Let Down Your Hair (25 page)

My eyes filled unexpectedly. I fought back the tears, but a single one managed to escape. Ryan watched it slide down my cheek, a strange expression on his face.

“There’s not much market for any of those things,” he said, sounding cautious. “Not enough people are interested.”

“I can think of two people who’ll be very interested.” More tears escaped, and I tried to swab them away.

“Only
two?
” he asked, with a glimmer of his old humor.

“Down the corridor. In the hospital nursery. Waiting for us to give them names.”

I met his gaze, weeping but defiant, and something changed in his eyes. The dull, defeated look faded away, as if a cloud was starting to lift.

Only a quarter of the girls in their mid-teens at Belfort College had their parents’ permission to draw a naked woman. Still robed, I set up a circle of easels as they worked cross-legged on the floor. Freya and I had given them a grid of eight life drawings of women very different in shape. The girls’ job was to comment in whatever way they wanted. In previous workshops, we’d seen girls make up biographies for each woman, rank their figures from “best” to “worst” and detail how each one should dress.

“Is everyone ready?” I said.

A murmur of assent.

“Who’d like to start?” said Freya.

The outspoken girl who’d talked the most so far shot her hand in the air. “Angela?”

Angela stood up, pushing her hair self-consciously behind one ear. “Um, yeah, so I thought I looked most like this one.” She pointed at sketch number three.

Number three was Josefina, who was twenty-five, with generous breasts and hips. Angela was busty, but the body in her too-short uniform was at least two sizes smaller.

“Can you explain why you chose number three?” I said.

“She’s got big boobs, I guess, and they’re sagging, like mine are starting to. I mean, God, I’m only fifteen, and they’re
already sagging!
By the time I’m twenty they’ll be down around my ankles!”

The other girls chuckled, with a nervous glance or two at the front of their uniforms.

“Then there’s my hips.
Oh my God
. I swear they’re taking over the world.”

Another chuckle as they looked for my response. “Any thoughts on the other models’ bodies?”

Angela gave a short laugh. “I can tell you which body I’d
like
to have.”

“Which one?”

Angela rolled her eyes, as if this was too obvious to need pointing out. “Number six.”

Most of the girls nodded emphatically. Two shrugged, as if to say they were above this sort of exercise. The remaining two looked at the floor, shoulders stiff and lips pressed together. Angela sat, and one by one the girls nominated the sketch they thought they resembled, describing their “flaws” with such vehemence it was like watching someone cut themselves. Everyone cited number six as the body they wanted to have.

The second last girl sat, and we looked at Kim, who hadn’t spoken yet. Kim was the largest of the girls, and so far she hadn’t said a word. When we all turned her way, she hugged her knees to her face, as if she wanted to hide behind them. She’d placed all the sketches face-down on the carpet. “Do I have to answer?” she said, sounding on the verge of tears.

My heart ached for her. “You don’t have to,” I said gently, crouching at her side, “but we’d like to hear what you have to say.”

“Well, I know what you’re all thinking.” Her voice was hostile and trembling. “You’re all thinking number
seven
, aren’t you?”

Number seven was Rose, a flamboyant woman who posed with feathers and flowers. She made her own clothes, which had a touch of the burlesque: jewels, fringed gypsy skirts and sequinned velvet dresses. She was at least size 22.

“I hire number seven once or twice a month,” said Freya. “She’s a great model. She sews her own clothes and sells them in her online boutique. I’ll put up a link to her style blog.”

Freya wrote Rose’s URL on the whiteboard, and the other girls copied it down. After a minute or two, Kim uncurled and did the same.

“So,” I said, sitting back on the edge of the table. “Everyone said they wanted to look like number six. Why’s that?”

When no one volunteered an answer, Angela gave a worldly, knowing shrug. “
Everyone
wants to look like that,” she said. “Blonde hair, long legs, tiny waist, perfect boobs. If you look like that, you can have anything you want.”

Freya raised an eyebrow. “How do you mean
anything?
”

“You know,
anything
.” Angela’s hands made an extravagant circle in the air. “You could be a model or a movie star. Date the hottest guys on the planet. Marry someone rich so you can live in luxury and never have to work.”

