How To Be Mary-Kate Olsen
By Rachel Ament
Dress like an unmade bed. Wear a bush as a sweater. Wear a teepee as a coat. Lie on the side of the road and let a car mow over the edges of your outfit. Look in the mirror and revel in your new tire-chewed style. Realize you are standing at the brink of a big fashion moment. Get your publicist on line one. Roadkill chic is going to be IT this fall.
Attend all fashion events but don’t enjoy them. Feel the 3,000 colors, 5,000 fabrics and 17,000 judgments close in on you at once. Wonder if there is life outside of The Row. Look out the window and watch trees shimmying in the wind. Wish that you could be these trees. Dig deep into your body and find a small strand of freedom. Grab hold of the strand and let it whisk you outside of yourself. Realize that stepping outside of your worldly self is the only way to get closer to your truest self.
Decide you have too much wealth to get tied up in earthly obligations. Embark on a journey into different realms. Go realm hoppin.’ Slip into a realm assembled solely out of rhythms and vibrations. Dip into a realm inspired by the steamy anatomy of a slow jam. Delve deep into the time space continuum. Slalom down the hills and dales of medieval times. Handglide into earth’s neighboring Andromeda galaxy.
Realize you are really high right now. Decide that you are done living inside of a misty haze. Understand the more smoking sets you free, the more it flings you further from the people who matter to you most. Realize you don’t even really know your own twin sister Ashley anymore. Be scared that the 9 months you spent all up in each other’s business in the womb doesn’t mean anything at all anymore.
Ask Ashley to meet you for Grapefruit Gimlets at Le Bain. Get to know each other again. Giggle about old crushes. Play with each other’s beach-wave hair. Decide that there is nothing threatening about Ashley’s poise or polish. Learn how to be happy being the inverse of her. Understand that you both enhance the shimmering colors of each other’s opposing traits.
Ask Ashley if she wants to be Siamese twins. Squeeze yourself inside her white lace sleeved sheath dress while she is still in it. Sew the outer layers of your lungs (the parietal pleuri) together. Let your respiratory systems congeal into one. Make sure Page Six knows all about your skeleton-sharing pursuits. Wish Zoey Deschanel a safe journey into obscurity. Grab hold of her reigns. The world has just recast its leading lady of quirk with you.
