Manufacturing Celebrity by Sarah Trachtenberg	Table of Contents part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4
conclusion

At my first Kabbalah class, I joined the group, comprised of a couple of incredibly good-looking WB kids, an actress I knew I’d seen on one of those medical dramas, and five or so other people. I’d done some reading on Kabbalah before the group and the gist of it was “a unique and beautiful marriage of spirit and function.”

One of the first things that struck me was how the students kept referring to Kabbalah as “a secret.” Sure looked to me like the secret was out.

When I revealed that I was Jewish, the students got very excited.

“Then you were brought up on Kabbalah!” They exclaimed. “You have a lifetime of experience!”

“Tell us, is this the secret to Jewish survival?”

Rather than break hearts, I simply said that I wasn’t raised on it, sorry. There was only a mild disappointment palpable.

The theme that day was “the evil eye” and how powerful it was. Students pointed out the evil eye jewelry they were wearing — mostly silver hands with a blue bead. One had it tattooed on her left breast; I almost reminded her that tattoos were against Jewish law.

“Wanna see?” she said, pulling down her tank top before we could respond. Many students wore a red piece of yarn like a bracelet around their left wrists.

“This,” said one of them about his red yarn bracelet, “is the most important piece of technology, and it was created in the ancient world.”

I must have looked blank.

He went on. “Without it, I wouldn’t have succeeded in my singing career due to sheer jealousy and bad karma. Who knows — I might not have even survived.”

“It’s like getting vaccinated,” an actress nodded. “It’s a very mild form of danger, vaccinating us from danger. But it only works if it’s tied on by someone who loves us and deeply cares about us.”

“I had my nutritionist tie on mine,” said one of the WB girls. “Not only is he a close personal friend, but I owe a good deal of my success to him.”

“I got my red string from my tour of Hong Kong,” said a musician. “I wanted one made of silk for extra protection, and I wanted it to be made by the people who have been making silk the longest. I knew the woman who wove this.” He sighed. “She was old and wise, you know? You could just tell. She gave me her email address, so we’ve been talking.”

I was tempted to see if he’d bought it at K-Mart, but I was trying my best to avoid being cynical.

“Why does God see fit to put jealousy in our hearts?” said another man. I started to open my mouth to reply before I realized he was being rhetorical. “To make us aim high. If we experience envy, that gives us the push we need to achieve.”

“Marty, would you be interested in getting a red string?” One of the singers asked me. Not knowing what else to say, I agreed.

She handed me a piece she had in her Fendi purse. I started to tie it myself, not realizing right away that it took two hands, when she said, slightly bowing her head, “Please. Let me.”

After filling in Tasha on my third date with Cara and my Kabbalah meeting, I told her, “Tasha, I know I was supposed to immerse myself in this Kabbalah thing for the sake of... culture...” She looked at me. “But maybe it’s not such a great idea.”

“Really? You didn’t like it?”

“Well...” I said, “it’s a load of crap.”

“Yeah, I know. We don’t need the spiritual angle for you. It’s just one building block. I looked into that village-sponsoring thing, and I have a good plan for you. In fact, the lead singer of Coldplay wants to buddy up and sponsor the village next to yours.”

“We’ll be like neighbors,” I said.

“So,” she said, “how are things with Cara?”

“She’s a very attractive and sweet young woman.”

“And?”

“And that’s all. I’m not sure we have such great conversations, even though I like her.”

“Yes, well, that sort of thing takes time.” She smiled to herself. “Oh, look at me, dispensing relationship advice to a professional psychologist!”

“Well, I’m not a clinician. I don’t really study relationships in that way, so, yeah, I welcome your advice.”

“But you have slept with her, right?”

I must have blushed.

“I mean, that’s important, isn’t it?”

“Well... Ordinarily, I don’t rush into that sort of thing...” I mumbled.

“Maybe you could send her some flowers. Women love that.”

* * *

A modest bouquet of yellow roses made its way to Cara’s apartment. Tasha had recommended sending them to Cara’s studio so that other people could see them.

“I love them,” Cara texted me that afternoon. “Yellow is my fave.”

I asked her out to dinner again when she was done filming for the week. She said I could pick the place this time, adding a smiley face.

I was doing another talk show, basically reassuring a bunch of angry women who all asked the same question: “Dr. Marty, if vasopressin is supposed to encourage monogamy in men, and if men are allegedly wired to be monogamous, why don’t those things work? Why do men cheat and run away after sex?”

