Salon.com > Christina Valhouli

Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful

Mon, 12 Nov 2001 21:42:00 +0000

Damon and Gage are two really, really, ridiculously good-looking male models from New York's Fusion Agency. I had the privilege of taking them on a date to see "Zoolander," Ben Stiller's wickedly funny satire of Damon and Gage's chosen profession. (Like Madonna -- and Hansel -- the two go by their first names only.) After the film (they laughed at all the right moments), we decided to skip the orange mocha frappuccinos and head to Union Square's Coffee Shoppe for cocktails and a discussion of "ambi-turners," "eugoogalies" and whether it's a good idea to engage in a freak fest with an "investigatory" journalist. (More on that later.)

Like Fabio, Damon and Gage are known in the industry as "slashies." In addition to their male modeling careers, both have appeared as extras in the indestructible soap "As the World Turns" -- but not too often because they don't want to turn into "extra boys." Blond and blue-eyed, 23-year-old Gage looks like a taller version of Val Kilmer; Damon, 25, has green eyes and carefully messy brown hair (he uses moisturizer as hair gel) and refuses to admit that he looks like Ben Stiller. Gage showed up wearing a white sweater and tan pants underneath a floor-length white wool coat, while Damon sported a grungier, rocker look. For the first time in my life, I sailed past the smiling doorman and velvet rope of the notoriously strict Coffee Shoppe.

The loo and love

Mon, 26 Feb 2001 20:41:00 +0000

I'm lying next to my lover in bed, making sure he's fast asleep, and I'm planning a secret mission. It's not to leave him in the middle of the night, or sneak into the kitchen to gobble leftover food. I'm planning when I can use the bathroom so he can't hear me.

Men have no problem grabbing a magazine, strolling nonchalantly into the bathroom and spending a good 20 minutes in there. When they finally emerge they grin, bursting with pride at their accomplishment, and will occasionally comment about their dump. Women, on the other hand, will never do this.

For years I thought I must be the only person who couldn't take a crap near their boyfriend. But when I finally confessed my bathroom anxiety to my girlfriends, I received a lot of support. There would be a moment of stunned silence, then a slow-spreading grin and a look of relief (it's like bonding with women you just met over period stories). I've had endless conversations with my girlfriends about this, and the lengths we go to avoid it -- like running the water, fleeing in the morning to go "buy bagels" and carrying a mental map of every Barnes and Noble within a 30-block radius.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Mon, 29 Jan 2001 20:00:00 +0000

If Arnold Schwarzenegger were America's camp counselor, our kids would do 200 knee bends before breakfast. The 53-year-old former Mr. Universe would also blow the whistle on the growing trend of single parenthood -- a "tremendous danger," he says. Schwarzenegger is now bringing his tough love to the inner city, where he hopes to boost kids' self-esteem through the Inner City Games Foundation, a national network of after-school programs. While he remains the odd man out in liberal Hollywood, the rest of the nation may prove more receptive to the Last Action Hero's message, which sounds, well, compassionately conservative. The welcome mat is out for him at the Bush White House, and he admits to flirting with a run for governor of California.

If the star is considering a leap into politics, he'll need to prepare. Reporters will surely ask, for instance, what exactly happened in the U.K. during his recent publicity tour for "The Sixth Day." Schwarzenegger allegedly groped three female journalists (his publicist denies this), earning him the nicknames "Scharwzenookie" and "Kindergarten Cop-a-Feel" from the Fleet Street press and a "Groper of the Year" award from the London Sun. Rumors are also circulating about the actor's health. In 1997, he underwent elective heart surgery to replace a faulty valve, and the studios reacted as if he had the plague. "I really could feel people kind of pulling back," he told the Los Angeles Times. "You know, they don't return your phone calls the same way they used to."

The modern courtesan

Thu, 16 Nov 2000 20:11:00 +0000

Two thousand years of history, genetics and killer wardrobes converged in two 20th century women who rocked the world in true courtesan style: Clare Boothe Luce and Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman. Neither woman had any formal education. Neither got along very well with other women. And they both wielded political and business power, as well as an explosive sexuality, to get what they wanted -- their queen-size cojones hidden beneath a patina of charm, wit and beauty.

The two women had drastically different ways of charming men. Christopher Ogden, Harriman's biographer, chalks up her success to being the world's greatest nanny. "She had an extraordinary capacity to focus on her men. She made them think they were the greatest thing since the convergence of the planets," he says. "She knew everything about her men -- what they ate, drank, read. If you looked uncomfortable, she'd grab a pillow and place it behind your back. If you were squinting, a shade would be drawn."

