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It was Friday night, and I was over at Leslie’s for taco night. Of course, at Leslie’s that meant ground turkey tacos on baked tortillas, but it was still pretty yum. She’d practically adopted me as her little sister. Well, her younger sister who was taller and heavier than she was. Dinner was over, and Leslie’s husband was off to meet his friends at some snazzy cigar bar. I’d just read
The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish
to Leslie’s son, Jackson. He was three and the definition of adorable. Reading him a bedtime story on Friday nights was easily the highlight of my week. Leslie’s daughter, Danielle, who was seven, was like a little glamour puss. She had this huge vanity mirror and despite the fact that it drove Leslie crazy, she loved to play “model.”

Leslie and I were eating the tiniest bowls of blood orange gelato and listening to the new CD from Air in her “media” room. It probably goes without saying that Les’s media room was the size of my entire apartment. Everything in the media room responded to Leslie’s voice, so if she said, “Air.
Talkie Walkie
. Track six,” that’s what would come wafting through the speakers that were so high tech, you didn’t even see them: they were built into the walls and the bookcases and even the huge leather club chairs.

“Even the girls who do plus-size suits have flat stomachs,” I whined to Leslie. “Why do they even want me?”

“The Germans like big girls,” she said. “Think about it this way. It’s colder than a witch’s tit in New York. You’re getting an all-expense-paid weekend to Miami.”

“I know, I know.”

“They’ve booked Andy and Syreeta for hair and makeup.”

“That’s cool.”

“It’ll be great,” Leslie said reassuringly. Then, changing subjects, she said, “I wish I were Charlotte Gainsbourg.”

My mouth nearly dropped on the floor. In all honesty, a little gelato drooled out of the side of my mouth. Leslie was blond, gorgeous, successful, happily married, and loaded. People like her don’t dream about being somebody else. Which is what I told her.

“Oh, there’s a part of me that would love to be tall and French with chestnut brown hair and a sexy accent. Everybody dreams about being somebody else,” Leslie said. “It’s the way we’re built.”

In Miami, I stayed at the Delano, which is the definition of hotness. From the moment the porters open the big glass doors, you feel like you’re walking into a movie. There are thin white curtains that blow in the wind, and there’s a long lobby that leads right out to the beach. All the furnishing are white: white couches, white lamps, and white candles, with dark wood floors. I saw Syreeta checking in, and we had dinner by the pool. I was really good and had a calamari salad and a virgin mojito. Truth be told, I never used to like salads. But the more I traveled for photo shoots, the more I realized that the wilting lettuce and tasteless tomatoes my mom used to serve with Thousand Island dressing could hardly be considered a salad. The calamari salad had all kinds of lettuces, hearts of palm, sweet bananas, and a sesame orange dressing. I was going to have a big fat chocolatey dessert, but Syreeta reminded me that it was my first swimsuit. I’d hate to add overnight sugar bloat to my list of insecurities, so we split a fruit plate instead.

The next morning, it was a six a.m. call at the beach. I liked getting up so early. My room had an ocean view and I slept with my windows open, even though Leslie told me that I’ve got to be more careful in hotels. I fell asleep to the sounds of the waves crashing and woke up at five a.m. the same way.

I was worried that I would look like a sausage squeezed into all the tiny swimsuits. But they fit fine. I told Syreeta how surprised I was that I felt comfortable in the suits.

“Aren’t you glad you skipped dessert last night?”

What I said was, “Yes, you’re totally right.” But I hadn’t stopped thinking about the “chocolate bomb” on the menu and fully intended to have it tonight. I guess I must’ve been drooling or something ’cause Syreeta said, “You’re thinking about that cake, aren’t you?”

“Oh yeah,” I said, grinning devilishly. “I thought being a plus-size model meant that I could eat whatever I wanted.”

Syreeta shook her head. “All things in moderation. Being a plus-size model means that you can eat. Those other girls don’t get to eat at all.”

I thought about this for a second. “Split the chocolate cake with me tonight?”

Syreeta smiled. “It’s a deal.”

I felt a little exposed, posing on the beach all day as people walked back and forth. When we shot Baby Phat, it had been inside and there were all those other girls with me. But the photographer, Karin, let me play DJ, and I started to rock out to all the music on my iPod. Two tracks into my Shakira mix, I was dancing around and having a great time. And the funny thing was, the more I moved, the more people stopped—men and women—to cheer me on:

“Wepa, mami!”

“You are beautiful, girl!”

“Te quiero, morena.”