I smiled wryly to myself. When the twins were born, I’d sent Emmeline a photo and told her she was welcome to visit. Since then she’d turned up a few times a year, with baby clothes and bright, defensive smiles. She’d taken up modeling again, playing mom in shots for department store catalogues. The last time we’d spoken, she’d met a new man, and was angling to move into his condominium. He played golf at the same club as Dirk, who’d replaced Emmeline with a younger blonde a few weeks after they split.

“Is that what you want to do?” I asked.

“Well,
yeah,
” said Angela, shaking her head at so stupid a question. “Who wouldn’t?”

Freya raised an eyebrow. “What’s it like, being a model or an actor?”

The other girls sat up, eager to fill me in.
You fly around the world and designers send you beautiful clothes. You get to be in movies and have any guy you want. Everyone looks up to you and wants to be you. Or be with you. 

“But that’s not a
good
thing,” said Mia. She was small and determined, and rolled her eyes a lot, implying that her peers were silly children. “That means fans hassle you all the time, and paparazzi follow you with cameras.”

“So you wouldn’t want to be a rich, beautiful celebrity?” said Angela, with an eye roll of her own. “Yeah,
right
.”

“Of course I don’t want to be a
celebrity
,” said Mia, in scornful tones. “Celebrities are bimbos with boob jobs and drug habits.”

Angela took an outraged breath, and I hastily stepped in. “But you’d still like to look like one?”

Mia shrugged. “I suppose so. Everyone wants to be pretty.”

I smiled to myself again and cranked up the data projector. “Let me show you something,” I said. “Model number six was me, four years ago.”

I clicked the mouse, and a picture from my photo shoot with Fabian de Carlo came up. In it, I was wearing Emmeline’s polka-dot bikini and looking over one raised shoulder. The girls gasped, impressed and envious.

“I used to work as a fashion model,” I said, not mentioning that I quit my first job. “I did a shoot for La Carina.”

They listened avidly as I told them about the shoot. How we’d posed outside in lingerie on a cold autumn morning, ogled and bullied by the crew. How I found a model their age crying in the toilets, convinced that she needed liposuction.

“Most fashion models are really insecure about their bodies. Everyone zones in on your looks and your weight, and one pound or pimple can mean you don’t get work.”

I put up an ad from the shoot I’d taken part in, letting the girls think about what went on behind the scenes.

“Let’s talk more about what you want in life. Who’d like to get married one day?”

All of the girls raised their hands, including Mia, who’d announced that she knew she was a lesbian at ten. “By the time I want to get married,” she said, “gay marriage will be legal. And if it isn’t, I’ll fight until it is.”

Two girls applauded, one looked repulsed and one said, “You go, girl!”

“How about kids?” I said, clicking back to me in a bikini and heading for the circle of easels. “Who wants kids?” Eight hands went up, some more certainly than others.

“Great. Now. You see that photo? Six months later, I gave birth to twins.”

I threw my robe open, letting them take in my limp, hanging breasts, my stretchmarks, and the saggy, crinkled apron of skin that hung from my stomach into a full complement of curly pubic hair. These days I kept my legs and armpits bare, but I avoided Brazilians, because they were embarrassing, painful and gave me ingrown hairs.

A horrified hush descended. The changes in my body were a terrifying reminder that no matter how much you went to the gym and how little you ate, you were never safe. That even a beautiful young woman was only a pregnancy or a decade or two away from Not Being Pretty.

“Oh my God,” said Angela, whites showing around her eyes. “I take it all back. I’m not having kids. Not
ever
.”

Ignoring the gasps from my audience, I put my hands behind me on the stool and leaned back. “Why not, Angela?”

“If it does
that
to your body, it’s not worth it.”

“
Angela!
” shrieked one of the other girls, genuinely aghast.

Angela flushed, belatedly realizing how this had sounded. “I mean,” said Angela, trying to make amends, “I’m not saying that you look
bad
now or anything, I just mean you … you were so beautiful, and … and …”

“Give it up, Angela,” said one of the others.

By now, every eye in the room was on me, waiting for me to cry, or flee the room, or at least tell Angela off. One or two girls had covered their faces, and the rest were making sympathetic faces and gestures, convinced I must be devastated.

