[00:16] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking The ‘80s! I am Meg.

[00:19] Jessica: And I'm Jessica! Meg and I have been friends since 1982, and we got through middle school and high school together here in New York City, where we still live!

[00:28] Meg: And where we are podcasting about New York City in the '80s. I do rip from the headlines - 

[00:33] Jessica: And I do pop culture!

[00:35] Meg: Do you wanna just get started?

[00:37] Jessica: Why, yes. Yes, I do.

[00:38] Meg: Okay. Usually, I've got some other things to talk about, but today, let's just jump in.

[00:43] Jessica: Are you streamlining?

[00:44] Meg: Sure.

[00:45] Jessica: Wow!

[MUSIC PLAYS]

[00:58] Meg: So my engagement question today, Jessica…

[01:01] Jessica: Mm hmm. Is?

[01:03] Meg: Is a rather personal one.

[01:04] Jessica: Oh, God. All right.

[01:06] Meg: Did you ever have moments of panic, or – 

[01:11] Jessica: Are you kidding me right now? I live in one extended moment of panic. Yes. I'm sorry, finish your question.

[01:19] Meg: Well, I mean, as a young person, when did…? 

[01:22] Jessica: You know what? When I was – from a very, very single-digit young age, I remember being with my dad in the street, and I was still young enough to be carried across the avenue because I was so little. He had taken me to a puppet show. And apropos of nothing – although maybe the puppet show was something really dark and I don't remember it –

[01:44] Meg: Marionettes are creepy.

[01:46] Jessica: It was. Well, you know. Yes, I remember sobbing and my father getting really nervous and upset. And he was like, “What's wrong? What's wrong?”. And I wailed at him, “Someday I'm gonna die, and there's nothing I can do about it!”. [Meg: Jessicaaa, hun bun!] I was, like, five, so I had my existential angst moment at five, and it never stopped.

[02:08] Meg: Interesting. For me, it didn't really start happening until after college.

[02:15] Jessica: Oh. After college, I had such a meltdown that I couldn't get in elevators or go on bridges and had to be heavily medicated for a while.

[02:24] Meg: See, there you go.

[02:26] Jessica: Anxiety is an ever – It has been an ever-present... I can't say, friend, can I? Frenemy.

[02:35] Meg: Got it. Well, thank you for sharing that.

[02:37] Jessica: Is today mental health day or is it mental health week?

[02:40] Meg: Is it?

[02:41] Jessica: I don't know.

[02:42] Meg: Well, it relates to the story.

[02:43] Jessica: Well, for those of you who suffer, as I did, seek help, as I did.

[02:49] Meg: My sources for today, The New York Times, “A Mother's Story” – a book written by Gloria Vanderbilt – The New Yorker, Nothing Left Unsaid – which is an HBO documentary – and Anderson Cooper's podcast, “All There Is” – which I highly recommend. He interviews people who are going through grief, or who have gone through grief. And it is really beautiful.

[03:19] Jessica: I think I know which story this is.

[03:20] Meg: Yeah.

[03:21] Jessica: All right. I'm going to settle in for sadness.

[03:23] Meg: Yes. On the morning of July 22, 1988, 23-year-old Carter Cooper came by his mother's party place. Gloria Vanderbilt lived in the 14th-floor penthouse at 10 Gracie Square, where she had raised two of her sons. She wasn't expecting him but was happy to see him. Carter had graduated from Princeton the previous year and had recently moved back to the city to work at American Heritage magazine. He was living at his father's old apartment at Beekman Place. His father was Wyatt Cooper, who had died of heart failure when Carter was just 13 years old. But the family kept his studio, and it seemed like a perfect place for this recent graduate to stay. It's private and quiet - Beekman Place – about a half-hour walk from his mother's home. His younger brother, Anderson Cooper, was still in school at Yale. Now back in April – we're in July right now – back in April, Anderson had been in the city to row crew for Yale at the annual Dodge Cup against Columbia and Penn. He was coxswain, and he'd stayed at home for the night. And Carter was staying over with his mom that night, too. And Gloria told Anderson that Carter wasn't feeling well and was resting. So Anderson crept in to check on his older brother, and they spoke softly in the dark, and they didn't really talk about anything important or revealing. But Anderson thought Carter sounded strange, maybe scared. He didn't think too much of it, especially after his mom told him that Carter had agreed to see a therapist. So months later, on the July 4 weekend, Anderson happened to run into Carter on the street in New York, and they decided to have lunch. And at this lunch, Carter seemed relaxed. He said about that night in April, quote, “The last time I saw you, I was like an animal”. And Anderson thought it was a good sign that Carter could talk lightly about that rather unsettling evening. During his senior year at Princeton, Carter had dated Pearson Marx, but they'd broken up after their graduation in 1987. Nothing dramatic. They weren't living in the same town at that point. Carter had moved to DC right after graduation, so it made sense. But they remained close. And on the evening of July 21, 1988, Pearson was watching TV with her sister as Michael Dukakis accepted the presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention. And in his speech, Dukakis talked about jobs. “And I've worked with the citizens of my state, worked hard to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, and I mean good jobs. Jobs you can raise a family on, jobs you can build a future on. Jobs you can count on”. To which Pearson's sister added, “Jobs you hate”. And Pearson thought Carter would think that was funny. So she called him up, and they talked for a bit. And during that phone call, he was emotional. In fact, he was crying. And he asked her to come over that night. But she wasn't feeling cute. She had a huge pimple. Quote, “Substantial”. So even though she loved him, she didn't want him to see her with a huge pimple.

