Relationship In Love

Tales of the Pretty

On a recent afternoon, four women met at an Upper East Side restaurant to discuss what it’s like to be an extremely beautiful young woman in New York City. About what it’s like to be sought after, paid for, bothered, envied, misunderstood, and just plain gorgeous—
All before the age of twenty-five.
Camilla was the first to arrive. Five feet ten, pale white skin, big lips, round cheekbones, tiny nose—Camilla is twenty-five but says she “feel old.” She began modeling at sixteen. When I first met her, months ago downtown, she was doing her duty as a “date” to a well-known television producer, which meant she was smiling and speaking back when someone asked her a question. Other than that, she was making very little effort, except to occasionally light her own cigarettes.
Women like Camilla don’t need to make much effort, especially with men. While many women would have killed to have a date with Scotty, the TV producer, Camilla told me she had been bored. “He’s not my type,” she said. Too old (early forties), not attractive enough, not rich enough. She said she’d recently returned from a trip to St. Moritz with a young, titled European—that, she said, wsa her idea of fun. The fact that Scotty is indisputably one of the most eligibale bachelors in New York meant nothing to her. She was the prize, not Scotty.
The other three women were late, so Camilla kept talking. “I’m not a bitch,” she said, looking around the restaurant, “but most of the girls in New York are just idiots. Airheads. They can’t even carry on a conversation. They don’t know which fork to use. They don’t know how to tip the maid at someone’s country house.”
There are a handful of women like Camilla in New York. They are all part of a sort of secret club, an urban sorority, with just a few requirements for membership: extreme beauty, youth (age range seventeen to tween-five, or at least not admitting to being over twenty-five), brains, and the ability to sit in new restaurants for hours.
The brains part, however, appears to be relative. As one of Camilla’s friends, Alexis, said, “I’m literary. I read. I’ll sit down and read a whole magazine from cover to cover.”
Yes, these are the beautiful girls who throw off the whole man-woman curve thing in New York, because they get more than their fair share. Of attention, invitation, gifts, and offers of clothes, money, private airplane rides, and dinners on yachts in the South of France. These are the women who accompany the bachelors with the boldface names to the best parties and charity events. The women who get asked—instead of you. They have access. New York should be their oyster. But is it?

“Let’s Talk About Scumbags”
The other women showed up. Besides Camilla, who said that she was “basically single but working on” a young scion of a Park Avenue family, the women included Kitty, twenty-five, an aspiring actress who was currently living with Hubert, a still-famous-but-basically-out-of-work, fifty-five-year-old actor. Shiloh, seventeen, a model who had had a breakdown of some kind three months before and now rarely goes out; and Teesie, twenty-two, a model who had recently moved to New York and whose agency told her that she had to tell everyone she was nineteen.
The girls were all “friends,” having met each other several times when they were out in the evenings, and they had even dated “some of the same scumbags,” as Kitty put it.
“Let’s talk about scumbags,” someone said.
“Does anybody know this guy S.Ps.?” asked Kitty. She had long tumbledown brown hair, green eyes, a little-girl voice. “He’s an old, white-hair guy with a face like a pumpkin, and he’s everywhere. Well. One time, I was at Bowery Bar, and he came up to me and he said, ‘You’re too young to realize that you want to sleep with me and by the time you’re old enough to realize it, you’ll be too old for me to want to sleep with you.’ ”
“Men always try to buy you,” said Camilla. “Once, this guy said to me, ‘Please come to St. Barts with me for a weekend. We don’t have to sleep together, I promise. I just want to hold you. That’s all.’ When he got back, he said, ‘Why didn’t you come with me? I told you we wouldn’t sleep together.’ I said, ‘Don’t you realize that if I go away with a man, it means I want to sleep with him?’”
“Someone at my old agency tried to sell me to some rich guy once,” said Teesie. She had tiny features and a long swan nect. “This rich guy was friends with one of the bookers, and she promised him that he could ‘have’ me.” Teesie looked outraged, then quickly motioned for the waiter. “Excuse me, but my glass has a spot on it.”
Shiloh, perhaps feeling competitive, piped up: “I’ve had guys offer me plane tickets, I’ve had guys offer to fly me on their private jet. I just smile and never talk to them again.”
Kitty leaned forward and said, “I had one guy offer me a breast job and an apartment. He said, ‘I take care of my firls even after I break up with them.’ He was a tiny, bald, Austraian guy.”

