Getting the Pretty Back Read online

  Getting the Pretty Back

  Friendship, Family, and Finding the Perfect Lipstick

  Molly Ringwald

  Illustrations by Ruben Toledo

  THIS BOOK

  IS DEDICATED TO PANIO,

  AND TO ALL WOMEN.

  OUR MOTHERS AND

  OUR DAUGHTERS

  Contents

  Introduction: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the F-word

  1 Isn’t It Pretty to Think So

  2 It Woman

  3 Boyfriend Hair, the Skinny on Skin Care, and Making Up That’s Not Hard to Do

  4 Who’s Got Your Back?

  5 She Gives Good E-mail

  6 Never Wear Sandals in the Kitchen

  7 Work It Out

  8 Oh, Mama!

  9 What Did You Want to Be When You Grew Up?

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  INTRODUCTION

  HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE F-WORD

  IT HAPPENS TO ALL OF US. Here is how it happened to me.

  On February 18, 2008, I turned forty years old. It hardly seemed possible. I felt like I was just out of my teen years—a sentiment that in my case happens to be shared by a lot of people. The enormous popularity of the films I made as a teenager has succeeded in essentially freezing me in time for the general public. In the minds of most viewers, I will always be sitting on a table eating birthday cake with a hunky senior.

  Like most women, I was sort of dreading the day. Unlike most women, I didn’t have the luxury of fibbing about my age, or even being coy when asked. Even my poor mother has experienced the fallout when she was paying a bill recently and the waitress innocently inquired if she was Molly Ringwald’s grandmother. And while it is nice in some way to be seen as “youthful,” the fact remains that I am no longer a teenager, and no amount of reruns on cable is going to change that.

  For months leading up to my birthday (let’s just call it B-Day) I had well-meaning friends call and e-mail my husband incessantly about what kind of special plans we had in mind. He kept them at bay by saying he would let them know. Then he would gently nudge me, saying that I could do whatever I wanted—a big blowout party to end all parties, or a simple dinner at home together. He just wanted to know what I wanted.

  “Let me think,” I would moan. “I’ll decide tomorrow…”

  Eventually he stopped asking, and I don’t know what he told my friends. Finally, the day before B-Day, I did some soul-searching. What did I really want for my fortieth birthday? A yoga retreat? An overnight flight to Miami? Botox? Then, as if from the ether, a voice spoke with astounding clarity.

  Fondue.

  Of course. If I had to turn forty, I would celebrate it by eating cheese. And not just any old cheese, but the yummiest, most decadent, melt-in-your-mouth kind of cheese—made only more decadent by the warm crusty bread that you dunked into it. So, in the dead of winter, ten of my closest friends and I bundled up in our layers and traipsed over to Artisanal, a famous cheese and wine bar in New York City, and ordered bowls of fondue. I made sure I wore a red dress under my winter coat, drank delicious red wine, ate amazing gooey French cheese, and laughed with my friends until I was forty years old and one day.

  Here’s a secret: I actually like my age. Or rather, I like everything that I’ve learned as those years have been accumulated. Whether it has to do with friendship, family, or falling in love, whether it involves acting, fashion, or motherhood, there’s nothing that I would give up. (Well, OK, maybe I’d pass on the Dorothy Hamill haircut I got in the fourth grade.)

  This book is about celebrating turning forty and being the sexiest, funniest, smartest, best-dressed, and most confident woman that you can be. It’s about everything I’ve learned, thus far, and how to put it together and incorporate it all. It doesn’t matter if you’re married, divorced, remarried, or eternally single…the one thing we have in common is that we all turn forty and wonder how we got there—and what we’re going to do now.

  Two months after my fortieth birthday, I was asked to be a part of a show about teenagers. There was that word again! Teenager. It seems to stick to me like a barnacle. But the difference was that now I was not being asked to play a teenager, but to play the mother of one. Once I got over the shock (I was still recovering from the fact that I had just turned forty. And for those of you who have gone through it, you know what I’m talking about. For those of you who have it still coming—it gets way better, I promise) I realized that the show was a great way to bring it all full circle. Surrounded by teenagers and their urgent high school dramas, I felt a mixture of nostalgia and relief. Nostalgia at seeing my younger self reflected in them, and relief that I was no longer agonizing about things like popularity and acceptance in the same way.