[06:51] Jessica: And she's what, 22 years old?

[06:53] Meg: Yeah. So she said she'd call him tomorrow. And the next day, July 22, Carter went to his mom's place. He told her he wanted to move back home. Gloria was amenable. She told him he could take Anderson's room. It was bigger, and Carter's room had a bunch of stuff stored in it. The two of them had lunch together. She made spaghetti, his favorite. He told his mom he hadn't been sleeping well. So after lunch, he laid down on the couch to nap, and Gloria read to him a short story from the New Yorker called White Angel by Michael Cunningham. It was printed in the July 17 New Yorker, and it's about two young brothers living in Ohio who take drugs and dream of flying. I think they're on acid. But one night, during a drunken party given by their parents, the older brother crashes through through a plate glass window and bleeds to death. And the story ends with the younger brother watching airplanes fly overhead, taking people to exciting lives in other places.

[07:59] Jessica: That's a really odd bedtime story choice.

[08:04] Meg: Well, I don't know if she knew what it was gonna be when she started reading it. She was just reading a short story in the New Yorker. Gloria and Carter talked about the story for a bit, and then she left him to nap. It was very hot that day, but Carter was cold. He asked his mom to turn off the air conditioning, and she gave him a quilt. They planned to rent a movie after his nap. Before she left him, he looked at her and asked, “Am I blinking?” He was. She checked on him a couple times over the next few hours, and he was asleep. He'd definitely gone to sleep. Then at 07:00 p.m. he came into her room and seemed completely out of it, dazed and disoriented. He didn't know where he was and asked her, “What's going on?”. He was so distressed. She tried to soothe him, but he broke away from her and ran upstairs to Anderson's room and out onto the terrace, and she was right behind him. He straddled the stone ledge overlooking the east river. She begged him to come back in. When she approached him, he held out his hand, gesturing for her to stop, he asked, “Will I ever feel again?”. Gloria said they should call his therapist, but she couldn't remember the number. And Carter called out the number, but then said, “Fuck you”. He looked down at the alley below and then up at an airplane flying overhead.

[09:29] Jessica: Oh, Jesus.

[09:30] Meg: And then went over the wall, hanging onto the ledge for a second and then letting go. Why? He left no note. His new therapist was shocked. There were no drugs or alcohol in his system. He did have a newly prescribed inhaler for his asthma that contained theophylline. I don't know if that's how you pronounce it. And some of the side effects of this drug are agitation, insomnia, terrifying nightmares, acute depressive states.

[10:01] Jessica: Oh, my God.

[10:02] Meg: And that's actually what Gloria Vanderbilt believed was responsible. Probably a lot going on there, though, is my guess. Life transitions are emotionally unsettling.

[10:14] Jessica: Well, that is when I went totally gaga after graduating from college. That year was when I really had, you know, very acute panic. That was the kind of panic where all you can do is sweat and hold on to whatever is close to you and wait for it to subside. And you do. When that panic comes upon one, you really do feel like, this is it for the rest of your life. This is who you are now.

