Hostile Makeover (5 page)

“Sounds like you’re more up-to-date than I am. I thought pink was actually pink. Silly me.”

Lacey did not blame Cassandra for her disdain. She had felt the same way before she inherited the accursed fashion beat from the former fashion editor, Mariah “the Pariah” Morgan, who had very inconveniently died in her chair at her keyboard and practiced her rigor mortis for some hours before anyone noticed she wasn’t typing, or moving, or breathing, or finishing her feature for the next day’s edition. Just as Mac was realizing the ramifications of not having a warm body in the fashion chair, junior hard-news reporter L. B. “Lacey” Smithsonian had wandered through his field of vision wearing something that looked like an actual style statement: instant fashion reporter.

Mac had no conception of fashion, other than dreadful descriptions of dreary Washington dresses wrapped around department-store advertising. But he also was a man of swift decisions, and Lacey was soon shanghaied to the fashion beat, kicking and screaming, where she demanded at least the dignity of a chair in which no one had died. Now she had the pleasure of listening to others who thought they were superior to her because they had better news assignments and loftier moral opinions—and prematurely serious wardrobes in festive shades of beige, gray, and taupe. And Mariah’s death chair was still there, floating around the newsroom like the Ancient Mariner. The last time Lacey had seen it, Wiedemeyer had commandeered it for a meeting.

However, after a few years on the fashion beat and some exciting forays into the darker side of dressing oneself, Lacey was beginning to understand her beat on a new level. Fashion could be a kind of peephole into a person’s psyche.

Lacey examined Cassandra’s style vibe over her coffee cup and saw that she was all about being taken seriously, from her straight middle-part haircut to her horn-rimmed glasses and shapeless burlap-brown sack of a dress that hid her thin frame. Heaven forbid that makeup should offend the intellectual purity of the sallow complexion, the pale lashes, or the lily-livered lips. She was plain to start with and clearly proud of continuing the tradition.

“I’m interviewing Amanda Manville.” Cassandra looked blank, so Lacey continued. “She was a noted ugly duckling who underwent some radical plastic surgery on
The Chrysalis Factor,
that reality makeover show a couple of years back. Now she’s a celebrity supermodel.” Cassandra blinked, wide-eyed, and for just a moment Lacey thought that perhaps a makeover might uncover even her hidden attributes. But then Cassandra’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.
Nah. Hidden too deep,
Lacey concluded.

Cassandra shuddered. “That is just so wrong on so many levels.”

“What, being a supermodel?”

“The whole plastic-surgery-on-television thing, mocking people for their looks, turning women into these plastic caricatures of themselves.”

“It changed her life.”

“And what does that tell us?” Cassandra editorialized. “That we have to be beautiful to be successful?”

“But those shows have done other things, good things. They’ve corrected birth defects, cleft palates, facial deformities,” Lacey protested, wondering why she was even bothering to argue with Cassandra.
It’s the caffeine talking.

“For the cheap entertainment of millions.” Cassandra’s disdain was palpable.

Lacey stared into her hot coffee. She remembered her eyes tearing up when a woman on
The Chrysalis Factor
saw her beautiful new mouth and teeth for the first time in her life.
You’re a wuss, Smithsonian,
she scolded herself. And Lacey had cried for the women who had reconstructive surgery after breast cancer. She suddenly realized she had cried over Amanda Manville’s amazing transformation as well.
Too wussy to be a hard-news reporter?

“It is immoral,” Cassandra stated plainly. “God, Smithsonian, how can you be so complicit in this evil?”

“I’m being paid for it. But what about our innate love of beauty? It’s hardwired into our brains,” Lacey protested. “Even yours.”
She’ll love that one.

“Speak for yourself, Ms. S.” Cassandra Wentworth had enough moral superiority for an entire newsroom of reporters, Lacey wanted to say, but didn’t. She figured it was tough enough being Cassandra: Everything she did, or said, or put into her mouth presented a morally or politically correct decision—whether to eat white bread or wheat, take the Metro or drive, buy animal cruelty-free products or torture small furry creatures for the sake of a little blush on her cheeks. And her editorials, did anybody read them?
Not even Mac on a slow news day, I bet.

“Have a pleasant day, Cassandra,” she said to the rigid figure who was stalking out of the kitchen in righteous indignation.

But before she left, Cassandra turned to her and moaned, “How can you be blithe when there is so much poverty in the world?”

Lacey shrugged and returned to her desk to reread a file of news clips about Amanda Manville—and to try to banish Cassandra’s depressing oracle of the moral depravity of wanting to bring the world a little more beauty. Lacey’s snarky “Crimes of Fashion” column certainly had more readers than Cassandra’s editorials. But if Cassandra Wentworth was the new look the paper was going for, Lacey knew her fashion beat was in no danger of ever being taken seriously at
The Eye Street Observer.