  When you’re a teenager, you’re forever thinking: Do they like me? When you’re a grown-up, as anyone over the age of thirty can attest, the question becomes: Do I like them?

  Happily, the show has been a great success, and I am constantly looking for ways to portray a “cool” mom—a mom that all of those characters I played way back when would have liked to have had. At the same time, it gives me a chance to think about the kind of mother I want to be for my own children, and what kind of woman I want to be…for myself.

  ARTISANAL BLEND FONDUE

  Serves 6

  Kosher salt

  1 clove garlic, end cut off and discarded

  3 cups shredded Comte, Emmenthaler, and Vacherin cheese (for 12 ounces total), at room temperature

  1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons cornstarch

  1 cup dry white wine

  1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

  1 pinch nutmeg

  Black pepper in a mill

  1. Put 1 teaspoon salt in a fondue pot or a heavy-bottomed, 2-quart stainless-steel saucepan. Vigorously rub the exposed end of the garlic over the surface of the pot, starting in the salt and coating the entire surface. Discard the garlic.

  2. In a medium bowl, combine the grated cheese and cornstarch, mixing well to distribute the cornstarch evenly. Set aside.

  3. Add the wine and lemon juice to the prepared fondue pot and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.

  4. Once the liquid has come to a boil, slowly add the cheese and cornstarch mixture, whisking continuously. Make sure each addition is completely melted and incorporated before the next addition.

  5. Once all of the cheese has been added, cook it over medium heat for one minute. Season with nutmeg, salt, and 4 grinds of pepper, or to taste. Remove the pot from the heat and serve.

  EMBELLISHMENTS: Serve the Artisanal Blend Fondue with cubed bread. Day-old bread is best, but any crusty bread will work well. The Artisanal Blend Fondue may also be served with boiled fingerling potatoes, sautéed beef tips, pickled vegetables, or air-dried beef, kielbasa, and/or sausage.

  Chapter One

  ISN’T IT PRETTY TO THINK SO

  EARLY ON DURING MY FIRST PREGNANCY, A FEMALE ACQUAINTANCE OF MINE TOLD ME, “YOU BETTER HOPE SHE ISN’T A GIRL, ’CAUSE SHE’LL SUCK THE PRETTY OUT OF YOU!”

  I sort of laughed. Sort of.

  In a few short weeks, I found out that the baby was a girl. A few weeks after that, I was absolutely sure that the woman was right.

  I was not a particularly attractive pregnant person. Every woman I know has wanted to be “beautifully pregnant”: the type of cover-girl pregnant where you can’t tell from behind—it’s only until you turn and reveal the perfect bump hovering above your Manolos that you are with child. Me? I blew up like a water balloon (thanks to a semicommon ailment, preeclampsia…and a troubling, powerf
ul fondness for “macho nachos”). The freckles on my face decided to band together and form a pigment block party, and my ankles swelled as if I’d been stung by a hive of particularly vindictive bees. On the day my daughter Mathilda was born, as I tried to tie up loose ends before heading into the labor room, I was asked to participate in a maternity Gap ad—which I was obviously unable to do. When I hung up the phone and told my husband and friend Victoria, the nurse on call chimed in, “That’s funny! A Gap ad? You look like the Michelin Man!”

  * * *

  WHY SHOULDN’T ART BE PRETTY?

  THERE ARE ENOUGH UNPLEASANT THINGS IN THE WORLD.

  —PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR

  * * *

  My husband, friend, and I were shocked into silence. The nurse took this to mean that we hadn’t heard her and felt compelled to repeat her insight.

  “You look like the Michelin Man!” she snorted.

  It wasn’t till she went in for the third time that Victoria snapped, “Yeah, we got it.”

  In the months after I delivered Mathilda, I would catch glimpses of myself in the mirror, each time thinking the same thing: Is that me? I couldn’t get over the heft of my body. I would breast-feed my daughter and look down in horror to find that my breasts were larger than her head.

  My husband came home from work one day to discover me in the bedroom, dissolved in tears.

  “It’s true! It’s true…”

  “What’s true?” he asked, alarmed.