[10:42] Meg: I had never heard of something called a panic attack. And when I had one, it was graduation weekend at Brown, and we were at a party that a bunch of kids were invited to, a bunch of seniors were invited to with their parents. And I went to the pay phone in back and was calling my roommate, who was a junior and my housemate, and was like, “I'm losing my mind. I don't know what I'm going to do”. And she was like, “Just come home. Just come home. Say good night to everybody and come straight home, and we will talk through this”. I didn't know what I was feeling. My heart was beating out of my chest. I had no idea what was happening to me. I ended up, you know, sleeping it off or whatever. But then it wasn't a few months later, when I was on my way to grad school, driving across country, I had my first bouts of insomnia, where I don't think I slept for, like, more than a couple of hours a night for, like, a week. I was losing my mind. I'd never had insomnia before.

[11:49] Jessica: It's bad. It is a thing that I have dealt with chronically my entire life. Yeah, the thing about panic attacks is people think that it's just like, you're very, very nervous. Very agitated. No, you actually feel like you're about to die, and there is a weird narrative that goes on in your head that's like, “Yeah, this is it” [Meg: Right?] This is – This is all there is. I remember, actually, just to really reveal for those who suffer from this, when I was a freshman at Kenyon, I was already having – I didn't realize it at the time, but looking back on it – I was having anxiety attacks – which are a little different than full-fledged panic attacks, but pretty nasty – multiple times a day. And I was depressed in a really black way. And I remember at one point, I was walking from the dining hall back to my dorm, and I thought I had this very crazy, circular thought, and I was like, “I can't take this anymore. I can't keep living like this. And my terror of dying has never left me”. And then I was like, “Well, what can I do to stop this?”. And then the only thing I could think to stop it was to kill myself. And then I was like “Well, that's not right. I'm too afraid of that. I can't do that!”. I was like, “God damn it. There is no solution”, and trudged back to my dorm. But that's very, very typical, actually, of this kind of affliction. So just a little more light.

[13:28] Meg: Right. And it's interesting, too, the context of the Democratic National Convention that that was an election year. And I don't know if you have visceral memories of that particular campaign in that period of time where we really did... It was hopeless. Like, you and I were in college during this – we were still in college in 1988 – but the idea was. Yeah, and then after this, you're not gonna get hired to do anything because there are just absolutely no jobs out there.

[13:57] Jessica: Correct.

[13:58] Meg: Now, Carter Cooper, of course, is in a different category because he would never, we assume, have to worry about money because of his family. And frankly, Pearson Marx was in the same category because she –  Her – I looked her up – Her grandfather was Leo Marx, who was, like, the biggest toy manufacturer. Anyway, so they both come from a lot of money, but nevertheless, you know, you make these sort of assumptions about people who are financially comfortable. Yeah, exactly.

[14:30] Jessica: It's an underlying chemical condition. It's not logical.

[14:34] Meg: What's interesting on Anderson Cooper's podcast, what I find interesting about it is that he's not really looking for the whys, but he does talk through the facts. I get the sense that that has its own sort of therapeutic value. This is what happened, and then this is what happened, and then this is what happened. And he actually talks about how his mother did that for all those years after this happened, where she would just have to tell that story again and again. He's heard that story from his mother a hundred times, which is really rather interesting, I think, considering her history.

[15:13] Jessica: Yeah. Which people may not know. Do you have that at your fingertips?

[15:16] Meg: The Vanderbilts, I think, were shipping money. In any case, she had a very difficult childhood because her mother and her aunt went to court for custody over her, and she was the poor little rich girl, basically, and then she got married very young, and then divorced and married and divorced and married and divorced. And then her husband, Wyatt Cooper, died. And that one sounds like it might have stuck.

[15:45] Jessica: She's just surrounded by a lot of strife and death.

[15:48] Meg: Right. And not a lot of communication.

[15:51] Jessica: That is the territory of the WASPs, isn't it? Right.

[15:54] Meg: Yeah. Anderson Cooper talks about that a little bit, too, how he's trying to change that family tradition.

[15:59] Jessica: Is that the end of the sad story? 

Meg: Yes, that’s the end of the sad story. 

Jessica: So, obviously, it was covered – So this was covered in the news, I'm sure quite heavily. Was it treated – unlike so many other New York tragedies – was it treated with respect in the papers, or was it…?

[16:13] Meg: It was definitely treated as an unbelievable tragedy. For some reason, they felt the need to mention how many divorces Gloria Vanderbilt had. Had, which I'm like, what does that have anything to do with right now? She didn't start really talking about it until many years later.

