Average in Hollywood
I’ve begun writing essays in my free time. Please enjoy this one and let me know your comments.
“She’s a dancer!”
“She does yoga!”
“Her house has fresh flowers in it!”
“Men are always in love with her!”
We were doing an exercise in my first official L.A. acting class. One by one, we got up and introduced ourselves to the strangers with whom we would be spending the next six hours in close quarters, then sat on a chair with our backs facing out while they called out “facts” they imagined to be true about us.
And it wasn’t my turn yet.
I knew Los Angeles was filled with pretty people trying to make it in show business, but this class was ridiculous. It was as though the Greek gods had been reincarnated in this very room.
The girls all had long, lustrous hair, perfect noses and big dazzling eyes. They sat in the chair with perfect posture. The men had lips I couldn’t look out without wanting to kiss them. And there I was, a character actress dressed in a ratty Woodstock T-shirt, Converse, and no make-up. I was totally fucked.
I’ve always known my place in the food chain of beauty. Not the most gorgeous girl in the world, but prettier than the average bear. In high school, I harbored no hopes of being nominated for Homecoming Queen, but I did okay with the boys. Of course, in retrospect, attracting high school boys might have had more to do with my enormous breasts than with the blue eyes my elder relatives all admired so dearly.
When I lived in Chicago, my place on the beauty scale had more to do with the bars in which I was hanging out. Go to a dive bar or comedy club with a bunch of other improvisers and I made a decent impression. Hang out downtown at a club and I was easily ignored. Obviously, I chose the former more often than the latter. In L.A., there is nowhere to escape. Even the dive bars are filled with beautiful people wearing weird scarf/fedora combos that couldn’t detract from their perfectly shaped noses and plump lips.
On my first night in Los Angeles, after driving cross-country with two of my friends from Chicago, we were walking down a sidewalk in Santa Monica after eating a hearty dinner. Ahead of us we spotted a man leaning against a tree, eating a piece of pizza out of a to-go container. He had unruly shoulder-length hair, full, pouty lips and huge brown eyes you could get lost in. He looked up at me, caught my eye and said in a husky baritone, “Got any change?”
Yep. In L.A. even the homeless people are hot. (Since this encounter, this statement has proved to be the exception rather than the rule, but still I never saw a single hot homeless person in Chicago, which gives L.A. the advantage.)
Back in the sweltering classroom on that July day, the time came for my turn. I stood up in front of half the class and bowed in unintentional reverence as I said, “Hi, my name is Hanna LoPatin.” Then, I turned and sat in the uncomfortable wooden chair, my shoulders hunched forward as I awaited my fate.
“She’s good at chemistry!”
I swear that was the first one.
“She reads a lot of books.”
Well, at least they think I’m smart.
“She’s good at numbers!”
Okay, enough of that.
“She eats pita and hummus.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. Not only was I the only person who apparently ate, but I ate ethnic food.
By the time it was over, I had basically been established as a funny, perpetually single bookworm. I couldn’t argue with them. Except on assuming that my smarts extended to the math and science wing of knowledge, they had me pegged. I walked out of the classroom knowing that my future in Hollywood as the sarcastic, witty best friend to the female lead was secure. I went home, looked in the fridge and took out some pita and hummus for dinner.