Dash at the Mark Hotel
“Why is it that all these unattractive guys have all these ideas about what they are going to do for you?” asked Teesie.
“Most men come across as very arrogant,” said Shiloh. She had skin the color of toastedd almonds and long, straight black hair and huge black eyes. She was wearing a tank top and a long swirling skirt. “It is just too much for me. I finally found one guy who wasn’t, but he’s in Idia right now. I didn’t feel intimidated by him. He didn’t try to touch or feel me.”
“There are two types of guys,” said Camilla. “They’re either slimeballs who are just out to get laid, or else they’re in love with you instantly. It’s pathetic.”
“What kind of guys fall in love instantly?” Kitty wondered.
“Oh, you know,” said Camilla. “Scotty. Capote Duncan. Dash Peters.” Capote Duncan was the thirtysomething Southern writer who was always out with beautiful young girls. Dash Peter was a well-known Hollywood agent who was frequently in New York, also a squire of P.Y.T.’s. Both had also dated and broken the hearts of women who were in their thirties and usually pretty accomplished at somethig besides looking good.
“I dated Dash Peter, too,” Teesie said. She touched the back of her short, dark hair. “He kept trying to get me to spend the night with him at the Mark Hotel. He sent me baskets of flowers, all white ones. He was begging me to come over and take a sauna with him. Then he wanted me to go with him to some stupid party in the Hamptons, but I wouldn’t.”
“I met him in the South of France,” said Camilla. Sometimes Camilla spoke in a weird, fake European accent, and she was using it now.
“Did he buy you anything?” Teesie asked, trying to be casual.
“Not really,” Camilla said. She motioned to the waiter. “Can you please bring me another frozen margarita?” she asked. “This one isn’t cold enough.” She looked back at Teesie. “Just some Chanel.”
“Clothing, or acessories?”
“Clothing,” Camilla said. “I already have too many Chanel bags. They bore me.”
There was silence for a moment, an then Shiloh spoke up.
“I hardly ever go out anymore. I can’t take it. I’ve become very spiritual.” A thin piece of rawhide hung from her neck, twisted around a small crystal. What have finally done her in was an encounter with a famous movie actor in his early thirties who had seen her photo in a magazine and tracked down her agency. They passed on his number, and because she had just seen him in a movie and thought he was cute, she called him. He invited her to spend two weeks with him at his house in Los Angeles. Then he came to New York, and he started to get weird. He refused to go out, except to stip clubs, where he tried to get girls to do special things to him for free, “because he was famous,” Shiloh said.
Kitty put her elbows on the table. “A couple of years ago, I said, ‘I’ve been screwed over too many times.’ So I decided to take a guy’s virginity and then leave him. I was bad, but on the other hand, he was twenty-one, which is probably too old to be a virgin, so he deserved it. I was as sweet as could be, and then I never talked to him again. It doesn’t matter how pretty you are. If you can create who the guy wants you to be, you can get him.”
“If a guy says to me, ‘I like fishnets and red lipstick,’ I see it as accessorizing,” said Teesie.
“If Hubert was a girl, he’d be the trashiest girl you’ve ever seen,” said Kitty. “I said, ‘Yes, I’ll wear short skirts, but I’m going to wear underwear underneath.’ One time, I had to totally get him back. He kept harassing me and harassing me to sleep with him and another woman. Finally, I have this friend who’s gay? George? And we kiss sometimes, but it’s like kids? So I said, ‘Honey, George is coming over and he’s going to spend the night.’ Hubert was like, ‘Where is he going to sleep?’ I said, ‘Oh, I thought he’d sleep in the bed with us. And you’re going to play receiver.’ He totally freaked out. I said, ‘Honey, if you really love me, you’ll do this for me because it’s what I want.’ Well,” she said, ordering another margarita. “It had to be done. Now we’re on a level that’s equal.”

“Hello, Kitty”
“Older guys are gross,” said Camilla. “I won’t go out with them anymore. A couple of years ago, I realized, why do I need to go out with these ugly, rich old men, when I can go out with gorgeous, rich young guys? Plus, these old guys don’t really understand you. No matter how much they think they do. They’re another generation.”
“I don’t think older guys are so bad,” Kitty said. “Of course, when Hubert first called me up and said he wanted to go out with me, I was like, ‘How old are you and how much hair do you have left on your head?’ He really had to woo me. The first tiome he came to pick me up, I walked me so much, get a look at the real me. And after that, the first time I spend the night with him, the next morning I woke up, and he had a bouquet of my favorite flowers in every room. He found out who my favorite author was, and he bought all the books. On the mirror, he wrote in shaving cream, “Hallo, Kitty.’”
The women squealed. “That’s so adorable,” Teesie said. “I love men.”
“I love men too, but sometimes I need a break from them,” Shiloh said.
“Hubert loves it when I mess up,” said Kitty. “He loves it when I buy too many clothes, and I can’t pay the bill. He loves to step in and take care of everything.”
“Men are needy, and we’re the goddesses that give to them,” Kitty said triumphantly. She ws well into her second margarita. “On the other hand, men are… bigger. Larger. They’re on comfort.”
“They give you something that women can’t,” Shiloh said, nodding. “A man should provie for his girlfriend.”
“Hubert makes me feel really safe. He’s allowing me to have the childhood I never had,” said Kitty. “I don’t buy this whole feminist idea. Men have a need to be dominant—let them. Embrace your feminity.”
“I think men can be complicated, but I always know there’s another one out there if this one doesn’t work out,” said Teesie. “Men are not high maintenance.”
“It’s other women who are really the problem,” siad Camilla.
“At the risk of sounding obnoxious, being beautiful is such a power, you can get whatever you want,” said Kitty. “And other women know that and don’t like you, especially older women. They think you’re invading their territory.”
“For a lot of women, when they reach thirty, they start to realize their age,” said Camilla. “Men have given women this stigma. Obviously, a woman who looks lke Christie Brinkley is not going to have a problem.”
“But they get mean,” said Kitty. “They make comments. Women just assume that I’m an idiot. That I don’t know anything. That I’m stupid. That I’m with Hubert for his money. you get spiteful and wear an even shorter skirt and more makeup.”
“Nobody bothers to ask. They just assume,” said Teesie.
“Women are so envious in general,” said Shiloh. “It doesn’t have anything to do with their age. It’s digusting. They see an attractive girl, and they give attitue. It’s so sad and shocking. It’s so telling of where women are in their lives. They’re so insecure and unhappy about where they are, they can’t stand it if it seems like another woman has it better.”
“That’s why most of my friends are men.” The three other women looked around the table and nodded.
What about sex? Someone asked.
“I tell every guy they have the biggest thing I’ve ever seen,” said Kitty. The women laughed nervously. Kitty slurped up the last bit of her margarita through a straw. “It’s survival,” she said.