Free Wallflower at the Orgy by Nora Ephron Page A

look forty years old,” she said.
    “But,” I protested, “I look just like Gene Tierney.”
    “Nevertheless, you look forty years old.”
    Went into bathroom and looked in bathroom mirror.What a shock. Bathroom mirror looked nothing like little stage mirror I had sat in front of all day. Face in bathroom mirror looked nothing like face in little stage mirror I had seen all day. Face in mirror
did
look forty years old. False eyelashes looked as if two skunks were sitting on eyelids. Face looked buried under two feet of pink grease. Eye shadow on chin looked like five-o’clock eye shadow. “And why is your lipstick so red?” asked Roz. I began mumbling. “Gene Tierney … black-and-white pictures … had to be.” Then I took out the cold cream and took off a little bit of the make-up.
    “Now,” said Roz, “you look only thirty-eight.”
    While leaving restaurant later that night bumped into Everett and Cathy. They began laughing. “You looked better before,” said Cathy between snorts. “You look During,” said Everett. I rushed home to cold cream and took off every bit of the glamorous new me.
Friday
    Old me back in mirror. Ringlets have lost curls. False eyelashes sitting in medicine cabinet. Depression lifting. Mystery remains. For years I have been reading about makeovers in magazines. I would look at the new girl, made over top to bottom, and would think, ‘Fantastic. That girl will
never
wear brown shoes with a black purse again.’ What I did not realize is that when the pictures are over, the dress goes back to the wholesaler, the new hairdo goes back to the wigmaker, the new face disappears with the first night’s cleansing, and you are left with two false eyelashes in themedicine chest, one tube of false-eyelash glue, and your brown shoes and your black purse.
    Not that I didn’t learn a great deal: I know how to widen my face, shorten my chin, and narrow my nose. I learned how to put in cheekbones where none had been. I learned that the make-up designed for a black-and-white photograph is not necessarily make-up designed for nighttime wear. But when it was all over, I did not look like Faye Dunaway. Or Kay Kendall. Or Elizabeth Taylor. Or Scarlett O’Hara.
Monday
    MRS. DAN GREENBURG
LAS BRISAS HOTEL
ACAPULCO, MEXICO
    PICTURES GOOD. YOU LOOK LIKE GOYA PRINCESS .
    MALLEN DE SANTIS, BEAUTY EDITOR
    And I didn’t look like a Goya Princess, either. I looked exactly like Nora Ephron used to look. Only a little teeny bit better.

Women’s Wear Daily
Unclothed
    Women’s Wear Daily
threatened to sue
Cosmopolitan
when this article appeared. Which I consider praise indeed
.
    For any of you who are hanging by your Henri Bendel false fingernails as to what has happened to this merry little periodical since I wrote about it, I am told that it has gone right on giving hell to the Nixon girls, too much space to Jackie O., and orgasmic praise for the midi length. I wouldn’t know myself, however. My subscription expired last year, I never renewed it, and I have been a better person ever since
.
January 1968
    Scene: The cloistered House of Balenciaga, 10 Avenue Georges Cinq, Paris, a fashion establishment so secretive about its operations it is often called The Monastery. Time: Just days before the Paris collections open. Enter a florist’s delivery clerk, in shabby nylon dress and carpet slippers, delivering a bunch of flowers to Balenciaga’s directrice, Mlle. Renée. Shuffling slowly through the salon, the clerk sees everything—the models, the collection, the look. She leaves with a two-franc tip. The following day,
Women’s Wear Daily
prints advance sketches of the collection, its information supplied by the delivery clerk—a disguised full-time reporter for the famous newspaper of the women’s clothing business.
    Scene: Fifty-seventh Street, midtown Manhattan, half a block from Tiffany’s. Time: Autumn, the clothes-buying season. Greta Garbo, New York’s most elusive, least photographed