It was snowing in New York, and I was getting paid to shake my groove thing on a beach in Miami. Once and for all, it had been established: it does not suck to be me.

Not everybody was in “You go, girl,” mode about the ubiquity of the Baby Phat campaign. The Monday after I got back to New York, this newspaper columnist, Ryan Reynolds, in Los Angeles wrote an editorial that ended up making national news. He said:

Every morning, in order to come to work, I’m forced to drive by a giant billboard of five hippo butt girls declaring that they “love their baby phat.” It’s a play on words: “Baby Phat” is the name of the underwear these bovine beauties are wearing. But the point is they’re happy with their cottage cheese asses, so I should be too. For the record, I’m not. If I want to see out-of-shape girls with their stomachs spilling over their thongs, then I can stand in line at the all-you-can-eat buffet at my local steak house. The idea that we’re supposed to herald overweight women as real-life beauties is the worse kind of feminist tripe.

He didn’t call any of us by name. He didn’t say, “Bee Wilson’s cellulite is a personal offense.” But it still hurt. For days, I kept walking around and hearing the phrases over and over again, “bovine beauties,” “hippo butt.”

We were dissed publicly; sliced, diced, and flambéed. Then the countermovement happened. I got flowers from Christy Turlington, the most ginormous arrangement of hydrangea and roses and lilies I have ever seen in my life. The note said,
I want my daughter to be like you, Bee
. It turns out all the girls got them.

15

2 Cool 2 Bee Forgotten

The
president of Baby Phat had this party in our honor at a loft downtown. They even sent a limo to pick us up, and when we got to the party, there was an honest-to-goodness red carpet.

“Damn,” Melody said. “I’ve never walked the red carpet before.”

“Come on, we’re models,” Elsie said. “The one thing we know how to do is walk.”

So we did this silly sports team cheer inside the limo and then sashayed our way down the red carpet like it was something we did every day. The strangest thing is that the photographers knew all of our names. They kept calling out stuff like, “Melody, let me see you smile, baby.” And, “Over here, honey Bee.”

Inside, there were life-size portraits of us everywhere. We had to give interviews to all the local news stations, and we all kept saying the same thing over and over again:

“I’m very proud to represent real women.”

“Real women have curves.”

“I do love my Baby Phat!”

We were all standing together in the press area when a reporter from channel five asked us what we thought of Ryan Reynolds’s editorial. I looked from girl to girl, and we all had an identical frozen smile plastered on our face. Which is why we all burst out laughing when Melody, Miss Sweetness and Light of all people, turned to the camera and very innocently said, “I think it’s been a very long time since Ryan Reynolds was laid.”

Later on at the party, I was talking to a buyer from Neiman’s when Kevin approached me. “Excuse me, may I speak to you for a moment?” he said.

OMG, what was he doing here?

“I haven’t seen you in forever, Kev. What have you been up to?” I asked. “Still struggling with math for poets?”

“Well,” he said, totally humble like, which was so not him. “Ever since my video hit the number-one spot on
TRL
, the label’s been pressuring me to drop out of school. But I won’t do it . . .”

I was confused.

“Wait a second, you have the number-one video on
TRL
? I thought it was some guy named DJ Go Drop Dead.”

Kev laughed. “So you still got jokes.”

“No, seriously,” I said. “I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard people talk about this DJ Go Drop Something.”

“It’s DJ
Drop and Roll
,” Kevin said. “That’s me.”

“Wow!” I said, still reeling as I gave him a hug. “Way to blow up! Sorry I’ve been out of the loop.”

“That’s cool,” he said. “You’re blowing up too. See, unlike you, I keep tabs on my friends. Like this Baby Phat joint. Yo, I really like you in these ads. I like the whole lot of you girls, but you take the cake. That red hair is wild. Who would’ve thought that Miss Premed had it in her?”

“You’d be surprised,” I said.

“A lot of things surprise me,” Kevin said. “Like you not coming to my album release party.”

I was shocked. I couldn’t believe he noticed. Chela said more than five hundred people had been there.

“I was there,” I said, trying to play it off.

“You weren’t there,” he said. “But nice try.”

He took out a Sharpie marker and I burst out laughing.

“Are you going to give me your autograph, DJ Drop and Roll?”

“No, I changed my number,” he said. He wrote his phone number on the palm of my hand.

Then he said, “Give me your phone.” So I handed it to him. He programmed his number into my phone.

“Now you have my number in two places. Don’t start saying you lost it.”

When I got home that night, there was a message from Chela. She’d left me a bunch of messages, and with all the Baby Phat stuff, I just didn’t get a chance to return them. I called her back.