I held up a calm hand. “Let Angela finish.”

Angela bit her lip, almost purple with embarrassment. “I just meant that if I looked like that, I’d do anything to stay that way. Exercise, surgery, abortion,
anything
.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “You think my life would be better if I still looked like that picture?”

Angela opened her mouth, shut it, and looked at the floor. Around her, the other girls avoided my eyes, too uncomfortable to speak. Shocked as they were, they agreed with Angela. When they drew me, most would slim me down, remove my pubic hair, restore my shape to pre-baby perk. Photoshop by pencil. Some might even congratulate me on being so “brave”, or offer suggestions on how to regain my figure. But all of them had now seen at least one woman who was comfortable enough with her imperfect body to pose nude for people to draw.

“Looking like a model—” I gestured at the slide, “—didn’t give me a wonderful life. I got a lot of attention, which was fun when I felt safe and confident, but creepy and stressful when I didn’t. Sleazy, pushy men, staring and commenting and trying to touch me. Resentful women, making loud comments about how I was dumb and arrogant and probably starving myself. Now I have a career I’m passionate about, two beautiful kids, and a partner who loves me for myself. A man who wants me as a lover and companion, instead of flaunting me like a wearable sex toy. These things have made me much, much happier than looking like a fashion model.”

The girls sat in deep, fermenting silence.

“I won’t lie to you,” I added. “Pretty girls get unfair advantages. But life doesn’t end at thirty, or forty, or whenever you can’t play the pretty game any more. Less pretty girls often end up happier later on, because they learn a lot younger to base their relationships and confidence on things that last longer than their looks.”

Freya set the timer. “OK girls,” she said, “let’s do some drawing. Sage is going to do four five-minute poses. Grab your pencils and I’ll come around and give you tips.”

I settled into a pose that allowed me to study the girls’ expressions. Two of them—beautiful alpha girls with long glossy hair—were ignoring me and talking, perhaps about the lame, preachy workshop the school made them do. One was checking Facebook on her cell phone. But the rest were looking intently from me to their sketchbooks, their faces unsettled but hopeful.

Our cottage was three blocks from Freya and Brett’s, and backed onto the same forest. Instead of ferns, it was surrounded by fruit trees, with plums and apricots bobbing in the windows.

Between tutoring, life modeling and short shifts at Molehill, we’d scraped through our first year with the twins. When they turned one, a Colombian student began babysitting for us in exchange for help with academic English. Ryan started work on a portfolio for publishers; Freya and I designed body image workshops for girls in high school. Two years later, we were bringing in enough to run a car and rent a house of our own.

I opened the front door and the smell of baking pastry poured out. As I slipped my workshop folder on the sideboard, the twins came thundering down the hall. A child latched onto each of my legs, with an unselfconscious love that lit me up inside.

“Mom!” shouted Zoe, tugging at my finger. “Look what Daddy made!”

I heaved my son on one hip, and let my daughter tow me down the hallway. Zoe had my surname and Ryan’s buoyant hair; Lucas was a “Prince”, but his hair was fine and very fair.

“Hey!” said Ryan, bounding over. I just had time to register his King of Wands tarot card T-shirt before he grabbed me in an exuberant hug. “How’d it go? Bikini shot still working its magic?”

“Like a wand.” I fitted my face into the crook of his neck. “Why the King of Wands? Have you taken the throne?”

He hooked his arm through mine as if I were blind, his face suspiciously gleeful. “All will be clear, sagacious girl. Close your eyes and I’ll lead you to my masterpiece.”

I shut my eyes obligingly and he propeled me down the corridor.

“Open your eyes.”

The entire kitchen table was covered by a castle made from pale orange bricks of cantaloupe. The towers at each corner had figs on top, like edible minarets, and a moat made from blueberries encircled it. Beyond the moat he’d built a castle garden, with finely chopped honeydew grass. On this grew shrubs with grape leaves and strawberry flowers, and trees with kiwifruit trunks and autumn leaves made from apricot, among which wove a winding path of apple-slice cobblestones. It looked amazing.

“Fantastic,” I said with enthusiasm. “We should start a business sideline in fruit sculpture. Did you take photos?”

