effectively procrastinating.

Although the novel is about all of the above, its also not. Its about sex and beauty and fashion and Calvin Klein and Kate Moss and Paris and fifty looming and losing weight and adultery and French mistresses and family and a BlackBerry and falling apart. Its more than that and its different than that. Less of a rant, more of a story. Like is it a love story? Kinda. Is it a story of self discovery? (yawn) Kinda. Is it about me? Yes and no.

So now you’re thinking, then what the fuck is it Barbi? Like if you dont know then how are we supposed to know?

You will. I promise. I’m just kicking up dust and see what settles. Using you and this blog-thing to get my head from the story to  an advertising-copy sized essence of what took me 65,000 casual self-effacing words into something  that now needs to read like the self-important blurb at the supermarket check out.

Suggestions are most welcome and also see poll below…


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DASH – ing

Iona's self portrait

If every principal was like Stacey Mancuso the world would be a better place.
I’m writing this from the courtyard of DASH, the Design & Architecture Senior High School. Its awesome. Like really awesome. Like I wanna go here when I grow up. I now know that I never appreciated school, never, not even college in London, St Martins, Harrow, The Royal College of Art. But I’d really appreciate it now. Especially DASH. Iona is auditioning as I write this. And I’m having Couvade ( that’s when men get contraction pains when their wife is in labor) I’m having I wanna get into this school contractions, and like Iona I’m everso nervous for the audition. Poor Iona. Am I projecting? Bad mother!
So back to Stacey, and I’m not sucking up (yes, she’s funny and glamorous too) she just gets it. She gets kids, teenagers, what they need, how they’ll be their best when super motivated, super engaged, super challenged.

Never bored!

Iona’s Middle School teachers do NOT get it. They are angry. They punish. They fail to engage. Kids sleep in class. They text, listen to their I-pods. Like the gym teacher, who releases the entire class into the sports-field without any directions. She then disappears, sits around lazily, and the kids hang around in the grass, chat and listen to music. Then she suddenly stalks and punishes them by taking their music/ Ipod away. For a week, and if your parents complain she threatens, I’ll keep it for the rest of the school-year.
I want to complain but then they’ll be punished by doing one hundred push-ups without any sense that what they’re doing is for any other reason than breeding resentment.

So thats why I want Iona to go to a highs school like DASH. A place that sees teenagers as an endless source of creative posibility and not as juvenile delinquents. So wish her luck, fingers crossed and even send a little prayer if its not too much to ask.

Iona paints friend Josirus


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super bore sunday miami

mark ellwood

Audi super bowl party tonight at W penthouse with large outdoor deck only it rained so deck was closed for fear of ten inch heels slipping and diving down side of building. All of us cramped inside the PH suite with model renta crowd and two celebs as in Hillary Swank and Kate Walsh, going mostly unnoticed. Then onto the pool area where I met Mark Ellwood from Plum TV, celebrating his bday and talking about models, amazon models. It was that kind of night when mini mini skirts are more rampant than dead-from-frost lizards and husband remembers why we moved here in the first place and I remember why I stopped going… like why would anyone have a six foot sultry greeter in them ten inch heels at the door in a teensy black lace dress? She must’ve made at least 50% of party guests, as in women, turn and go home to hide under the covers hugging their teddy bears and pondering non-compete pre-nups. Tomorrow: twins have a treasure hunt birthday party at the Aventura mall, is this somehow an oxymoron? And one wonders: Twenty little girls running for clues and competing for treasure in a huge mall? Safe? Day before Super Bowl? Crowded? Lost little girls? I’m volunteering to chaperone…
Then another mini skirt leggy poolside affair at the Raleigh. Its party time again in Miami and I feel like Jon Stewart on Bill O’Reilly….I’m not scared….

barbi