[16:31] Jessica: Well, and I would imagine the constant reviewing of the facts, I couldn't imagine that there wasn't a total sense of disbelief. So by going through the facts, it's confirming this really did happen. And there may not be a why, but it's sort of getting a sense of control over the event.

[16:57] Meg: She said one thing that she thought she could have done was hit him in the head with an iron. If she had knocked him out, then that would have stopped him from running upstairs. I mean… 

[17:06] Jessica: That's a very specific and strange thing, which is fascinating.

[17:12] Meg: Yeah.

[17:12] Jessica: When your children do things that are maybe a bit odd, do you want to hit them in the head with an iron?

[17:18] Meg: No, but thank God I've never been in this kind of distressful situation. I mean, it's a grown man. How do you stop a grown man from doing anything? Honestly?

[17:26] Jessica: My brother had a very, very good friend who was still alive when he was at Princeton. I was mad about him. He was a very tall, lanky guy, very thin. He used to love making my mother lose her shit, which, of course, for John and for me was like, yeah, Go! Go! More! More! 

Meg: What would he do? 

Jessica: So one time he came over - he grew up in Oregon, so if they had a very, you know, if it was like a quick break, like a weekend plus break - 

Meg: He would come to New York? 

[17:56] Jessica: He would come to New York.

[17:59] Jessica: And he had a grandmother in the – either Queens or Brooklyn – and us, their roommates. And so one time, it was the summertime, he came into the apartment loudly, saying, “It's so hot”, and stripped off all his clothes except for his boxer shorts – we lived on the 7th floor - opened the window, and straddled out the window.

[18:25] Meg: Oh, my God.

[18:26] Jessica: And my mother – I had never seen terror like that in her face – and she started screaming at him, “What am I going to say to your grandmother?!” Because she knew he wasn't suicidal. She's like, “You're going to fall out the window because you're playing around like an idiot!”.  And finally he realized that she was in a terror and came back inside and I think she tried to hit him with a newspaper or something.

[18:54] Meg: Oh, my God, I would lose it. I would be just like your mother. I would completely lose it.

[18:58] Jessica: So that's my experience with Princeton grads or Princeton students who want to go out the window. 

Meg: Jessica! 

Jessica:  Come on, we have to find some levity or else we're in serious bad shape.

Meg: No, absolutely! 

[19:11] Meg: And should we talk about Gloria Vanderbilt jeans?

[19:14] Jessica: Yes!

[19:15] Meg: She created designer jeans!

[19:17] Jessica: She did. And they were, you know – it's interesting, cause, you know, I look for a lot of vintage clothing – and I've been looking at, you know, seventies jeans, straight leg jeans. You can't find Gloria Vanderbilt jeans, or at least I haven't run across them. But then she also was one of the first people to branch out from clothing to –

Meg: Perfume? I’m sorry. 

Jessica: No, like a whole license, a whole line of –

[19:42] Meg: Right.

[19:43] Jessica: So it was perfume, but it was – I remember when I was in college –  I must have been a sophomore. Sophomore or a junior, I can't remember. Anyway, so in the middle of Ohio at the time, there was, like, Kroger's for grocery shopping and maybe a Target, I think, or Walmart. I don't know what it was. I had to buy sheets, and I had these Gloria Vanderbilt sheets.

[20:07] Meg: Oh la la.

[20:08] Jessica: And I was like, oh, look at these, Gloria. Fantastic. And they were a sort of obnoxious or even noxious seafoam green with a white trellis and roses on them. I was like, “Well, I'm in Ohio, this is the style I’m stuck with.”  But, yeah, she was really a pioneer. She was an entrepreneurial pioneer with knowing that her name was a brand.

[20:34] Meg: Yeah, yeah. And I guess in closing, I just, I do hope that while maybe in the '80s, those kinds of symptoms weren't. I mean, did you know what panic attacks were? I didn't know what it was. I didn't know what was happening to me.

[20:47] Jessica: I had been having panic attacks and waking up and running out of bed into the middle of the living room, not knowing what was going on. Even as a little kid, my parents didn't know.

[21:00] Meg: Right, exactly.

[21:00] Jessica: It was just like, what the hell is wrong with our kid? And then I would pull it together. But I was always – I had a hard time with separation anxiety – I had all of the hallmarks of childhood anxiety and depression, but no one knew! 

