One Woman

Time 100, Molly Ringwald and Women In Clothes

I went to the Time 100 gala earlier this week. I knew there would be a red carpet with a wall of cameras and I would be asked a question like “What does it feel like to be on of the 100 most influential people in the world?" and so in the cab on the way to the gala I tried to come up with a concise way to say that it was less about me and more about women my age being at a historic breaking point, something about many waves of feminism and Trump and #metoo and the pandemic and how really it was all those things that had a massive impact, or influence, on women who, in turn, had a massive influence on each other, so my novel was really more of an inciting incident....but then I remembered that while men could say this sort of true thing and be only more lauded (what modesty!) everyone was still actually quite unable to imagine the influence, the power of a single, plotting woman — that she might have intended to have such an influence, that it might have been political — and so perhaps it was best to say something that didn't immediately toss the power back, like a hot potato (yikes, stepping out of the cab and still no plan) because wasn't it important to for us to clearly see the power of one woman, had I not played the Mecca Normal song One Woman again and again over the course of my life, trying to distill this huge, tough feeling? One woman said / I don’t like the way things are going.

When I got to the press line I was asked if I wanted to do video or just pictures and I immediately said Just pictures. Maybe I had done enough and I could just focus on standing up straight and not smiling more than I wanted to when they yelled Show us your beautiful smile! (Once I was behind Tilda Swinton on a red carpet and when they yelled this at her she calmly said, “This is my beautiful smile”.)

This pose works from the front, trust me. The outfit is by Willy Chavarria

Is the Time 100 not just a sort of an invented franchise? Most definitely. But I try not to get too 90s about it and grab meaning where I can. In 2017 Cindy Sherman was one of the Time 100 and I was asked to write about her, which felt like a big honor (each person is written about by someone else in their field.) I was written about by Molly Ringwald, which is a very sweet full circle moment for this girl whose middle name is “I just wanna let them know that they didn't break me.” But this isn’t just a throwback thrill, Molly is one of those rare childhood icons who just kept on being impressive and cool (she's a writer and translator, among other things.) In her lovely piece she mentions that we had “once even collaborated” and I smile imagining a couple people searching IMDB for some obscure movie we'd done together. I did direct her, but not in a movie.

In 2012, when I was nursing a baby, my friend – the writer Sheila Heti – and her friends, the artist and writer Leanne Shapton and writer Heidi Julavits, edited a book called Women In Clothes. It’s a fat thing comprised of interviews and surveys and projects from over six hundred contributors; it tries to get at how women present themselves through clothes and what style really means — but not in an obvious way. Not everyone in the book loves clothes and some of the women make them for living and are paid too little.

Initially I was going to be one of the editors but I bowed out early on which meant the whole thing was just handed to me like a piece of cake on a plate; it’s one of my favorite books of all time (and going to be reissued next year.) I’m about to bring it back to Molly Ringwald but maybe this is interesting, from one of my emails to the other editors in 2012 — we were trying to conceive of the book’s shape and I was, I guess, trying to make it about sex:

This thought came after reading an email from Sheila, which, like many of our emails, was much more honest about sex than pretty much any other discussion of sex in my life. I was thinking "I wish I could read a hundred of these emails, I wish everyone could! it would change how life feels, the way the Kinsey report probably did, but in a less statistical, more modern and beautiful way. You can see where this is heading...

what if this book wasn't only about women and style?? it was about three things, for example: Style, Sex, and Dreams.

So funny that I wrote Dreams, when obviously it should be Money. But back then I knew so little about money that I didn't even know it was a topic.

The sex part is just like we have been describing for the style part - about things that WE know are real but which you don't see discussed (just off the top of my head, for someone in a relationship: How does masturbation fit into your sex life with your partner? When and why do you do it and how is it different/better/worse than sex with your partner?)

Heh. Seeds of All Fours. A few weeks later (with pronouns adjusted):

hello everyone,

well, it turns out the baby was just really young (i had them eight weeks early) and now that they’re a few weeks older it is not quiiiite as easy to get both hands on a keyboard (and when i can type i try to write a few sentences of a novel…)

I bowed out; finishing The First Bad Man with a newborn baby was enough.

But I still wanted to be involved in Women In Clothes and apparently so did Molly Ringwald, who also lived in LA at the time, so these (east coast) editors suggested I do something with Molly. (NY people are always throwing people in LA together and we have to pretend there is something organic about it, as if we'd seen each other around the...ocean. But obviously I was excited.)

As is often the case when I'm deep in writing fiction, I didn't want to do anything that involved more words, so instead I came up with the idea to cast six women who were all the same clothing size as Molly and she and the other women would all be photographed in each other's favorite outfits. Somehow Molly was game for this. She would be placed in a context that yes, revolved around her, but not in a way that could be easily deduced (this was probably me just messing around with the idea of star power.) But maybe, with this new visual, we would learn something about what our clothes do, the wierd magic trick of them.

What I remember most was her casually handing me her diamond earrings and then leaving (we were done shooting her.) I had said again and again how careful we would be with her favorite clothes (other than letting six strangers wear them lol). I think I offered to dry clean the cashmere sweater and black pencil skirt and she politely refused and I knew this was wise because I was still a person who felt amazed that I even used a dry cleaner. (To my knowledge neither of my parents have ever gotten anything dry cleaned.) She was kind and easy going and I admired her elegance.

Here is the finished project. In the top row each of the women are wearing their favorite outfits.

xx

mj

This is actually a poster-version of the layout Leanne made; in the book it’s printed differently. Photos by Michael Schmelling.