Everything About Me Is Fake . . . And I'm Perfect (2 page)

                Yet there’s a strange thing happening in the
modeling industry. I’ve been hearing that a new breed of women will soon be
squashing women like me. They’re calling themselves plus-size models—the “big
girls.”

                The fact is, I don’t buy this new attempt to
shove their supersize images down our throats. When women ten sizes overweight
are crawling all over the fashion mags, what have we come to?

                Women like Missy Elliott and Queen Latifah
are in Vogue—in fact, they’re taking over the glossy pages. Recently I read an
article about their eating secrets, and I almost had a stroke. Truth Squad: I
don’t think what they’re eating is actually such a big secret. Who doesn’t know
how to get ahold of a couple bags of chocolate-chip cookies?

                I’m all for stroking the egos of our
plus-size friends, but I’d also like some of them to move into my house for a
month. First of all, Queen Latifah looks like a lot of fun, and I’m sure we’d
get down. She could teach me how to sing, and I’d have her cutting out carbs
and doing yoga. As for Mademoiselle Elliott, I’d say, “Missy, put down that
muffin, and join your sista Janice in a little walk around the canyon. We’ll
make fun of all the other bitches and hos on the trail.” Man, if that isn’t a
fun morning out, then I don’t know what is.

                I’ll give Carré Otis a pass for her recent
coming-out as a bigger girl. I understand Carré’s plight better than anyone:
she was eating carrots as a main course (like me) throughout the 1980s. She
could swallow one peanut and call it dessert. Carré has a perfect face, and the
camera loves that puss. She also must have residual issues from all those years
with the

                “complicated” actor Mickey Rourke. I mean,
you’d pick up a gallon of Rocky Road, too, if you had to deal with his shit.
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                But Emme? They should seal her lips
together.

                Anna Nicole Smith, in my book, is a pig. I’m
not sure where her tits end and her stomach rolls begin. When I saw her
drinking wine on an episode of her E! series, I began to understand: she doesn’t
sip, she guzzles. Ugh! How many grapes had to die for that woman to get a buzz
on?

                On the other hand, Anna was smart enough to
marry that shriveledup billionaire—and to convince a court of law that their
relationship was

                “true love,” topped off with sizzling sex.
Voilà! Now she’s a zillionaire. Here’s hoping he left this earth with a smile
on his face from watching Anna suck on . . . all that wine.

                Maybe I should give Anna another shot after
all. She might be a pig, but she’s a very smart girl when it comes to scoping
out fiscal opportunity. Anna, if you’re reading this, the world’s first
supermodel says you can call anytime to talk about business ventures. Just
please put a bra on—all that flesh makes me want to get lipo, darling.

                17.

               
Toning Up Body and Mind—

               
In a Hurry

                I wake up every morning like a racehorse,
fueled by adrenaline. I’m not sure where it comes from, but I thank God it’s
there. Still, I’ve still got a devil on my shoulder who’s looking to send that
horse to the glue factory. Every morning I fight that little voice that tells
me, You don’t have to do anything today. Rest on your laurels—hell, rest on your
fat ass. I just throw cold water on that feeling the minute I step into the
shower. Once I’m conscious, though, things get a little bit tricky because then
all the self-doubt kicks in. Many women, including myself, go through life
thinking, What do I need to change about myself? It’s too much, so forget it.
So how do you do it? Take a deep breath and I’ll help you. I mean it. All you
have to do to start is close your eyes and inhale. Even before I open my eyes
in the morning, I begin by doing something known as navel yoga. It’s basically
a half hour of deep, slow breathing exercises that primarily tone the stomach.
Mine, as a result, is like a rock. With all this heavy breathing, I know I may
sound like a dog in heat or a phone prankster. But I don’t care—it works. I
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                breathe, which is something I’ve been doing
for more than two decades. I got initiated into the art of meditation
twenty-five years ago at the Meditation Center in New York: they taught me how
to sit down, breathe in, breathe out, and focus on a mantra they give you.
Every morning, for twenty to thirty minutes, I follow this deep breathing with
some simple stretches. This combo platter of breathing and stretching gets me
off to the right start—it helps me bring out the power in me before life (jobs,
kids, men) tries to suck me dry. Then, just in case I’m not feeling 100 percent
when I’m done, I’ll whip out some positive affirmations. This is not just some
selfish, stupid bullshit, no matter what anyone says. Try starting your morning
by saying the following: “I affirm that I will prevail during this day—prevail
and sail on.”

                I promise you this: if I didn’t do
everything I just described (and what I’m getting to in a minute), I’d lose my
mind. I wouldn’t have the career, or the children, or the boyfriend, or the
work, or the new TV show. I would never be able to do it without this routine.
But I’m not done yet. Cut to SHOWER SCENE:
Janice Dickinson
, naked,
lathering myself with the most wonderful bath products. My personal favorite
right now is the St. Ives Vanilla Swiss with Vitamin E body wash. I love the
smell of vanilla; it just plain makes me happy. And when I’m inching toward
truly feeling good in the shower, I do something that just tips things right
over the edge: I raise one clean, soon-to-be-moisturized arm up proud in the
air, just like the Statue of Liberty. Remember, I was raised in the 1960s;
power to the people! still means something to me. At that moment at the
beginning of each new day, when I raise my fist in the air, I feel my own
power.