[21:18] Meg: Right. And at least now I feel like I can tell this story and there are “Oh, that's a red flag, that's a red flag and that's a red flag.” 

[21:27] Jessica: Absolutely.

[21:28] Meg: So you can only hope that with more awareness and with the actual language around it – Anderson Cooper talks a little bit about how it didn't occur to him that, you know – he was ten when his father died. Carter was 13. And we've talked on this podcast about the age of 13 and how that just such an age where lots of stuff can happen that if it's not dealt with properly, can affect your… affect you for the rest of your life.

[21:56] Jessica: I was in a variety of relationship with a man whose father died. He was ill, he died at home, and at one point had even fallen on his twelve year old son. And that person was just wrecked for the rest of his life because there was no therapy.

[22:14] Meg: Right.

[22:14] Jessica: And that's the nicest thing I'm ever going to say about that person. Thank you for that. That was very informative.

[22:21] Meg: Well, thank you for being open to a sad story and for adding to the conversation about it.

[22:28] Jessica: Well, you know my motto, that if I have lived through something unpleasant, you know, I'm, I'm very willing to share because no one should think that they invented or, you know, they're the starting point of something disturbing or sad or whatever. Like, we all, we all have these experiences.

[22:50] Meg: Yes. Not alone.

[22:53] Jessica: You're not alone. 

Jessica: I have an engagement question for you, Meg.

[23:08] Meg: Okay, I'm ready.

[23:10] Jessica: Do you remember the building or the house that you lived in when you were in grad school?

[23:16] Meg: Of course.

[23:17] Jessica: Where was it?

[23:18] Meg: I'll talk about the apartment that I lived in, in La Jolla, which was down the hill near the village. It was actually very un-California to me. It felt like it was… It was old! 

Jessica: That's why. 

Meg: It wasn't new construction. It had been built – I'm gonna guess – like, in the 50s.

[23:38] Jessica: Ooh. So old!

[23:41] Meg: It had one of those things you could slide out, like a wooden…  

[23:46] Jessica: A countertop? That you slide out in the kitchen? 

[23:49] Meg: Yeah, but it was meant to be an ironing board, I think? 

[23:52] Jessica: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you mean.

[23:54] Meg: I don’t know know. It just felt very 50s.

[23:56] Jessica: Very cute.

[23:57] Meg: Yeah.

[23:58] Jessica: When I was in law school, my very generous parents set me up in a studio in the most bananas building on 16th street between 3rd and Stuyvesant Park. So it was conveniently right across the street from Joe Junior’s.

[24:15] Meg: Okay.

[24:17] Jessica: Best diner ever. But it was a pre-war building.

[24:21] Meg: I know that block. Of course I do.

[24:24] Jessica: It’s on the South side. It has a big blue canopy? I can't remember the number.

[24:29] Meg: Okay.

[24:29] Jessica: But it was a very weird building because it was a.. It was a pre war building, but it hadn't been updated in any way yet. And it was filled with people who had been there since – it was built in, like, 1890 because it was on the edge of the east village. So it had – it was just a weird mix. So, like, we had in the building lobby every day was the most profane and cantankerous old man who was always wasted, named Mr. Smucker. What do you think of when you think of Smucker?

[25:05] Meg: Jelly.

[25:06] Jessica: That's who he was. What he was of the Smucker jam dynasty. And the family had just parked him in this building.

[25:14] Meg: Oh, no.

[25:15] Jessica: Another one of my neighbors wound up having a lot of success and was Mark Maron.

[25:21] Meg: Who's that?

[25:22] Jessica: Who's Mark Maron?

[25:23] Meg: Who's Mark Maron?

[25:24] Jessica: He's a major comedian, has one of the most successful podcasts available. He's had many shows. He's also an actor.

[25:31] Meg: News to me.

[25:33] Jessica: Oh, good lord, woman, you have to look him up anyway. But he was always like that… the guy who looked like he was in the darkest depression ever.

[25:41] Meg: The comedian was.

[25:42] Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. And I was always a little afraid of him. But there were also – there's also this thing that – It just irritated the hell out of me. There were these beautiful girls who lived in my building, and I couldn't understand why these seven-foot tall, pencil-thin creatures lived in such profusion in my building.

[26:05] Meg: It was a model apartment.

[26:06] Jessica: It was a model apartment. And I didn't know what that was in 1994.

[26:09] Meg: You know why? Do you know why so many models live in that neighborhood?

[26:16] Jessica: I bet I do.

