What you have all heard is true. It’s not glamorous and the people you are bound to meet aren’t either. Glamorous people usually do nothing but wear mink turbans while their Moroccan servants peel grapes for them. Rather, I’m giving/receiving back rubs in between takes from some of the creative, innovative and hardest working people. This is my life: shoots, models, designers, photographers and pizza. For now, at least.
I can do it blindfolded, actually. Method: Call designer, think of a word that will describe the look of the photographs as I refuse to use pegs – I often say fabulous and that’s it, and improvise on the day itself. I believe in spontaneity – call a photographer, discuss models, call models, call makeup artists, and make sure it does not fall on a weekend. Weekends are holy to me, and my 12-hour days during the workweek have earned me that right. Work hours include shopping and salon time for research. So, what have I learned so far? Well, here’s a sampling.
I’m 25, hardly the cherubic ingénue, yet still too stupid to be the older woman. So, I just am. I started as a disastrous field reporter/chimay for Newscentral 23. I once did a story on the pork barrel in Congress. Itching to get that ambush interview, I proceeded to bump into my parents’ friends in the congressional hall, calling them all "tito" as I interviewed them… live. I can certainly turn anything, pork barrel included, into a puff piece.
Tip no. 1: A cookie without sugar is just a cracker. Know your stuff and research, and never call the Speaker of the House or any important person who will determine our future tito or tita on TV.
It’s only natural for me to finally get my start in publishing when Ginggay Joven started Teen Philippines. I was the beauty assistant. Feeling like a supernova already, I went to stores breezily saying that I needed products for a beauty shoot. I was not aware of any processes that involved pulling out products for a shoot. I panicked; my shoot was the following day and I was not ready at all! So, I did what any little princess would do just before she got disinherited. I bought all the stuff that I was supposed to pull out. Total tally: P20,000. Paycheck after taxes: P9,000. I was really on my way to making it.
Tip no. 2: You are nobody until you’re somebody. Everything is a process. Even shooting lip-glosses can be a matter of bureaucracy.
The magazine unfortunately folded up, and so did my wardrobe to New York for design school! I befriended the prettiest girl in my class who also dated the son of the president of Fox in Canada (hardly means a thang in NY). Needless to say, I was her Nicole Ritchie to her Paris Hilton (Simple Life 1) and would get in Bungalow 8 without a hitch. But my heart wasn’t in it: the $25 cocktails, Lebanese playboys, who-whoing, and mean cab drivers. Plus, I hated school even if it was for the study of clothes. So instead, I just absorbed my days into writing my column for the Philippine STAR. And Barneys. I left after a year or so. I hugged my car when I saw it again! No more urine-stained subways.
Tip no. 3: You never marry your first love. Always keep options open. Everything is infinite. For example, now I’m back to designing! And unlearning everything I learned in design school while I’m at it.
I worked at the STAR as full time as any contributor could be. I gave birth to another column, which eventually led to the birth of YStyle, my little emperor. No one wants to hear about work, work really at this point. It’s only the gossip that matters to illuminate the gray skies of the working class. Lesbian models, philandering/sleazy photographers, bitchy editors (not mine!), and all the little Eve Harringtons clinging onto the powers-that-be like tarsiers: all those lovely clichés in the fashion world. I’ve got lots of fake friends and I think it’s pretty cool. They’re like accessories but they talk as in talk, like Teddy Ruxpin. Just as long as you know how to handle fake friends, then all is ok. Just don’t get too drunk, then all hell breaks loose and next thing you know, you tell them that you have some STD or an incurable breath problem or, worse, that you have a fake LV somewhere in your person. Scandales are currency, like pounds to the peso. Major leverage.
Tip no. 4: Don’t think the world is kind. You may be fabulous, but everyone has a dirty secret. (Mine is that I wear ratty boxers to sleep while watching The OC on DVD.) Taking yourself too seriously will be your downfall. No one ever shot the court jester. It’s a Macbeth-ish world out there. You can’t fight everyone, too. Let them say all they want about you and your equally twitty friends and refer them to Dial-A-Friend (Does it still exist?) or a really expensive shrink. An idea: plan your moves for social combat with prudence, apply to government, and we may just beat China next year. All this skill and intelligence is always exhausted at Nuvo and Embassy anyway.