Former 90s Supermodel Cindy Crawford Says People Shouldn’t Worry About Aging
I have two jobs, two kids.
I get five hours of sleep a night.
"True beauty is the energy
you give out," Cindy Crawford says,
"and that comes through being happy."
She says on the inside, souls don't age
and we are all who we were as children.
Cindy Crawford sleeps at least 9 hours every night.
She starts every day with a soak in her Jacuzzi.
She highly recommends a daily soak in a Jacuzzi.
"You have to make time for you,"
Cindy Crawford says.
I do not have a Jacuzzi. I have an old
shallow bathtub with bad caulking.
It leaks.
My hot water heater is about to go.
Sometimes it spits out rusted yellow water
and I pretend not to notice.
When I'm bathing, and my daughter comes in,
she looks at the water and says, "Ew."
She says, "Did you pee in the tub or what?"
Fuck you, Cindy Crawford.
**
"Relax," Cindy Crawford says.
"Just breathe and age from the inside out."
**
Cindy Crawford is in the news again
because of a photo shoot she did for Marie Claire France.
According to Marie Claire France,
none of the photos have been retouched—
no airbrushing, no vats of baby oil,
just one former supermodel and a camera.
Cindy Crawford is, give or take, 48 years old, a mother.
Marie Claire leaked
one of the photos on my 51st birthday.
Cindy is in a bikini
and a long fur black coat draped like a shawl.
She's wearing a huge hat, the kind crazy ladies
from the Red Hat Society wear, except this one's
black and glamorous, and shows off
Cindy Crawford's trademark mole.
Cindy Crawford has always been
the thinking-person's supermodel
because she could afford
to have her mole removed, but didn't.
Cindy Crawford is not shallow enough
to worry over a cheek-mole,
which no doubt sprouts little dark hairs
that Cindy Crawford has to keep on top of,
tweezers at the ready, defense
against paparazzi close-ups.
Bodies betray us all like that.
**
Cindy Crawford is careful and diligent,
but in the photo, her legs are mottled.
Stretch marks map her belly.
There's a Caesarean scar that runs
like a fault line above her bikini bottom.
Her skin tone is freckled, uneven.
Most of the comments
in the comments section
are from women who thank
Cindy Crawford for saving their lives.
They call the photo inspirational, beautiful, badass,
a testimony to how real women can age beautifully.
Then there's Wayne Johnson of Minnesota
who writes, "Puking."
There's George Stephens of Chicago
who writes, "That can't be her body."
There's Scott Smith of Saskatchewan
who says, "I'd still do her."
Like that might somehow be possible,
Scott Smith of Saskatchewan.
**
The photos of Cindy Crawford supposedly
leaked from Marie Claire France turn out
to be fakes, a reverse-Photoshop hoax
designed to make Cindy Crawford look
ordinary.
"Who would do
such a thing?"
Cindy Crawford's husband says.
He releases family photos—
Cindy on the beach with her kids, Cindy
with her buttered skin, her toned stomach
hard and shimmering as sea glass.
Fuck you, Cindy Crawford.
**
Like most of America, I can't help but like Cindy Crawford.
Cindy Crawford looks like my friend Lori Matcho, vice versa.
I love Lori Matcho. Lori Matcho has two kids and a job with long hours.
Lori Matcho has no Jacuzzi. She gets sick a lot. Stress, genetics.
The last time Lori Matcho got sick,
the hospital called to do a follow-up.
"I'm sorry to ask you this," the man on the phone said.
"But at any point did you die?"
He said, "I really am sorry."
He said, "I have to ask. It's on the form."
He said, "It's a formality."
He said, "Get it? Form? Formality?"
He said, "Sorry." He said, "Probably not funny."
He said, "I'm sure you understand."
Lori Matcho, who is Cindy Crawford
without the mole, is 35 I think.
Her death is a joke she tells me over wine.
I'm pretty sure neither of us thinks it's funny.
"We have a lot of fun
talking a sort of joke language,"
Hemingway explained to Lillian Ross
when she wanted to know why he sounded
like English was his second language.
Hemingway told her, "It isn't hard to die."
