Plus

by Veronica Chambers

  “What’s in the envelope?” he asked.

  “Oh, just some papers.”

  He picked up the envelope.

  “What kind of papers would you get from Mattel?”

  I didn’t want to tell him, but why should I have to hide such good news from my boyfriend? The boyfriend I wanted to marry and someday have a baby with so that she could play with her very own Bee doll.

  “They’re making a doll of me,” I said.

  “A Bee doll?” Brian was incredulous. I understood. I was still a little in shock myself.

  “Yeah,” I said, opening the envelope.

  “Is she going to be your size?”

  I don’t know why, but the question really hurt my feelings. He was a guy; what did he care about what size the Bee doll was?

  “Yep.” I took three or four doll molds out of the bag as well as some sketches.

  Brian picked one up. “They don’t have faces. They’re kind of creepy.”

  “I know,” I said. “They want me to pick the shape I like the best.”

  “Well, this one has the best shape,” Brian said, picking up a doll with a Jessica Biel booty and Shakira abs.

  “I like her,” I said.

  “But this one looks the most like you,” he said, picking up the doll with a pear-shaped body: small breasts, medium waist, big hips.

  “Okay,” I said. “But I like this one.”

  I picked up the doll with the Jessica Biel booty and Shakira abs. I mean, who cares, right? If you looked at her arms, her hips, and her thighs, the doll was still clearly plus. And I’d been working out with a trainer for nearly three months now. By summer, I fully intended on having a sculpted booty and, if not a six-pack, then at least a two-pack or a three-pack.

  “Well, you aren’t shaped like that. You should be honest,” Brian said.

  Ouch. That’s all I have to say about this particular subject is ouch, ouch, and double ouch.

  “If I want the Bee doll to have a banging body, then that’s my right, Brian. It’s just a doll,” I said, snatching it away from him.

  “Whatever,” he said, getting up. “I’m just saying do you believe all this stuff about loving your plus-size self or is it just an act? I’ve got to get to class.”

  He was all geeked out because he had been selected for this super-exclusive senior seminar in international conflict resolution. It was being taught by some big shot named Kofi Annan. But all I could think after Brian left was his little sarcastic comments.

  As a gift for landing the Mattel contract, Leslie had gotten me tickets to this new series that MTV was doing called MTV Amped. It was like the opposite of Unplugged. In Amped, they were going to take artists who normally played acoustic instruments and give them electric guitars and have them do their same songs, all amped up. The first artist on the roster was Norah Jones. I was really psyched to snag the tickets, and of course I asked Brian even though I knew Chela was the hugest Norah Jones fan. It just seemed like more of a boyfriend-girlfriend kind of thing. We had backstage passes too, which was wicked cool.

  The only problem was that Brian seemed to think he was going out on a private date with Norah Jones. He must have changed clothes at least half a dozen times. He kept saying, “How do I look?” And I’d say, “You look great.” And he’d say, “Yeah, but I’m meeting Norah Jones and she’s hot. Did you know she’s half Indian and she’s like some sort of special ambassador to the UN?” I wanted to say, Hey, buddy, I’m kind of a big deal too. I’ve got a billboard in Times Square. But how do you say something like that without sounding like a typical self-centered model?

  We were supposed to arrive an hour before taping started, and we got there about five minutes before the show was to start. When we arrived at the studio on the West Side, I gave our names at the backstage door. The publicist Liba, came running up to me.

  “Bee, I’m so glad you’re here; we’re just about to start,” Liba said, then, turning to the girl with the clipboard, “You’re supposed to radio me when the VIPs arrive.”

  Liba led us through the crowded studio audience and to the front row, where Norah’s band was setting up.

  She went to two people and said, “I’m sorry, these seats belong to Bee Wilson. I’m going to have to seat you in the back.”

  Two girls got up, and Brian and I sat down.

  “Thanks, Liba,” I said. “These seats are amazing.”

  “No problem, Bee. I loved your spread in Glamour. Do you have my card? If you want tickets to anything, call me.”

