Fancy Pants

How to channel Gloria Swanson and find happiness

The other day, I was teaching a class online, so about a half hour before it was to begin, I began to primp. I had been at the gym earlier in the day and hadn’t changed out of my workout clothes, and I was wearing a pair of suede Birkenstock Boston slides that I’ve ruined by using them to kick a ball for my dog to fetch; the repeated collision of toe to ball has worn the suede smooth, leaving a hard, dark nub, like a wayward almond.

Photo by Anastasiya Badun on Unsplash

I’ve been on television and Zoom enough to know all the tips on how to dress: No small patterns, lest you confuse the lens, and avoid solid black so you don’t look like a disembodied floating head. I showered and did my makeup, and then chose a navy blue sweater with white eyelet inserts and a pair of clean Levi’s, which seemed professional but relaxed.

After I got dressed, I stepped back into my ratty Birkenstocks, just because they were sitting next to my bed, and then kicked them off in a rush, as if I felt a baby copperhead in the toe. Composing myself, I put on a pair of new patent leather ankle boots with sharp, chic heels. Then I started to laugh at the absurdity of the choice. No one would be able to see my shoes, idiot. And yet I couldn’t countenance doing a presentation—for which people paid a considerable fee—in my dog-fetch Birkenstocks.

I used to think that being a voice actor would be such a great job because you could do your work in sweats, or PJs, or ugly clothes. But the other day I mentioned this to an actor friend who is voicing a role on an animated series, and she disabused me of this. “No, I like to look cute,” she said. “I don’t want to look like a slob.” As I minced across my courtyard to my office for the Zoom class, breaking in my new boots, I understood. I have very low slob tolerance, when applied to myself. I wrote for an entire season of HBO’s How To With John Wilson, on Zoom, eight hours a day, and I wore good shoes the entire time, even the week when I turned my camera off because I had a rash on my face and didn’t feel like being seen. Besides the fact that no one on the show cared at all about how I looked, and the fact that for all they knew I was a torso propped up on a desk chair, my body ending where the computer screen ended, I felt better being presentable at all times, top to toe.

When I teach, I preach the gospel of reporting much too much. It requires discipline to resist the urge to splatter everything you’ve learned on the page, of course, but if you can manage that, you’re golden. What’s important is to know much more than you put on the page, because it will change the nature of what you do choose to include, and you’ll write with the confidence of someone who knows far more than they have time or space to tell you. It gives you a very desirable bit of swagger. I always think about the story—true or not doesn’t matter—about Gloria Swanson, who insisted that she be provided with fine silk lingerie to wear under her costumes. The story goes that Louis B. Mayer or whoever was Daddy Pursestrings on her films objected, saying the lingerie cost a lot of money and no one in the audience would even know she was wearing it. Ah, Swanson replied, but I will. She would act with the confidence of someone who knew she was wearing fancy lingerie, and that would make all the difference.

I don’t regret changing my shoes.

SHOW NOTES

—I was a hard-core fan of “Le Bureau”—it might be one of my all-time favorite television shows—so I started watching “The Agency” with some dread, since remakes are often dreadful. This one stars Michael Fassbender, who is always good, and follows the plot of “Le Bureau” very closely so far. Which is fine but also raises the question of why bother, since you can just go watch “Le Bureau”? I’ll keep watching but I’m not sure yet whether this is worth all the fuss.

—After finishing Held by Anne Michaels I was so blown away that all I wanted to read was more Anne Michaels. So now I’m knee-deep in Fugitives Pieces, and it’s fabulous. She is just an extraordinary writer. I think if she were American and not Canadian we would hear more about her.

—I was crushed when the very cool Onitsuka Tiger store in Beverly Hills closed, because I love their sneakers, plus the store had all sorts of crazy clothes that the brand makes in small batches. But apparently they’ve closed all their US stores. The good news is you can still get the shoes online. Of course the pair I fell in love with were sold out on their site, but I found them on one of those predatory sneaker resale sites which I don’t quite understand: Do they just buy up all the stock and then resell it, like scalpers? Anyway, I got my shoes, which are Mexico 66 denim cut ups that I think are great. They’re the shoes I’m going to rely on in India when I go on Friday.