“If I hadn’t worried so much about myself, I could have taken better care of her. She’d still be alive,” I told David. He was crying; we both were.
“Ever since then, I’ve just been running on autopilot, distracting myself with wild parties so I don’t have to think about how much I loved her and how much I miss her.”
“You still miss her?” he asked.
“Sure. But it’s different now, because I know she’s here with me. Like a guardian angel. I think she was there the night I met you. Luis will be there for you too. He loved you so much, he will always watch out for you and make sure you live up to your potential.”
I wasn’t just telling David this; I was telling myself. I had gotten so used to playing a part: the supportive child, the sexual goddess, the good-time party girl, the flawless model. I had never gotten to know who I really was.
We spent the rest of the night remembering Luis, laughing and crying together. Once he opened up, David started to feel better, and he seemed to be ready to get back to society. He had L-U-I-S tattooed on the knuckles of his right hand, to honor his right-hand man. Then he got back to work.
I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown during the shoot for Time in a Bubble. Seriously. I was naked in a big bubble that was hung from the ceiling. The headpiece I was wearing was really heavy; it felt like a table. I had to sit completely still for hours, holding on to a giant dildo. The worst part was every time I exhaled it would fog up the bubble and they’d have to wipe it down. I had to hold my breath as long as I could.
When we finished, my entire body hurt. “That was more painful than my sex change,” I said. I meant it.
Richie Rich was building a name for himself as a fantastic fashion designer.
Untitled: (Picture of Jason Wu’s Amanda Doll Full Back), 2005 Chromogenic Print © David LaChapelle
Charm School, 2003 Chromogenic Print © David LaChapelle
Silicone Injection in Amanda’s Apartment, 1998 Chromogenic Print © David LaChapelle
His personal style was so eye-catching; he’d taken the best of what the Club Kids did and put a high-fashion twist on it. Eight parts glam, two parts rock. Shake the hell out of it and add a few feathers, and you got Richie and his friend Traver’s fashion line, Heatherette. Very East Village meets Bergdorf’s.
Richie started making these T-shirts for celebrities he’d meet on his travels. He’d stencil their name, then hand paint, glitter, and Swarovski crystal the piece. Foxy Brown, Gwen Stefani, and the Backstreet Boys all ended up wearing those shirts. Pat Field even asked Richie to make a T-shirt that said CARRIE, for Sarah Jessica Parker to wear.
I introduced David to Richie and Traver and said he should keep them on set, they were great at making magic out of nothing.
“Karolina Kurkova will be here tomorrow for a Vanity Fair shoot,” David said. “Make a dress for her to wear and we’ll see how it looks.” This was a big deal; Karolina had just been on the cover of Vogue and she was only seventeen. Richie and Traver stayed up all night making a signature dress out of purple fishnet and torn silk stenciled with the words LOOK AT ME.
The next morning Richie and Traver were waiting, dress in hand, when David and I arrived at the studio. David looked disgusted. He threw up his hands and yelled, “Go back to your studio and get all your supplies, stencils, fabrics . . . and come back here. I have a few shoots I want you on today. This dress is fucking fantastic.” He was tricky like that.
That day Heatherette styled Steven Tyler and Mariah Carey. While they were styling Mariah, Pat Field called and said the Carrie shirt would be part of the season two ad campaign for Sex and the City. It was magical, seeing how things come together like that.
Afterward Heatherette was on David’s set even more than I was. We were like a big happy family, like Andy Warhol’s Factory, just as David had always wanted.
I was always curvy.
It wasn’t the “in” look, but it was my look. Then Jennifer Lopez came around and big asses became the big thing. Sophia thought I was crazy, but I started finding out about how I could enhance my shape even more.
I won’t mince words: I became obsessed with achieving an hourglass figure. It’s all I could talk about. I was driving Sophia and David nuts.
“Just get it done already,” Sophia said. “If I have to hear you talking about it anymore I’m going to throw myself into traffic.”
There were a lot of shitty silicone jobs out there, and the only thing worse than not doing it at all would be doing it wrong. At a party one night I met a girl who had a fantastic shape, exactly what I was looking for. I asked what she had done, and she told me about a woman who ran a private practice. I begged for the number and immediately called for a consultation.
The appointment was at a residence in Harlem with a nurse named Kimmy. I was nervous going in. There’s a lot that can go wrong when you start playing with body shape, but I’d seen what this woman could do, and I had to find out more.
I recognized Kimmy as soon as I saw her; she had worked for Dr. Reinhorn. In fact, she was the nurse who had shown me how to dilate my pussy.
We hugged and made small talk, she asked me how my pussy was and I said good. She told me Dr. Reinhorn had passed away, and a lot of his patients had been coming to see her directly. It was shocking to hear; Dr. Reinhorn had been such an important part of my life. But he was an old man, so it wasn’t out of nowhere or anything.
Seeing Nurse Kimmy felt like fate and I immediately trusted her.
The first thing she told me was we could only use top-of-the-line silicone. Then she said it would take a long time; girls made the mistake of doing too much at one time, and that made it come out uneven. We made a plan for me to go once a month and do a small amount in my hips one month, and a small amount in my ass the next.