Courtesan power

Wed, 15 Nov 2000 20:19:00 +0000

Courtesans have moved nations for centuries, using a potent combination of sex and politics to influence powerful men and advance their own places in society. Renaissance Venetian Victoria Franco charmed her powerful men with poetry and sex. Fast-forward 400 years or so, and courtesan spirit is embodied in women like Pamela Harriman and Clare Boothe Luce, who propelled themselves to power through their associations and marriages with powerful men. The throne is still open for a true courtesan of the 21st century.

Like a hybrid of Dorothy Parker and Jennifer Lopez, a courtesan in Renaissance Italy used her brains and her body to enjoy the benefits of marriage -- companionship, property and financial stability -- without the stifling social constraints. She also replaced a man's wife on the social scene, since proper married women were sequestered from the sins of the world and kept prisoners in their own homes.

Courtesans were companions for bankers, princes, prelates and merchants. Known for their wit, charm and elegance, they palled around with the most important and powerful men of their day. They wrote novels, published poems and influenced politics, often delivering political messages from pillow to pillow. They also used sex, and they flaunted it in ways that married women could not. As the French traveler and writer Pierre de Brantome snidely commented in the 16th century, "Roman ladies copulate like bitches but are silent as stones."

Bikini politics

Thu, 27 Jul 2000 22:23:00 +0000

Burgers! Breasts! Hand puppets! Hooray! There may be hope yet to save this year's presidential election from extreme boredom. Andrij Witiuk, acting managing editor of Maxim magazine (the beer and boobs bible for men who scratch their balls and think fart jokes are funny) announced his independent bid for the presidency Thursday at the Manhattan White Castle Burger shop. In a publicity stunt juicier than anything even The Donald could drum up, Witiuk burst into the shop to the strains of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" trailed by six "security chicks" -- Robert Palmer-esque women with pulled-back hair and pouty lips sporting star-spangled bikinis, sunglasses and earpieces to shouts of "Dirty girl!" and "Show us your platform!" Puzzled-looking employees passed out Slyders and plastic hand puppets (hijacked from a local McDonald's and covered with Witiuk stickers because the campaign couldn't afford its own) to a soggy crowd in what can only be described as a gleeful white-trash extravaganza.

Asian eyes

Wed, 16 Feb 2000 17:00:00 +0000

When most women get ready in the morning, they reach for lipstick, mascara and concealer. For Caroline (not her real name), 29, the makeup routine also includes glue, a brush and a mini-fork. It's not an emergency fondue kit. She's a Chinese-American hellbent on forcing a crease, or a fold, onto her eyelids and these are her tools. First she sweeps the glue above her eyes, then uses the fork to hike up her eyelid, and presses it into place. The skin stays folded for most of the day. She says it makes her eyes look bigger, prettier, and as some might argue, more Caucasian.

Sound unusual? Hardly. In Japan and Taiwan, stores sell tubes of eyelid glue and pre-cut tape that women use to create a fold. Other girls, says Caroline, "hold their eyelids back with toothpicks to 'train' them into place." But for those who balk at sticking toothpicks and forks in their eyes (visions of "A Clockwork Orange") there is a third option -- plastic surgery -- where a permanent crease is stitched into place and excess fat is sucked out of the eye socket.

Beyond step and spinning

Fri, 10 Dec 1999 17:00:00 +0000

Faster than you can say "chicken schwarma falafel babaganoush please," health clubs are booking classes that sound more like exotic meals than workouts. At just about every health club in New York, you can go Korean, Brazilian or Israeli, with a little Indian or a side of Thai.

Ethnic workouts have always existed -- think oily Greco-Roman wrestling -- and were especially big in the early 1980s, during the height of the video workout craze. (Remember "Buns of Steel" with that silly man telling us to "squeeze out those cheeseburgers"?) But back then, ethnic workouts were marketed to their same demographic. Big sellers included the Irish "Jig Don't Jog," "Woman! Free Yo' Soul," the Yiddish dubbed workout tape "Putting on the 'Shvitz," and the short-lived "Afrobics" craze.

But now ethnic workouts have moved into America's gyms. Says Peg Jordan, R.N., author of "The Fitness Instinct" (Rodale Press, 1999), "The backbone of American aerobics up until now has been white girl, cheerleader, up-and-down moves. And people are really sick of that." Amen from this white chick.