Lacey felt like exploring Cassandra’s lament with a small bite of copy, a “Fashion Bite,” to be exact, which allowed her to toss off brief and brash fashion opinions in print. She was sure her editor thought of these as “bite-sized” fashion columns. Lacey preferred to think of “Fashion Bites” as a complete sentence, with a subject and a verb.

“Makeover Madness” wasn’t quite enough to fill a whole “Crimes of Fashion” column, Lacey decided, but it would be perfect for a “Fashion Bite.” Maybe, she thought, she should thank Cassandra for the inspiration?
Nah, no way.

Chapter 4

Amanda Manville was the quintessential ugly-duckling-into-swan transformation. On Lacey’s beat that was newsworthy enough. But of particular interest to a Washington fashion reporter, as oxy-moronic as Lacey knew that phrase to be, was that Amanda came from a neat and green neighborhood in Northwest D.C., and she had returned home to the District to unveil her new line of clothing, rather than doing the usual runway debut in New York. Her collection was called Chrysalis in honor of the TV show that had changed her life. Lacey figured her debut might raise the glamour level of the habitually seriously dressed District of Columbia.
This week, anyway. Next week it’ll be back to beige.

Amanda was a modern-day miracle, a testament to what could be done with willing raw material, a team of highly skilled surgeons, and unlimited network-television money. Of course, if she had stayed plain, gawky Mandy Manville, she would be checking groceries at the local Safeway and living in the shadow of her pretty older sister, Zoe. But the magic of
The Chrysalis Factor
happened instead. The news stories in Lacey’s clipping file recapped Amanda’s unexpected journey to supermodel. Amanda’s publicist had also sent her a video press kit on DVD, but thirty seconds of jump-cut images and thumping disco had threatened to cause a migraine, so she pulled the plug and returned to the clippings.

Although Lacey was not a fan of reality television shows, she had gotten hooked on the endless waves of ultimate-makeover shows, the ones in which the plain and homely, left behind because of their looks, were offered the chance to change their appearance and their lives for the better, presumably forever.
The Chrysalis Factor
had been one of the most sensational—and sentimental. It was like
This Is Your Life
meets the surgeon’s scalpel. Lacey remembered the episodes that featured Amanda’s transformation.

In high school Amanda suffered with the nickname “Ostrich.” The crueler kids taunted her to hide her face in the sand. Her sister, Zoe, pretty in a wholesome, blond, and freckled way, was a cheerleader, while Amanda never had a date until college. Zoe Manville told the TV audience it was terrible to listen to the taunts her sister endured. It was so hard to be “the pretty one.” They wept together for the cameras.

Amanda’s pain was so naked on TV that the nation (and Lacey) wept with her. And she was so sweet. Amanda worked as a volunteer at a battered-women’s shelter, and she even had a boyfriend, Caleb Collingwood, who loved her, he said, “for her beautiful soul.” Caleb was a gentle guy, just as homely as Ostrich. They met while dishing up soup side by side at the shelter. With his oversize hawk nose, receding chin, pale hazel eyes, and scraggly mud-brown hair he was a perfect match for her. As Miguel had said: “Too ugly to live.” They were already engaged when Amanda was being considered for the show, so she was selected from among thousands of hopeful applicants for one of a special series of episodes: the “Wedding Belle Makeover.”

The premakeover Amanda was nearly six feet tall and skinny as spaghetti, except for a rather disproportionate bottom. On top, she was a double-A bra size—when she inhaled. Her skin was blotchy, her teeth wandered around her mouth in a Picasso-esque way, her eyes were hooded, her nose enormous, and her chin nonexistent. The doctors chipped her nose down to size. They cut away the extra skin from her eyes. They also implanted a pert chin and a pair of solid C-cup breasts, and sculpted her bottom with liposuction. The smile makers restored her teeth. Dermatologists tackled her skin with scalpels and lasers, and stylists selected her wardrobe, dyed her hair, and applied her makeup. She weathered a rocky postoperative stage, with massive bruising, swelling, and lingering infections. She was not a pretty sight, and she often wondered aloud if she had made the right decision, a poignant uncertainty that the cameras caught for the sniffling television audience. Lacey knew she wasn’t the only one reaching for another tissue.

She recalled the moments leading up to the “big reveal.” The distinguished and handsome lead plastic surgeon, Dr. Gregory Spaulding, said he had never seen such a dramatic change through surgery. Captivated by his own work, Spaulding called Amanda his masterpiece in front of the cameras, which also captured the first hint that Amanda had fallen in love with her surgeon.

Amanda’s infatuated glance traveled from her image in the mirror to Spaulding to Caleb Collingwood—and a sudden shock of dismay showed in her eyes. She quickly covered it up with her new big, white porcelain smile. But Lacey and everyone watching saw that look and knew in an instant that it was all over for him. Caleb Collingwood dropped out of sight, and the wedding never happened.