  Then she walked away.

  “This is unbelievable,” Brian said, staring at me.

  “I know. I can’t believe we’re going to see Norah Jones rock out on the electric guitar.”

  “No, I mean that you are considered a VIP now. That woman all but kissed your feet.”

  “It’s not that extreme,” I said.

  “Uh, it is,” Brian said. “I mean, I’m just really glad we got back together.”

  Just then, Norah came out onto the stage. It was a good thing too ’cause I honestly didn’t have a thing to say to Brian.

  The next day, I was shooting my very first television commercial without the Baby Phat girls. It was for Bond Number 9 perfume, and we were shooting it on Long Island. It’s such a long way out there, two hours if the traffic’s not bad, that I invited Brian to come with me even though Leslie said not to. I made him promise to stay in my trailer all day, and I figured afterward, we could take a romantic walk on the beach and maybe have dinner at B. Smith’s, overlooking the water, in Sag Harbor. Things had been a tad tense with us. Everything he said felt so hurtful, but I figured it was just me being super-sensitive. I’m working so much and I’m studying so hard. I’m a total stressball! Somewhere deep down inside, I was probably still paranoid that Brian would leave me again. A beautiful Friday out near the beach would fix everything. I would work a little, then I’d play a little. That’s what it’s all about, right?

  When I got to the set, I met the director. She was this really cool British woman named Karen Greene. I’m not trying to say anything, but has anybody noticed that people from England dominate the fashion scene? It’s like they decided since they couldn’t colonize the world, they’d focus on designing clothes, becoming photographers, and being big-time agents so they could boss around models instead.

  I had Brian safely sequestered in the trailer, and I was all dressed in my first outfit, this really cool off-the-shoulder cocktail dress by Rachel Roy. It was super-soft jersey, kind of like a souped-up version of the sweatshirt the girl in the eighties movie Flashdance wore. When I was in high school, my friends and I used to Netflix Flashdance all the time until finally my dad got me the DVD for my birthday. Dressed in this short gray jersey dress with one shoulder exposed, it was all I could do not to start jogging in place and singing, “She’s a maniac! Maniac on the floor! And she’s dancing like she’s never danced before!”

  Karen explained that I was to get in the car, spritz myself with the perfume, and then pretend to drive. Because this is the thing. The car was a $300,000 baby blue Bentley, so they’d have a car in front of me towing it so that I wouldn’t actually have to drive the thing at all.

  Still, I was nervous as all hell. A $300,000 car. I was only seventeen. My license said I couldn’t drive without at least one adult in the car.

  “Don’t worry, luvvie,” Karen said. “We’ve got plenty of insurance if the car gets scratched. That said, don’t scratch the car.”

  She took a long look at me. “You know what, Bee? I love your red hair, but I think it’s clashing with the car. Let’s put you in a blond wig.” So they did. They put me in this super-straight blond wig, then they pulled it up into a massive French bun. It was amazing to see how much hair can change your personality. All of a sudden, I felt very slick, very triple C. (Calm, cool, and collected.)

  When I came out of hair and makeup, Karen was ecstatic. “I love it,” she said. “Now you’re a Hitchcock blonde.”
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br />   It was different being filmed by live cameras than it was for still photography. Every movement had to be totally smooth. I only had one line to say, but I must’ve said it a hundred times. Each time Karen had a different instruction. “A little more fierce, Bee,” she’d say. “This time, give me a little purr in your voice. Like you’re ready to rev this motor and go.”

  As many different ways as I humanly could, I said, “Bond Number 9 is my perfume because while I love a fast car, I like to take it slow.”

  After about four hours, Karen announced that we were breaking for lunch. They always have huge catered spreads at shoots, but I knew they always had too many high-calorie goodies on display. So I’d ordered sushi delivered to my trailer. As Melody always said, “It’s not impossible. But it’s really, really hard to get fat eating sushi.”