A plague on all your boroughs

Fri, 17 Sep 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Thucka-thucka. Thucka-thucka.

That is the sound of the black helicopters flying over my house. No, I'm not a paranoid conspiracy freak, but a resident of Queens living smack in the middle of the deadly St. Louis encephalitis outbreak.

St. Louis encephalitis is a mosquito-borne viral disease that can affect the
central nervous system and cause a deadly swelling of the brain. It first appeared in the United States in 1962, in St. Louis (hence the name.)

Since then, outbreaks have occurred in Chicago, Delaware, Houston, New Orleans and St. Petersburg, Fla. (Chicago was home to the country's worst outbreak, in 1975, with 2,500 cases.) But this is the first time the disease (and its causative virus) has appeared in New York City.

The disease first appeared in New York on Sept. 2. As of Thursday, there had been 11 confirmed cases and three deaths. The city is investigating 65 other possible cases. The latest incidences involve a 15-year-old boy and a 38-year-old woman from the Bronx.

"Until now, the youngest person who had a confirmed case was 58 years old," said city health department director Neal Cohen at a press conference. "Younger people, given stronger immune response, generally have milder forms of the illness. So this is not an unexpected finding; it is not a signal that we have a new turn in this outbreak."

Faster Pussycat, Wax! Wax!

Fri, 03 Sep 1999 16:00:00 +0000

I am lying flat on my back, naked, holding my butt and legs up in the air while a middle-aged Brazilian woman peers at my crotch. She leans a little closer and moves her fingers between my flesh. While this is a position normally reserved for bedroom activities, it's business as usual at the J. Sisters International Salon in midtown Manhattan.

The salon is named for seven Brazilian-born sisters: Jocely, Jonice, Joyce, Janea, Jussara, Juracy and Judseia Padilha, whose claim to fame is introducing Americans to their hometown phenomenon of "Brazilian bikini waxing." What it is: a very thorough waxing where every bit of hair -- and I mean every last bit -- is removed except for a thin landing strip. Think porn star. Think pain. But also think fanatic devotion.

Celebrities love this procedure. Kirstie Alley has said, "It feels like a baby's butt, only all over." Paula Yates, the widow of INXS rocker Michael Hutchence, flies over from London to have it done (salons in the U.K. refuse to do it for hygienic reasons). The salon's walls are covered with celebrity photos and their signed testimony to the miracles of waxing. "You've ruined me for anyone else!" scribbled Jennifer Grey (or is she talking about her plastic surgeon?). "You've changed my life!" crowed Gwyneth Paltrow.

Plato not Prozac

Fri, 20 Aug 1999 16:00:00 +0000

When Megan, 29, goes to see her therapist, she never has to talk about her mother, lie on a couch or engage in an hour-long dialogue. What she does do is elbow her way past dozens of college students to the cluttered office of Lou Marinoff, a guitar-playing philosophy professor-cum-therapist. "I went to talk to him because I was in a lot of debt. So we talked about the political and economic history of the last 20 years. It was very cool," she says.

Marinoff is at the forefront of a movement called "philosophical practice" -- philosophy professors setting up shop as therapists. A professor at City College of New York, Marinoff has been in practice since 1991 and recently published "Plato Not Prozac!" (HarperCollins). He is also the president of the American Philosophical Practitioners Association, which has certified about three dozen people in the United States. While using philosophy as therapy is relatively new in the U.S., Europeans have been doing it since 1981. The trend is huge in Europe, especially in Germany, which claims more than 100 counselors.

Ufology

Tue, 22 Sep 1998 10:02:00 +0000

Take us to your professor.

Since the time of Galileo, astronomers have pointed their telescopes at the heavens and asked, "Are we alone in the universe?" Now, that same question is being posed by historians, political scientists, psychologists and sociologists who don't use telescopes but the more elusive instruments of the soft social sciences: research, oral history, theory and, finally, conjecture.

Recently, popular culture has been suffused by man-made aliens. From television shows like "The X Files" and "3rd Rock From the Sun" to movies like "Independence Day" and "Men in Black," from the ad campaign for the Volkswagen Beetle claiming the car has been "reverse engineered" from UFOs to commercials in which ETs promote Hostess Ding Dongs, Quisp "the qwazy energy cereal" and Chilis restaurants, we can't seem to get enough of these alternately adorable, wise and terrifying but always slimy creatures. They've even starred alongside Kenny, Cartman, Stan and Kyle in the premiere episode of "South Park," called "When Cartman Gets an Anal Probe."