  “She got it all. She sucked the pretty out of me…”

  I’m sure I’m not the only woman who has felt this way, and obviously it isn’t only motherhood that can give you this feeling. It can be a relationship gone south, a stressful job, weight gain. What makes it so disturbing when it is motherhood, however, is the completely irrational feeling that your loss is someone else’s gain. Something that is so associated with something so wonderful. The giving of life. It’s the ultimate bittersweet sensation.

  * * *

  MANNERS ARE ESPECIALLY THE NEED OF THE PLAIN. THE PRETTY CAN GET AWAY WITH ANYTHING.

  —EVELYN WAUGH

  * * *

  It seems to me that there is a moment when women are no longer defined as “pretty.” It’s hard to know when exactly it happens, but suddenly you notice it. You are “beautiful,” “unique,” “handsome” (if you’re unlucky), or “interesting.” Pretty is a word that is reserved for the young. At some point you are expected to relinquish the word like an Olympic torch. If you were ever called pretty to begin with, you know that there is a definite time limit imposed on the word. You could say that it has the longevity of the career of an ice-skater or ballerina. You get to dance Swan Lake a few times, then you’re expected to teach it.

  What is pretty anyway? Not just beauty. It’s an attitude toward life, a frame of mind. A lightness, even a frivolousness. It’s attractive and charming—yet also naïve. It’s endearing, particularly because it is so innocent, because it seems to disregard (or simply be unaware of) all the things in the world—the experiences, the people, the accidents—that increasingly defy and deny this sense of giddy hopefulness.

  * * *

  PUT YOUR HAND ON A HOT STOVE FOR A MINUTE, AND IT SEEMS LIKE AN HOUR. SIT WITH A PRETTY GIRL FOR AN HOUR, AND IT SEEMS LIKE A MINUTE. THAT’S RELATIVITY.

  —ALBERT EINSTEIN

  * * *

  When I told a friend I was writing a book called Getting the Pretty Back, she asked, “Why don’t you call it Getting the Beauty Back? That’s a better title.” But beauty isn’t what I’m talking about. Prettiness is inside every woman; it’s a feeling, a sense of self that never entirely leaves. It’s always there. I remember at my daughter’s baptism, which we had in Greece (where my husband’s parents live), watching my mother-in-law dancing at the after party at four in the morning. As she spun I could see the village girl she had been fifty years earlier in every light, joyful step. It was moving and it was inspiring, and it was also—the best part—completely, carelessly normal. She wasn’t thinking about it. She wasn’t pretending. She was just doing what felt right. I watched her turning her wrists and hands in time with the music with such confidence and grace, thinking to myself, She’s so pretty.

  Getting the pretty back is about getting back in touch with your essential self: the part of you that knows what you really want, that takes risks, that isn’t scared away by all the things that can—and have—gone wrong. It’s the part of you that runs around in summer holding your sandals in your hand. It’s remembering the girl you were at fifteen who did double flips off the high dive, the girl who laughed and squealed with your best friend while you huddled together in the bathroom, double piercing your ear with a needle and a potato.

  Being pretty can be about style or outer beauty, true, but on a deeper, more fundamental level, it’s about learning to take care of yourself again. Style is the first and easiest step to reminding yourself—and the world—that you matter. Too often, after kids, after years in and out of relationships, we settle. We stop paying attention to ourselves. Everyone else’s needs come first. We’d love to try a yoga class or see a movie with a friend or visit a country that we have never been to, but before that can happen, we have all these other responsibilities. The car payments, the mortgage, the dental appointments, the carpools, the birthday parties, the work functions…at times, they can make you feel as if adulthood is nothing more than a series of tasks to be completed.

  And I’m not advocating trying to recapture your youth—mostly because it is impossible, but secondly, because you shouldn’t want to. Our life experience, after all, is what makes us interesting, smarter, more confident, and formidable. But being all those things shouldn’t preclude being whimsical, light, flirty, and fun. At heart, prettiness is a state of mind. It’s a way of looking at things, of looking at ourselves. It’s just one thread of the tapestry that makes us up, but it’s an important, all-too-often neglected thread.