  It was kind of a strange concept. Everyone in the fashion industry thought we were the fat girls because we were plus size. But we worked really hard to stay in shape. I was now meeting my trainer, Jenisa, every morning at six a.m., six days a week. Leslie had arranged for me to meet a nutritionist, who insisted I keep a food diary. Having to write down everything I ate was tough. Having to fax her a copy every night was tedious. But it was a fresh slice of hell having Alexandra, a size-two drill sergeant from Georgia, call you up and say, in her thick southern accent, “Watch ya step, missy. Because I have read your food diary and I can see, plain as day, that yesterday ya had waffles!”

  When I got to the trailer, however, Brian had eaten my sushi.

  “I was hungry,” he said, shrugging. “And bored. I can’t believe how much time these fashion people sit around doing nothing.”

  I wanted to correct him. He was sitting around doing nothing; I was actually working. But I knew how it looked from the outside—photo shoots are long, and sometimes they are boring.

  “I want to see that new Don Cheadle documentary about Darfur,” Brian said.

  “We’ll go as soon as we wrap,” I said, wondering if I should ask a production assistant for another serving of sushi or just grab a smoothie and call it a day.

  “That’s a sweet ride they have you driving,” Brian said. “Is that a Bentley?”

  “It is,” I said, nibbling on banana chips.

  “Look,” he said. “I’m sorry I ate your lunch. That was very unsupportive of me. I’ll go to the catering truck and get you a Caesar salad and a Diet Coke. How does that sound?”

  “Great,” I said. I know that I could have asked an assistant to go for me, but I was too embarrassed. It was sweet of Brian to offer to go for me.

  About fifteen minutes later, I heard a huge crash. I rushed to the window and there was Brian, in the driver’s seat of the Bentley. The air bag had exploded, which probably saved him from some sort of major head injury. But honestly, I think his block head could have survived any kind of trauma. Apparently, he’d gone out to get my lunch, wandered over to the car, and noticed that the key was still in the ignition. He had this crazy idea that he was going to drive the car to the local television station and make a statement about luxury cars and how Americans used more than our fair share of the earth’s natural resources.

  What he didn’t know was that the car was attached by a tow line to the truck in front of it. The line was hidden so it wouldn’t show as we shot the commercial. So he turned the car on, mashed the gas, and kapow. The front of the car was completely smashed in. Karen was turning all shades of purple, and before I could say, “I’m sorry,” my cell phone was ringing and Leslie was reading me the riot act.

  “I spoke to you about having your boyfriend at shoots,” she said.

  “But Karen said there was insurance,” I said hopefully.

  “There is insurance to cover authorized drivers,” Leslie said. “But the fact is that you have not only destroyed a $300,000 vehicle. You have put an end to the day’s shoot, which will cost the client another half-million dollars by the time they send the cast and crew home, replace the car, and reschedule the shoot.”

  “When’s the shoot rescheduled for? I’ll come anytime. I’ll do it for free.”

  “You’ll do no such thing,” Leslie said. “Because you are fired. Now go home.”

  I went back to the trailer to change. Brian, who for all of his attempts at grand theft auto was sporting a very small Band-Aid on his forehead, was still complaining like he’d been the victim of some heinous crime.

  “My head really hurts,” he said. “I might have a mild concussion.”

  “I’m the one whose head hurts,” I said. “I haven’t had any lunch, and oh yeah, by the way, I was fired.”

  “Who cares? It was just some perfume commercial,” he said.

  All of a sudden, I looked at him and for the first time, maybe ever, I really saw him for what he was. A guy who was so smart about so many things. But a guy I really didn’t care to spend any more time with, at all. Not when he could so casually break my heart. Then take me back. Then risk ruining my modeling career—the one really good thing I had going. I suddenly realized if I had to choose between Brian and modeling, I’d choose modeling.

  “Look, Brian, it’s over,” I said. “I don’t want to go out with you anymore. Getting back together was a mistake.”

  He looked stunned.

  “You’re breaking up with me? Because of some overpriced, non-fuel-efficient car?” he said.

