"My god, I had black hair — it was photographed blue-black it was
so dark — and thick bushy eyebrows. And my mother and father had to stop
them from dying my hair and plucking out my eyebrows. The studio even
wanted to change my name to Virginia. They tried to get me to create a
Joan Crawford mouth when I first began using lipstick at fifteen. They
wanted, you know, Joan Crawford, the ‘40s and everything. Every movie
star, Lana Turner, all of them, painted over their lips: and I’m sure
that some of them had perfectly fine, full lips — but thin eyebrows were
the fad…and God forbid you do anything individual or go against the
fad. But I did. I figured this looks absurd. And I agreed with my dad:
God must have had some reason for giving me bushy eyebrows and black
hair. I guess I must have been pretty sure of my sense of identity. It
was me. I accepted it all my life and I can’t explain it. Because I’ve
always been very aware of the inner me that has nothing to do with the
physical me"