  Luckily, it isn’t so hard to get the pretty back—as I rediscovered again while writing this book. I spent a lot of time searching through my past—remembering the good and bad and finding out what got me to where I am now. I invite you to do the same. Whether it’s reconnecting with friends that you miss, or remembering how much you used to love to dance to Bananarama in the living room by yourself, getting back in touch with the pretty girl that you once were might just make you realize that she really isn’t so far from the woman you are today.

  Drink, pretty creature, drink!

  —WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

  IT CAN HARDLY BE A COINCIDENCE THAT NO LANGUAGE ON EARTH HAS EVER PRODUCED THE EXPRESSION “AS PRETTY AS AN AIRPORT.”

  —DOUGLAS ADAMS, THE LONG DARK TEA-TIME OF THE SOUL

  THAT’S THE THING ABOUT GIRLS. EVERY TIME THEY DO SOMETHING PRETTY, EVEN IF THEY’RE NOT MUCH TO LOOK AT, OR EVEN IF THEY’RE SORT OF STUPID, YOU FALL HALF IN LOVE WITH THEM, AND THEN YOU NEVER KNOW WHERE YOU ARE.

  —J.D. SALINGER, THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

  HARK! HARK! THE LARK AT HEAVEN’S GATE SINGS, /AND PHOEBUS ’GINS ARISE, /HIS STEEDS TO WATER AT THOSE SPRINGS/ON CHALICED FLOWERS THAT LIES;/AND WINKING MARY-BUDS BEGIN/TO OPE THEIR GOLDEN EYES:/WITH EVERY THING THAT PRETTY IS,/MY LADY SWEET, ARISE,/ARISE, ARISE!

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, CYMBELINE

  MY DEAR YOUNG LADY, THERE WAS A GREAT DEAL OF TRUTH, I DARE SAY, IN WHAT YOU SAID, AND YOU LOOKED VERY PRETTY WHILE YOU SAID IT, WHICH IS MUCH MORE IMPORTANT.

  —OSCAR WILDE, A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE

  TO LOOK ALMOST PRETTY IS AN ACQUISITION OF HIGHER DELIGHT TO A GIRL WHO HAS BEEN LOOKING PLAIN THE FIRST FIFTEEN YEARS OF HER LIFE THAT A BEAUTY FROM HER CRADLE CAN EVER RECEIVE.

  —JANE AUSTEN, NORTHANGER ABBEY

  HE REMEMBERED THAT SHE WAS PRETTY, AND, MORE, THAT SHE HAD A SPECIAL GRACE IN THE INTIMACY OF LIFE. SHE HAD THE SECRET OF INDIVIDUALITY WHICH EXCITES—AND ESCAPES.

  —JOSEPH CONRAD, VICTORY

  Chapter Two

  IT WOMAN

  WHEN
I WAS SEVEN YEARS OLD, I WAS A TALL LEGGY KID WITH SHORT SHAGGY HAIR AND PERMANENTLY STUBBED TOES, AND FOR A GOOD DEAL OF TIME I SPORTED A WOMAN’S STOCKING (MY MOTHER’S) ATTACHED TO THE TOP OF MY HEAD WITH TWO PRECISELY CRISSCROSSED BOBBY PINS. This seemed to be, in my seven-year-old brain, the best solution as to how to exist in California in the seventies with a gorgeous blue-eyed older sister with long blond hair. I was sure that she knew how it tortured me as I lay on the bed and watched her brush her long straight tresses, and then flip it back over to have it land on her back, as if in slow motion. I was mesmerized by the perfection of it. It was the perfect color, the perfect weight. It even smelled nice. (Farrah Fawcett Shampoo, which I’m pretty sure was just Herbal Essences with a picture of Farrah stuck on the bottle.) I asked my mother if I could grow my hair out like my sister’s.

  “Maybe later,” she’d tell me. “This time we’ll cut it short, then you’ll see. It’ll grow in thicker!” This lie, handed down from the ages, clearly senseless and yet somehow, at that age, irrefutable. And anyway, who doesn’t want thicker hair? So off to the barber I’d go, where they’d chop off my honey-colored wisps and fashion my hair into a boy’s cut.

  “A pixie,” my mom would say.

  “What’s his name?” everyone else would say.