Everything was going great. I was really happy with the results and started to get even more attention from guys than ever before, but there was a problem with having my hips and butt enlarged: it made my boobs look smaller by comparison. I had one more breast enlargement, going up to a double D.
There was one more thing I needed to do to get the exact proportion I was looking for. My tits and ass were large, but I wanted the hourglass to be more extreme.
I had to have my ribs broken.
David was always supportive of my injections, but he was not happy about this one. He staged an intervention with Richie.
“Mandy, honey, honey,” Richie said. “It’s too much. You’re taking it too far.”
“I can’t have you dying on me too,” David said.
“Oh, boys, I’ll be fine. They’re going to remove my bottom two ribs, and I’ll have them gold plated and sold at Christie’s.”
“It’s illegal, you know,” Richie said.
“Yes, that’s why I’m going to Mexico. If Cher and Raquel Welch can do it, then so can I.” (Those are rumors I’d heard; please don’t sue, ladies!)
“You’ll look like you’re wearing a corset even when you’re naked,” David said. He was starting to get into it. I could see the wheels spinning in his head.
“Yes, that’s exactly the point.”
Sophia graciously volunteered to come to Mexico to take care of me while I healed.
“If you die,” she said, “I’m getting all your shoes.”
“Sophia, my feet are so tiny you could never fit into them.”
Breast Feeding, 2003 Chromogenic Print © David LaChapelle
People don’t quite understand what the procedure is; they think you get a rib removed, but that’s not it. At least that’s not what I did. To have the rib removed, they have to cut you open, and it leaves a very large scar. They didn’t cut me open at all. Your bottom two ribs are considered “floating ribs,” they are only connected to your back, not to the front of the rib cage. If you corset train, you are pushing those ribs in to make your waist smaller.
My surgeon basically took a hammer, cracked the bottom ribs, and pushed them in, then put
a cast over my midsection to hold them in place.
While he had me under, my surgeon also gave me a forehead reduction without even telling me he was going to. I woke up after the operation and couldn’t understand why my face hurt so much. The nurse told me they gave me a lift and a hairline reduction, too.
Maybe other people would be pissed off about something like that, but I had to appreciate the fact that my doctor knew I’d be happy to save myself another trip down. And it looked great; it made my face heart-shaped and much more feminine.
The rib procedure was by far the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced. I wasn’t even able to lie down afterward; while I was waiting to heal in Mexico, all I could do was walk around the doctor’s parking lot with Sophia until I was tired, and then I’d fall asleep in a sitting position. I couldn’t lie down for six months.
I left Mexico and headed back to New York, happy to have Sophia along to take care of me. My head was covered in sheer plastic held on with blue surgical tape. Large red gashes and black stitches were clearly visible. I had no makeup on, not even my eyebrows. My stomach was covered by an enormous belt. I looked like I’d gone to Mexico for a wrestling match, got the shit kicked out of me, and was wearing the title belt. The stewardess gasped when she saw me.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Can I get a Diet Coke?” She seemed flustered and not sure what to do.
“Just get the poor girl a Diet Coke and stop gawking like a child,” Sophia snapped.
David was waiting for me in New York. He was supposed to be at the MTV Video Music Awards that night but he wasn’t feeling up to going.
“Just come stay with me,” he said. “I’ll take care of you, and we can watch the show together.”
Walking into the Mercer Hotel, I knew what Frankenstein’s monster must have felt like. Parents shielded their children, grown men fainted, women held up rosaries to ward me off. I was in such intense pain from my ribs that I didn’t care at all.
David answered his hotel door holding a six-month-old baby. He’d given his award show tickets to a friend of his, who left her child to be watched by him. I took off my clothes to show him the training belt, and there was a knock on the door.
“Go answer it,” he said. He handed me the baby and hid in the bathroom.
It was room service. I answered the door completely naked (except for heels), holding a newborn baby that was trying to breast-feed off me, with a sinister-looking corset belt, bandages around my head, and huge stitches across my face.
The poor old Dominican man almost fell backward, he was so freaked out. He handed me a bottle of water and went running down the hall.
David came out of the bathroom, laughing hysterically, and picked up the phone. “Yeah, hi, can you send me up a toothbrush?” Same thing, different guy at the door. Ten minutes later, “Yeah, hi, can I get some ice, please?” “Can we have chamomile tea?” He kept calling, and they kept sending different guys. They must have been down there like, “You have to see this.”
We locked ourselves in that hotel room for a week. I heal really fast . . . alien fast. It’s a miracle that with all the work I’ve had done I haven’t had anything go wrong.
Cherry Bomb, 1999 Chromogenic Print © David LaChapelle
I still wear that cincher belt. I put it on when I’m getting ready to go out. It sets the bone and makes it feel better. Before I would always get blisters when I wore corsets, and I don’t get them anymore. My waist got smaller and smaller. For a while I was down to eighteen inches when I was completely naked, with no corset on. My body just stays like that.