“One from every angle,” confessed Ryan, and I chuckled.

Lucas pointed solemnly at a shrub. “I helped you, didn’t I Dad?”

“You did,” said Ryan, adjusting a piece of strawberry. “You and Zoe picked all the grapes off the stalk for me.”

Zoe circled the table like a shark, uninterested in claiming credit. “Can we eat it, Dad? I want to eat it
now
.”

“Not yet, Zoe. We’ll eat it for dessert, OK?”

“O-K.” She rushed off to her bedroom, and Lucas picked up a picture book and settled on a beanbag in the corner.

I popped a leftover grape in my mouth. “So what’s baking?”

“A big, macho quiche. The type real men eat with their inch-thick steak.” He tweaked a fig and stood back to admire his handiwork. “There’s mail, by the way. Up on the kitchen bench.”

I inched around the castle to the oddly shaped parcel, and the old university logo caught my eye. Next to the parcel sat an envelope, with
Department of Womyn’s Studies
printed in the corner. A twinge of apprehension flickered through me.

When the twins were two, Fran had passed on a letter from a lawyer, saying Andrea had dropped all charges. As a gesture of thanks, I’d told Fran to pass on my address, but we’d had no word until now.

I slit the envelope with a butter knife and pulled out a cream card embossed with swirly gold words that took me three stunned readings to take in.

“So what’s the letter?” said Ryan, sounding mischievous. “Best wishes from Andrea?”

“Actually,” I said, “it is. Sort of. It’s an invitation to her retirement party.”

I’d expected Andrea to keep on working until they wheeled her out in a coffin. The thought of her with cupcakes and a giant farewell card was so bizarre that I searched for a note to say it was a joke. But there was only the card, with no personal message, formal as a wedding invitation.

“She’s
retiring?
” Ryan sounded as astonished as me, and he’d only met her once. Under less than favorable conditions.

“Apparently.”

“And she’s invited you to her
farewell party?
”

“Not just me,” I said. “Take a look.”

Next to the swirly gold
To
was printed
Sage Rampion and family
. We stood by the castle and boggled. I could understand why Andrea might invite me. I was a Women’s Studies graduate, and knew lots of the staff and students. But in Andrea’s one encounter with Ryan, she’d maced him, hit him, accused him of rape, and pressed charges against him.

“I wonder who she’ll appoint as her successor?” I mused aloud.

Of the two deputy Heads, Madhu and Hilda, Hilda had by far the better publication record. She’d published in every reputable feminist journal in the English language, and most of the German ones. She’d also exhibited her strange, menstrual collages in galleries all round the world. When I told Ryan about her, he’d laughed and said he should jump on the bandwagon, make a few collages from stubble and used condoms. So far he hadn’t exhibited at a big enough gallery to satisfy him, but sales of his T-shirts were booming online, and he’d just got a deal for illustrating his first children’s picture book.

Ryan reached for the oil and vinegar and started mixing a salad dressing. “Fran might know. Or we could go to the party and find out.”

“Should we? It’s 5 pm Friday week.”

He grinned. “Maybe we should. It’s about time I saw my grandmother-in-law again. This time without a can of Mace in my eyes.”

“You might want to wear safety goggles, just in case.”

“Or dress in drag. She’d never dare to mace me then. That would be transphobia.”

We both laughed.

“God,” said Ryan. “Why the hell has she invited
me?
”

I stuck the card to the fridge among the finger paintings, and came up with an answer to this question. Andrea had never been one for admitting she was wrong. Inviting me to her party and adding
and family
was the closest thing we’d get to an apology.

I picked up the other piece of mail, a parcel addressed to Zoe and Lucas.

“That’s from me,” said Ryan. “I ordered it from overseas.” He gathered some herbs from the pots on the windowsill, a housewarming present from Freya. Tiny purple flowers were blooming among the silvery leaves of the sage plant.

“Birthday present for the twins?” Their fourth birthday was a couple of weeks away.

“Partly for them, partly for you. To help you with an important motherly duty.”

The parcel was big, but felt light, and when I pinged it with my nail it made a metallic sound. I hacked through the layers of bubble wrap and pulled out a cake tin in the shape of a frog.