Then Again - Diane Keaton [14]
Save It for Later
Even before I was a teenager, I realized something was wrong. Being the first of four children, I couldn’t understand why all the attractive genes had been passed on to my younger sisters, Robin and Dorrie. This incredible botch job had to be corrected. I hated my nose, so I slept with a bobby pin stuck on top, hoping the bulb would squeeze into a straight line. In Mom’s bathroom mirror I spent hours practicing a special smile, convinced it would hide my flaws. I even pried my eyes open as wide as possible for hours, determined they’d grow bigger.
A few years later, my best friend, Leslie Morgan, and I slunk through the hallways of Santa Ana High School like dark smudges in a universe of red, white, and blue. Unrecognizable in our white lipstick and black eyeliner, we tried to be pretty by renouncing normalcy. At the beginning of every month, we’d sneak over to Sav-on drugstore in Honer Plaza to see if the new Vogue was out. We loved Penelope Tree; her bangs were so long they almost covered her face. I decided to cut bangs too—long ones. They hid my forehead, but they didn’t solve the problem. The problem was my fixation with pretty. Mom gave no guidance with regard to my face. Sometimes I thought she didn’t have much hope for me in that department. But she had plenty of ideas about style. In fact, it might have been better if she had given me a little less freedom of expression in the fashion department.
But, hey, I thought we were a pretty good team. By the time I was fifteen, I designed most of my clothes and Mom sewed them. When I say designed, I mean I played around with the patterns we bought by changing details. The basic shape remained the same. Mom was a big proponent of the “walk-away” dress. It was so easy to make you could “start it after breakfast … walk away in it for lunch!” Fabric was essential. Everything available at Woolworth’s or Penney’s was entirely too predictable. Mom and I branched out and hit the Goodwill thrift shop, where we found a treasure trove of search-and-rescue items waiting for us in polka dots, stripes, and English plaids. We cut up men’s old tweed jackets and made patchwork miniskirts. Of course, Mom carried the heavy load. I had no interest in learning how to sew. God, no. Results were all that mattered—quick results and The Look.
I was unaware that Mother had questions about my “appearance” until I found something she wrote in 1962. Under the heading “Diane,” she observed: Diane’s hair is ratted at least four inches high. Her skirts are three inches above the knees, and while we all kid her to death on this, the total effect is pretty cute, I guess. To us here at home, she looks her best at night, when all the rats are out and she is in her comfortable pants with no eye makeup. She is quite a girl, in this junior year of high school. She has an independent way about her. She shows a set of values she has figured out for herself. She is strong on this point. A sure way to lose an argument with Diane is to tell her what she should do or think. She has to decide for herself.
And I did, thanks to her. My all-time favorite outfit was this little getup we put together for my high school graduation ceremony in 1963. After I redesigned the Simplicity pattern of a minidress Mom bought at Newberry’s, where I worked in the ladies’ bra department, we hit the Goodwill and found the perfect black-and-white polka-dot fabric from an old shirtwaist dress with a wide skirt. Then we splurged and bought an expensive pair of white straw high heels with pointed toes and black pom-poms. I found some black seamed stockings to go with it so I could look more mod. I even had a theory: If I hid my face, if I framed it to highlight my best feature, which I figured was my smile, I would get more attention. But then something happened that changed my life. I was browsing around our other favorite store, the Salvation Army thrift shop, when I found the answer: a hat, a man’s old bowler hat. I put it on my head—and that was it!
For the first