[26:17] Meg: Oh. Because that's what your story's gonna be about? 

[26:19] Jessica: Tell me what you're gonna say. 

[26:21] Meg: Well, cause I live near where you're talking about. I live on 23rd Street. And every once in a while, you're just, like, basically walking next to a giraffe. I mean, there are these just, like, impossibly tall, skinny, skinny little people. I mean, models in real life just don't look like people.

[26:38] Jessica: They don't look normal.

[26:39] Meg: And there are so many in my neighborhood, and I was always trying to figure it out, and I think I figured it out that there's an agency nearby.

[26:47] Jessica: Correct.

[26:47] Meg: Okay, look at me. Clever me. I figured it out.

[26:50] Jessica: So what I wanted to talk about today is why the '80s phenomenon of supermodels is a New York institution. 

Meg: Okay.

Jessica: Is that a good one?

[27:02] Meg: Yeah. Yeah! Okay.

[27:05] Meg: We dabbled a little in Polina the other day.

[27:08] Jessica: Yes. So I started my research. I found that I was captivated, captivated by the story of Eileen Ford.

[27:19] Meg: Okay, good one! 

[27:21] Jessica: And Eileen Ford is – very famously – the person who started Ford Models, Ford Modeling Agency with her husband. She was 24. He was 22 when they started it. And it all began because she was on the beach, I think, in – she was on Jones beach, and her husband, I think, was in the army at the time. A photographer came up to her and said, “I'm doing, like, an editorial of some kind”,  though that was not the word used at the time, showing women's bathing costumes from, you know, decades ago. And so he gave her an early 1920s bathing suit and had her model it for him. And that was her one and only time as a model. But it got the wheels turning for her that this was a thing.

[28:19] Meg: Right? An actual business and industry.

[28:22] Jessica: And what that meeting with that guy did was it actually got her into the business of being photographer’s assistants.

[28:31] Meg: Oh!

[28:32] Jessica: She – One of her many responsibilities was booking the models.  And the models were just – as they were called at the turn of the century in France – Mannequins. They were just mannequins. They were there to show up, put it on stand prettily, and that was it. And they were making something like $25 a job.

[28:56] Meg: Oh, wow.

[28:56] Jessica: And there was nothing that centralized the girls. Like, there were modeling agencies, but it was, like, almost the equivalent of the way a temp agency was. And so these places would have, like, 350 girls, and they just would take in all the money and then give the girls their percentage, and that was it. The girls had to go to all of their – and this is, you know, in the 40s, and 50s, and 30s – these girls had to go to their assignments with all of their own makeup, all of their own hair to do. They carried it in a hat box, big round case. And that was the industry was really all about the photographer. And Eileen Ford started actually talking to the girls because she was the only other young girl who was in this environment. She realized what they were missing, that they needed someone to champion them, and that they wanted to do their bookings differently. They wanted to be in control of their money and have it come in and then give the 10% that they needed help with all of the things that they were doing on their own. When Eileen Ford's husband Jerry came back from the war – she grew up in Westchester – and they started – well, she started – this business in her parents' house where they were living together. It started to grow, and girls started walking in the door who were really, very beautiful. And Eileen Ford started seeing them very differently.

[30:32] Meg: Okay.

[30:33] Jessica: That these are people with personalities. These are people who could be the product.

[30:38] Meg: Okay.

[30:39] Jessica: I learned a couple of things about models along the way, by the way, and this whole thing about the “cult of thinness”. I don't know if you know this, but the reason that models had to be so thin was because they had to fit into the sample sizes.

[30:55] Meg: I did know that.

[30:56] Jessica: And that the sample sizes were made the size they were just to save on fabric.

[31:00] Meg: Oh, now that I didn't know.

[31:01] Jessica: And that's why they were cheaper to make. 

Meg: Wow!

Jessica: So all of these women around the world now are squeezing themselves into nothingness because of a manufacturing and display quirk.

[31:15] Meg: Ridiculous.

[31:16] Jessica: And that there were three basic sizes: Junior, Misses – oh, and like Fashion. And Junior was, I think if you were no taller than 5’5” and you had to be 100 to 106 pounds. And if you were Misses, you were like the young mother, basically a little bit taller. And I think you were allowed to be like, 110, 112 pounds. And then the Fashion girls were no shorter than 510, and no. Weighed no more than 112 pounds.

[31:56] Meg: That's so not okay.