                Tick-tock, tick-tock. My brain’s internal
clock is always ticking away, and my God, it’s running fast. I’m always in a
hurry, especially when it comes to toning up my bod or my mind. We’ve already
discussed the breathing, meditation, and affirmation process. Often, I follow
it all with a nice hike and a prayer. In other words, a workout plan for body
and soul. If I don’t do all five—breathe, think, reaffirm, hike, pray—then I’m
in deep shit.

                E V E R Y T H I N G A B O U T M E I S F A K
E . . . A N D I ’ M P E R F E C T

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                I follow this up by sitting down for a few
minutes and writing my feelings down on a piece of paper. Some days, my
notebook reads about like this: “I’m a lost cause. I’m a downer. I’m not good
enough—not good for my children, not good for society.” Those are the bad days.
If the cops in L.A. could write tickets for feelings, I’d be booked as a “negligent
operator.”

                Why does my head fill up with these negative
thoughts? Oh, I don’t know: frustration, anguish, pent-up rage, low
self-esteem. But there’s good news: I don’t feel that way every single day
anymore. This doesn’t mean my mind still doesn’t host a bad thought from time
to time, even when I’m trying to calm myself down. I’m so hyper that even
during the most relaxing part of life, which is yoga class, I can’t slow down.
It turns out
A MAHA Yogatini (right). Really just trying to get the rust
out.
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                that yoga has been a pretty fast way to tone
up, which for a speed demon like me is a very good thing.

                Yoga has been a part of my life since I was
fourteen. My father did one decent thing I know of in his life: he happened to
bring home a book from the Far East filled with yoga positions. One night when
he wasn’t looking, I snuck the book up to my room and became obsessed with
trying out every single position I could manage. The agonizing hours I’d spent
trying to be a ballet dancer had left me surprisingly limber, and yoga just
came easily. A few months later, I read an article about a man from California
named Bikram who had his own take on yoga. I began to search for books by him,
and I copied all of his positions, too. I’ve never looked back.

                The bottom line is, yoga works. It helps you
fight gravity because half the positions have you upside down. It’s good for
arthritis, high blood pressure, spider veins, varicose veins, fat thighs, and
your sex life; it can even help you pop out babies without as much pain. You’ve
got to love a discipline that has an exercise called “breath of fire.” (No, it
has nothing to do with spicy food.) The breath of fire keeps your abdomen flat,
flat, flat! I do them backward, to help flatten out anything that dares to
protrude from my belly. With the breath of fire, what firms up stays firm, too.
When I go to yoga classes, I stride in with a look that says, I know what I’m
doing. Ladies, that’s half the battle right there. To the average layperson, I’m
a freaking yoga expert. My head may tell me otherwise, but only my head and I
know the truth. The minute I roll out my purple yoga mat and go through a
series of stretches, silence falls over the room. Suddenly a powerful groan
emerges from somewhere within me, and a gaggle of giggles pours out. The class ends
with a loud “om”—and mine is always the loudest. Yoga, to me, is holy. I love
the sounds of silence when I’m doing a

                “downward dog.” For a few moments, I’m so
wrapped and tangled up that I forget to hate myself; sometimes I even manage to
forgive myself for everything—past, present, and future.

                Why not try the same yourself? If you need a
motivation, find one. Find the button that lights up the Go, go, go! sign in
your brain, and push E V E R Y T H I N G A B O U T M E I S F A K E . . . A N D
I ’ M P E R F E C T

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                it. Maybe you need to relax. Maybe you need
to forgive yourself, too. Maybe you just want to be able to look down and see
your nicest pair of shoes without your gut getting in the way. Whatever it is,
find it and get moving. Stop leaning over to find your feet, move your ass, and
do it!

                Even before I have my morning coffee, I try
to do something physical. Walking uphill is key. I’m not a runner; bless you if
you can move your groove thing at top speed, but that’s simply not me. I don’t even
do that career-girl power walk, where your arms swing out like you’re about to
merge two Fortune 500 companies. I just find hills and walk up them at a
reasonable rate of speed. It’ll keep the ass off the back of your knees. I
promise.

                Even if your ass has been hanging longer
than the Mona Lisa, you can fix it. Just get out there and walk on an incline.
Walk, walk, walk, walk. If you think it’ll help you, you can always buy
yourself a walking tape—or choose your own music, like I do.

                You can walk with a girlfriend; I hear it
can work, but I don’t like to exercise with anyone except my two dogs. The only
people I actually like to walk with are my kids, but they’ve stopped exercising
with Mom, and I don’t push it because God knows I don’t want them to develop
some kind of complex over hanging out in public with their hot mama. I’ve even
tried walking with boyfriends—but in my experience, anyway, most men are better
oglers than they are walkers.

                If you live in a shitty climate, there’s
always treadmill walking. But you must set that machine on an incline. (Yes,
you do. Don’t argue with me. I don’t care what your trainer’s been telling you.
Ever consider that he likes you plump because it means return business?)
Walking on an incline is the only way to repair and reshape that ass. And when
the ass in question starts screaming from the 3.0 incline, just say these
words: “In a few months, I’ll buy a pair of stretchy Dolce & Gabbana jeans.”
It makes the ache worth it, so slap that puppy on an incline. As for the rest
of the exercises: yes, there are thousands of books out there, and even more
tapes from models, actresses, and their trainers. I’ve