Member-only story
OVERTURE, CURTAIN, LIGHTS
It’s Awards Season And The People Have Spoken
The most self-serving article you’ll read this year
And the Barbie goes to…
Many of us enjoy awards shows. Nothing goes better with a big bowl of popcorn than Grammys, Emmys, or Oscars. If you’re like me, you might dream it’s you walking up onto the stage to accept that gilded trophy. There I am in my designer gown. Painfully self-conscious, like a high school freshman walking into the cafeteria for the first time. All eyes on me. Praying I don’t trip up the stairs or that my mascara isn’t running down my face, Rudy Giuliani-style.
I’ll get onstage, my carefully written speech of course forgotten, cameras clicking all around me, each generously adding ten pounds to my frame. There I am, immortalized. The music fades and I stand, blinking, gaping, at thousands in the audience and millions watching from home, my mouth full of sand instead of brilliant quips.
After a pause just long enough to call my sanity or IQ into question, I’ll start stuttering thank yous to the first-grade teacher who believed in me while mentally telling off school bullies who didn’t. “Hah! Look at me now, Vultures!” Forgetting my husband altogether. Oops. That one will follow me to the grave.