[31:58] Jessica: Yeah, but that's – just as a quick side note – that's where all of this comes from. So, you know, she built this business based on listening to these young women and helping them along and creating relationships with photographers so that they would ask her for access to these young women. And one of them was Richard Avedon. He always has had an assistant for a long time, because one of his assistants, way back, had gone to my school, Kenyon College, for a long time. He had a list of assistants who were Kenyon grads, including our friend John Manion. Yes, your upstairs neighbor. So, John, if you're listening, we're talking about you. And John became a very famous photographer in his own right, working with the rap community. So Eileen Ford is really the person responsible for creating modeling agencies as we understand them now.

[32:59] Meg: Jonathan Mannion also was on an episode of America's Next Top Model.

[33:04] Jessica: Was he?

[33:05] Meg: Yes, he was.

[33:06] Jessica: Stop it right now. That.. that cutie. So I was getting this background because I was so interested in, what was it in the '80s that suddenly we had this different dynamic with these glamazons who became more famous than the photographers or as famous as the photographers, and famously said, one of them said, you know, “I won't get out of bed –” I think it was Naomi Campbell – “I won't get out of bed for anything less than $10,000.”

[33:37] Meg: Linda Evangelista.

[33:37] Jessica: Linda Evangelista. Unsurprising. So I was trying to figure out, what is it that made – because there were lots of famous models, because they were favored by these very famous photographers. Like, they would show up again, again and again. In the 1980s – very early '80s – Carol Alt, who was the queen at the time, she was the first person to recognize that she was a commodity beyond fashion. And she created the business of Carol Alt and began licensing and franchising her image. 

Meg: Oh! 

Jessica: So she was the first person to do commercial campaigns with, like, what is it here? They said, diet Pepsi, General Motors. Eileen Ford had been very, very against the girls doing anything other than high fashion.

[34:33] Meg: Okay.

[34:33] Jessica: Because it would diminish their value.

[34:36] Meg: Sure.

[34:36] Jessica: So no deodorant ads. And Carol Alt produced her own posters. She produced her own calendars. So she took control of her own image and made herself into a business.

[34:49] Meg: Was she represented by Eileen Ford?

[34:52] Jessica: I think she was with Elite.

[34:53] Meg: Okay.

[34:54] Jessica: And Elite Models is the brainchild of, I think it's Ted (John) Casablancas, father of Julian Casablancas of The Strokes. A lot of the young women who were modeling with Eileen Ford didn't like the restrictions that were put on them. And so there is a migration over to elite models. So in her following in her footsteps, Kathy Ireland.

[35:18] Meg: Ooooh, I remember her. She was a Sports-Illustrated person.

[35:22] Jessica: Yes. And so you had more of these sporty, not emaciated-looking young women like Cindy Crawford, known as “The Body”. Oh, no, that was Elle MacPherson, I think she was “The Body”. And they were all, you know, if you look at those 1980s, like Victoria's Secret catwalks, there are boobs and hips and all of that going on. They're very thin, but they're fleshier and tall as can be. Inès de La Fressange. Jerry Hall, erstwhile wife of Mick Jagger… 

Meg: And Rupert Murdoch. 

Jessica: That's right. Elle MacPherson. Paulina our friend Paulina, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, who, in fact, I just looked it up in 1990 she said,
“We don't wake up for less than $10,000 a day”. And the one who started as the “Guess? girl”, Claudia Schiffer.

[36:15] Meg: You didn't mention my favorite. 

Jessica: Tyra? 

Meg: No.

[36:18] Jessica: Helena Christensen?

[36:20] Meg: No.

[36:20] Jessica: Who?

[36:21] Meg: Christy Turlington.

[36:22] Jessica: Christy, well, Christy is special and different. 

[36:26] Meg: She is. She's so beautiful.

[36:27] Jessica: She's so beautiful. Oh, speaking of Joe Junior’s, she married Ed Burns. I think they're still together.

[36:33] Meg: True. They are.

[36:34] Jessica: And they lived right around the corner from me when I lived on 13th street and 6th Avenue. So they were always in the other outpost of Joe Junior’s on 12th and 6th. 

Meg: Oh, that's wild. 

Jessica: So they were always having breakfast there, and my friends and I would see them all the time. And unlike models who we were talking about earlier, Christy Turlington, in real life, more beautiful.

[36:57] Meg: She sat next to me at the theater once, and I could barely contain myself.

