It’s not often that I’ve had to suffer for beauty, but as an undergrad in Chicago, I wore size 26 raw denim, slept in them for a week, so they’d hug my hips as I danced. Later, working at Barneys in LA, I learned that many men found the idea of wearing jeans two sizes too small abhorrent, a kind of torture for aesthetics. So, imagine the patience, the sheer audacity it takes to pull off the kind of wild nails, lashes, and lips you see in magazines. I grew up surrounded by women—my mother, sister, grandmother—all glamazons who embody the idea that beauty requires labor. When something makes you otherworldly, a minor deity, it’s worth the effort. This belief led me, in the months leading up to my first Tony Awards in 2021, to a fitting in Paris, across from the Place Vendôme, at the famed Schiaparelli atelier. There, creative director Daniel Roseberry helped me into an inverted corset that would make my waist even smaller than those size 26 jeans. I didn’t think about how to deal with back-zipping pants or platform heels that gave me Babadook proportions. This was a garment meant for one of the most important nights of my life. I wanted to be beautiful, and beauty demanded labor. For nearly six hours, I suffered for beauty, for fashion. My mother braided my hair, my cuticles were torn from the nails on my hands and feet, and a heavy gold mask—made from a mold of my face after Daniel poured thick pink goo to capture my features—hung from my ears. Then came the corset. Two young stylists pulled it tighter and tighter until my breath left my body. I exhaled a smile as I saw myself in the mirror: beautiful, because I’d earned it. The transformation, and the process behind it, embodied the power of artifice—braids, masks, long lashes, impossibly long nails. What I didn’t learn from my mother, sister, or grandmother, though, is the indignity and sacrifice that accompany this labor. My mother was there as I dressed, yet neither she nor anyone else told me that after six hours of prep, tied into an inverted corset, I should drink less or learn how to gracefully manage a restroom break. Halfway through the Tony Awards, I found myself both constrained and exploding. It was a situation many corseted people have faced: the tortuous transition from a minor deity of beauty back to a human, and the laborious effort to revive the deity again. In this story, hair by Jawara, makeup by Yadim, manicurist Lola Rudelou, produced by Prodn at Art + Commerce, set design by Heath Mattioli.
Beauty’s Price: My Six-Hour Transformation for the Tony Awards