  “It’s not because of the car,” I said, sitting across from him in the tiny trailer. I could feel myself crying, and I knew that it was everything—Brian, being fired from the commercial, the whole lot of it.

  “We’re just not a good fit,” I said.

  “You know what, you can’t be breaking up with me,” Brian said, his voice turning snarky. “Girls like you don’t dump guys like me. You only got lucky because there’s this whole trend to make people feel good about themselves. You were in the right place at the right time, and now it’s given you a big head.”

  There’s a quote from Maya Angelou that I scribbled in my journal once and I’ve never forgotten it. She said, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”

  Brian had shown me who he was, and instead of just walking away from the experience, I became obsessed with getting him back. Now that he’d said all those mean things about me, I knew that I needed to walk out the trailer door and keep on walking. Which is exactly what I did.

  I went over to Karen, apologized for the car, and then asked if a teamster could drive Brian to the train station. I’d just opened the door to the Town Car for the long ride back to New York when Brian came running after me.

  “Hey, where are you going? You’re my ride,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, smiling as sweetly as I could. “I’m just too fat. There’s no room for you and my big model ego. You’ll have to take the train.”

  Then I got in the car and asked the driver to go. We had a long drive back to New York, and I had a whole mess of crying to do.

  20

  Oh, Bee-have!

  Even though I totally blew the Bond Number 9 shoot, Leslie got me booked for a music video shoot for a British band. It turns out Aunt Zo had a recital in London the same weekend, so we were able to fly together. I was kind of bummed—to say the least—about the breakup with Brian, but when it came down to it, I realized that while he was all the things that I loved about him: handsome and smart and politically conscious, being around him always felt like work. I was always trying to seem like I was something that I wasn’t. It was like Chela always said, “Do you.” With Brian, I couldn’t really do me.

  Besides, I hardly ever saw Aunt Zo, so it would be fun to hang out with her. I managed to get Zo upgraded to business class, and we were chilling, with plenty of legroom, catching up on all that had been going on.

  The stewardess came around to ask for our meal orders, but Aunt Zo had already packed a feast from Zabar’s: roast beef sandwiches with blue cheese dressing, tomato and cucumber salad, kettle chips, and Godiva chocol
ate.

  “Zo, the food in business class is actually not that bad,” I told her.

  “I know, but I’m a musician. I’m used to traveling like a gypsy. I bring my own food. I’m prepared to be routed and rerouted.”

  She looked so beautiful. For years, she’d worn her hair in this pixie cut, but she was letting it grow out. Andy, my hairdresser, had given her this cool scissor cut, and her layers were cool, very rock and roll.

  “You look like a dark-haired Sheryl Crow,” I said admiringly.

  Zo laughed. “Good. Maybe I’ll run into Eric Clapton in London.”

  “Don’t any of your musician friends know him?”

  “Probably. Speaking of friends, you haven’t mentioned Chela in ages.”

  I fidgeted with my personal video screen.

  “You two have a tuss up?”

  I guess tuss up is as good a term as any for the fact that I’d gotten back together with Brian and was sneaking around behind her back. I’d dumped him, but I’d been so busy with work and school, I hadn’t gone dancing with Chela in weeks.

  “Something like that,” I said.

  “It can’t be easy for her, your sudden fame, when the two of you used to be so close.”

  I rolled my eyes. “What am I supposed to do, call her up and say, Sorry, I’m no longer lonely and pathetic and able to hang out with you 24/7? I’ve got a life now, and I’ve been kind of too busy to be your chubby sidekick.”

  Zo gave me a stern look. “Is that how she made you feel?”

  “That’s how I felt.”

  “But do you think she purposefully tried to keep you down?”

  This gets back to the whole lying thing. If we’d been on the phone, I could’ve been deceitful: Yes, I would’ve said, Chela is gorgeous and I always felt like a big cow compared to her. But sitting next to Aunt Zo, ten thousand feet above the ground, I couldn’t lie. I had to tell the truth.