[37:01] Jessica: Yeah. Like, not a human. Whereas I saw Linda Evangelista coming out of Kiehl’s on 13th street many, many, many years ago. And she looked like a crazy alien. The size of the head was weird. What made her face have these amazing angles on camera made her just look disproportionate and off-putting, all the time. But anyway, so these young women, not only did they make themselves into franchises, they were the first ones to get these big endorsement deals where they were the face of Chanel or the face of Lancôme. And when I think about the supermodels of the time, I think if you really want to understand their power and you want to understand that they were really seen as this as a whole. It wasn't just, oh, here's one supermodel, and that's a thing that's happening. It was this group of young women who commanded New York City. Just watch George Michael's “Freedom! ‘90” video. The reverence that the camera holds them with and the unsurpassed beauty, and they were sexy. They weren't just there to be, you know, to model the clothes. They were there to be actors. And a lot of them wound up being actors. Not always successfully, but they were. So the 1980s supermodels, I don't think there is anything to ever touch that again. And I don't know if it's because the novelty of seeing yourself as a business wore off or the market was glutted with so many people – 

[38:38] Meg: Well, and everyone who was a model was calling themselves a supermodel at a certain point, it's.

[38:42] Jessica: Sort of like how everyone who works in porn is a porn star, right?

[38:45] Meg: Exactly.

[38:46] Jessica: Yes.

[38:48] Meg: You could just be a porn person.

[38:51] Jessica: Working-actor! “Yes, I'm a working-actor in porn. You might recognize me from…” You know, and looking back on those young women, and, you know, those were the years when our sense of beauty and self was being formed. To look back on it now, it's not even saying enough to say it's an impossible ideal. As an adult, looking at it, I'm like, that's like saying, “This is a very, very beautiful rhino. I think I want to be that. How can I become this gorgeous rhinoceros?” You know?  It's like, it's the equivalent. And maybe it was MTV being visible in a particular way, and these young women being perfectly poised to get sucked into whatever this new videos or packaging and branding and club promotion and what have you. Look at the “Freedom! ‘90” video. And I think it's kind of fabulous that – 

Meg: Oh, my god. It’s so amazing.

Jessica:  – it was released in 1990 because that's the end of the '80s, and it was Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, and Cindy Crawford.

[40:00] Meg: Someone else was in there, too.

[40:02] Jessica: No.

[40:03] Meg: Yeah. No, there was.

[40:04] Jessica: Oh, yes, yes, yes. I do know who you're talking about.

[40:07] Meg: Tatjana Patitz.

[40:09] Jessica: Yes. Patitz. Patitz.

[40:11] Meg: A lot of these models now have Instagrams, and they're talking about aging and what it's like to be a woman in your 50s who was a supermodel– 

Jessica: Or 60s. 

[40:25] Jessica: Yeah, well, Paulina is very vocal about it. I know that. So there you go. So, supermodels of the '80s, thanks, Eileen Ford, both for creating these opportunities for women, as well as requiring them to never eat, ever. I feel like every supermodel should have just retired and gotten, like, a tuna melt and fries.  Back to Joe Junior’s! Maybe that's what Christy Turlington was doing, because she was a big yoga person at the time. And you know who else lived right around the corner – speaking of models and fashion – who is also frequently at Joe Junior’s? Isaac Mizrahi, designer of the '80s. 

Meg: Hmm. 

Jessica: Hmm. Yes.

[41:08] Meg: And also member of the cast of Fame.

[41:11] Jessica: Isaac Mizrahi was in Fame.

[41:13] Meg: Isaac Mizrahi was in Fame. The movie?

[41:17] Jessica: No, he wasn't. 

Meg: Fact!

Jessica: What was he?

[41:19] Meg: He was like a kid in the movie.

[41:21] Jessica: Just like a crowd scene kid? 

[41:24] Meg: No, he had some lines.

[41:26] Jessica: I am in shock. I now need to look this up. 

Meg: Swear to God. 

Jessica: That is the greatest thing I've heard in a long time. Oh, my God. I love that so much.

[41:46] Meg: Jessica, you have such an easy tie-in this time, don't you think?

[41:50] Jessica: Yes, we do. We have supermodels showing off fashion. And we have Gloria Vanderbilt making a fashion.

[41:58] Meg: There you go.

[41:58] Jessica: So, to quote David Bowie, “Ooh, fashion”.