Getty Images (Hepburn); Bettmann/Corbis (Kelly); Starstock/Photoshot (Farrow); courtesy of the Everett Collection (remaining images)Advertisement - Continue Reading BelowNot long after we broke up, my ex-boyfriend marched me into Alexander McQueen, calling cheerfully to the shop clerk: "Hello! Have you got anything that can cope with her tits?"
His voice ricocheted off the walls. He was buying me a dress to celebrate a script we'd sold, him as director, me as screenwriter. The clerk pulled a skintight red minidress with strategic slashes at the cleavage. "We also do it in black," she offered.
More From ELLE"Yes, I'd—"
"No!" said my ex. "Red is more you."
By now I had accepted it: If you get involved with a director, you're going to be directed. As I stepped out of the McQueen dressing room, he clapped. "Oh yes, that's brilliant." It's fascinating—or just depressing—to be appreciated physically by someone who no longer desires you. My ex was madly in love with his new girlfriend. Speaking of whom: "We should buy a dress for her now," he told me. "Otherwise I can't tell her I bought you one."
Across the street, the Chloé store was like angels singing. An airy space stocked with peach, pale blue, chiffon, and ruffles. Two boutiques on opposite sides of the street, underscoring the difference between sacred and profane love. "Is your girlfriend the same shape?" the salesgirl asked my ex, pointing toward me.
"Slimmer," he said, "more delicate."
I'd known my place in the scheme of things ever since I'd first started obsessively watching movies as a young girl. Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor are the bad girls, Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly the good; Raquel Welch bad, Mia Farrow good, J.Lo bad, Gwyneth good. In this year's Last Night, Eva Mendes is the temptress to Keira Knightley's good girl. Though Truman Capote had wanted Monroe for Breakfast at Tiffany's, Hepburn was cast, specifically to help cover the fact that the story is about a call girl. If they had cast Marilyn, people would know.
This stark distinction applies to male actors to a lesser extent; Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ryan Gosling are considered serious and intellectual based on their skinniness, as was James Dean before them. Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill were lovable fat guys. (Now that they've both slimmed down, they're more, well, sexually viable.) From Stallone to Chris Hemsworth, there have always been beefcake actors. But these cineplex archetypes aren't traps the way they are for women; men are as malleable as their bodies. Ryan pumped up, Stallone got his Cop Land (Clooney is convincing as both cutup and charmer)—none lost his essence.
At 17, on holiday in Barbados (wearing a white one-piece I'd copied from Liz Taylor in Suddenly, Last Summer), my friend was appalled when I screamed because I saw a jellyfish. "Would Lauren Bacall scream at the sight of a jellyfish?" she demanded. No, of course not; having seen all her films, I knew Bacall was rangy, in control, slim and long and brave. Flat-chested, slender women aren't the emotional ones on-screen; they're cool, stylish, and treated with deference. Even losing their minds in Rosemary's Baby and Repulsion, Mia Farrow and Catherine Deneuve remained chic. Losing her mind in Don't Bother to Knock, Monroe just kept losing her clothes.
I had always defined myself by my body. I had no choice, I thought. I looked different from most of the other girls at school, for whom Kate Moss was not just an ideal but an echo. Me, I was a walking anachronism with a tiny waist, expansive bosom, and child-bearing hips. I was also a neurotic teen—unreasonable, uncontrollable, everything spilling, especially my fears. My body seemed at times a cheerleader for my anxiety.
During my adolescence, there had been a long stretch of hunched shoulders and oversize T-shirts. That was before I'd seen, on a field trip to the National Portrait Gallery, Philippe Halsman's photo of the teen Liz Taylor wearing a tight gown the green of dollar bills. Unanchored within my own body, unapproached by boys, I studied her journey from child star to ingenue. She had no awkward period—when Liz got breasts, the studio couldn't get her into low-cut dresses fast enough. What struck me equally was her behavior in love, so much that I carried it with me when I moved to New York at 20 to pursue a career as a writer.
WireImage (Lopez); courtesy of the Everett Collection (remaining images)Advertisement - Continue Reading Below