I drove people crazy with my proportions after I did my ribs. So many other girls went to Mexico but the doctors are very particular about who can have it done. Supposedly you can’t do it when you’re older than twenty-six, but I was older than that and my doctor didn’t know. And there are certain body types that it doesn’t work on; it’ll make you look bigger. So if you have a long torso, or if you’re tall, it won’t look right. You have to be short with a long stomach and a small rib cage.
The cinched-waist look isn’t so popular in America, and it’s gotten me a fair share of criticism. I have my own ideas about what beauty is. I look exactly the way I want to look.
Heatherette was doing their first fashion show since investors came on board, and MAC Cosmetics was partnering with them. They hired David to direct a video introduction for the show and he came up with this idea of having me paint my entire body with pink lipstick.
We went to Los Angeles for the shoot. My hair was yellow at the time and I hated it, but David told me I’d wear a blonde wig, so I didn’t wash it or bring extensions or anything. But in typical LaChapelle fashion, when he saw me after makeup and in the turquoise room we shot in, he liked the yellow hair and wanted to use it. It was filthy, and I was upset. I didn’t look good and did not want anyone seeing me like that.
“This is your big acting moment,” David pleaded. “Charlize Theron is filming Monster right now and they made her look bad. This is your chance to do the same thing. Besides, your body looks great.”
Publicity Portrait of David LaChapelle and Amanda Lepore in Helicopter, 2002 Published in Complex Magazine
Screenshots of Heatherette M.A.C. Cosmetics In-Store Video Starring Amanda Lepore, Directed by David LaChapelle
All the guys on set agreed that my body looked hot. One of the lighting crew said, “I’ll fuck you right now if it’ll make you feel better.” I said no, but it helped. I got on board.
When we started shooting I had to draw on my body with pink lipstick in an aggressive way. I started lightly, and after several minutes the tube was almost gone. Richie handed me another. “More, Amanda. Paint it like you mean it!” David screamed at me.
I tried to go faster and harder, but the lipsticks would break. “More!” David yelled. “More, MORE, MORE!” I was scared he was going to hit me. The lipstick would break and I’d just pretend I was still doing it, scraping the metal tubing against my skin until Richie handed me another one.
By the time I was done I had scratches all over my body. I cried as Richie helped clean me off; it didn’t hurt, but I was scared I might scar.
That night I went to bed angry at David, but also angry at myself for getting so upset. I’d been given the chance to model. Who was I to give my photographer a hard time?
The next day we met at the Los Angeles studio and David and his assistants were packing bags.
“Where are we going?” I asked
“Yeah, aren’t we done?” asked Richie.
“We’re going to the desert,” David said.
“Oh no. Do I have to be pink again?”
We drove halfway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. I was painted pink and was not happy about it. David was pushing me to my breaking point.
It was dusk, and there was a sharp wind in the air. I was naked besides high heels and a layer of pink body paint. “What do I have to do?” I asked.
David handed me a Tiffany-blue suitcase. “Just run down the freeway.” Cars were slowing down to gawk at me as they drove by.
I was about to cry. David could see the emotion on my face.
“Listen,” he said to me. “You’re Amanda Fucking Lepore. You can do anything. You’ve done everything. Just pretend your ex-husband is chasing after you, and get fucking moving. And don’t cry, you’ll fuck up your makeup.”
I started running while an assistant slowly followed behind me in a station wagon. I was tired, my feet hurt, I was freezing, but I was in the zone. In my mind, Michael was in that car and I wasn’t stopping until I’d gotten free.
A minivan drove by as I was running. As it passed me the driver rolled down his window and called out, “Are you okay, Miss? Do you need help?”
I didn’t look at him. “I’M ACTING!” I screamed, and he drove off.
The next morning David had flowers sent to my room with a note: Charlize has nothing on you. Love always, David.
Sophia and I
were both supposed to walk in the first Heatherette fashion show, but David told Richie not to put us in: “The brand will be more respected if you use professional runway models,” he said. Richie agreed, and I wasn’t mad about it; David was absolutely right. Besides, my video would be playing, so I’d still be in it in a way.
The day of the show, Richie and David came to my hotel. “Amanda, we had a great fucking idea. You’re going to be in the show,” David said.
“Oh, great! Sophia too?”
“Don’t worry about Sophia, just get ready to go.”
Nobody told me I had to be pink again until I was naked and the paint was already on the brushes. I should have seen it coming.
“It makes sense that you’re here,” Richie said as he painted me. “Heatherette wouldn’t exist without you.” We air-kissed. It was an exciting night; Paris Hilton was walking, and the New York fashion insiders had really come out in support of Heatherette.
The lights went down, and our video started playing—me in my turquoise room, painting myself with lipstick like a crazy person. It wasn’t as feminine as I’d have liked, but it was punk and I looked young.
The video changed, and there I was, running down the desert highway carrying my Tiffany-blue suitcase while Tiffany’s “I Think We’re Alone Now” played. As the video faded out, I ran out on the catwalk, carrying the same suitcase, wearing the same pink body paint, smiling and blowing kisses to the audience. The applause was thunderous and so vindicating. All the work had truly paid off. I sat down in the audience and watched the rest of the show.
Doll Parts Page 14