This was difficult to answer, but I held my own. Some of the women in the audience asked for help in their relationships. I’d been boning up on ways to apply my research to such advice even though, as I’d told Tasha and all the other talk show hosts, I wasn’t a clinician. At least one woman asked if she could “drug” her husband with vasopressin. Was there a cologne or something?

Tasha scored me an invitation to a party with a lot of talk show people. “It could be a good stepping stone to Oprah,” she’d said. I asked Cara to accompany me. Why not? She’d said cheerfully. Who knows — maybe she could promote her upcoming film, too.

Oprah, who was in South Africa at the time, visiting the girls’ school she founded for damage control after the sexual abuse scandals, couldn’t make it. I’d suspected she wouldn’t feel the need to go to such a party, anyway — she was already at the top, after all. I met some of the hosts whose shows I’d been on. While Cara was chatting up an attractive black male producer, I asked Rita about a return visit.

“I’m doing another piece for Playboy,” I told her. “It’s on the future of sex.”

“That sounds good for an episode we’re doing on teenage pregnancies,” she said. “You have the number of my producer. Give me a call.”

“What does it have to do with teen pregnancies?” I asked.

“Whether they’ll still be a problem in the future.”

“Haven’t they been on the decline for, oh, about ten years or so?”

“No one wants to hear about that,” she said.

“People don’t like positive news?”

“The audience wants to know what to do about the problem,” Rita said. “In this case, will monogamy come back in style? If we’re wired to be monogamous, does that mean that teen pregnancy is the result of destructive environments at home and in school?”

“There’s some truth in that,” I said.

Cara gave me a ride home in her Beemer, but I didn’t invite her in, not realizing that I might have made an ass out of myself for not asking her.

Would I be able to wear my pre-Clark Heath clothes around her? Would she gawk at me if she saw me on TV without my hair fixed and without my light concealer? Somehow, I couldn’t imagine she would have asked me to light her cigarette at the party if I looked like plain old Marty.

Clark had once showed me a very cogent portfolio: photos of celebrities with and without make-up. Many were scary and unrecognizable. “Cosmetics salespeople use these photos,” he said with not just a touch of pride.

Looking at Sean Connery with his wrinkles — there he was, warts and all, figuratively — well, it was like the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz. And like the Wizard, those folks must be petrified. Even the ones who weren’t paralyzed by Botox.

* * *

“I’ve reached the holy grail!” Tasha bubbled the day after the talk show party.

“You got me a spot on Oprah?”

“No, but just as good. You have a shot at a book deal. Just write a proposal — it doesn’t need to be anything fancy — on how to use evolutionary psychology to improve our lives.”

“I hadn’t really thought about a book,” I said. Of course, I was thrilled, but scared, too, and I told her. After all, I didn’t know all that much about any practical aspects of my field, at least not in the relationship sense.

“Oh, don’t worry. It’ll just be the same stuff you wrote about for magazines and talked about on TV. Throw in an introduction, a few anecdotes, and voilà!”

I asked her if I could get back to her. When she frowned a little, I told her it was an honor and I was flattered, but I still had to think about it. I went back to my office, planning my next grant application. Due to the dwindling honeybee population that was causing a food shortage scare, I wanted to research bees’ behavior and what we could find that might help nature along. Perhaps genetic engineering based on my findings wouldn’t be far behind. I wanted to do this project much more than Tasha’s book.

For my “other life,” I didn’t think there was enough everyday applicability to evolutionary psychology to fill a popular book. Besides, I was beginning to worry what all this pop psychology-esque stuff could do to my “real life” work. My colleagues understood that I was doing an experiment, but, as Cara had mentioned, people often couldn’t differentiate between the actor and the character.

Speaking of Cara, I had a potentially awkward break-up on my hands because I just, well, didn’t feel a connection with her.

* * *

“Oh, no,” Tasha said on the phone. “Is it serious?”

I’d just emailed her a photo of my face. “It doesn’t hurt, really. It just looks bad.”

“How could it not hurt?”

“The dermatologist said it could take over a year to treat,” I said. “Naturally, I was surprised. I thought it was just a rash.” I looked at the photo. My face was red and blotchy; it was the kind of rash that made people really look at you twice. “The dermatologist said it might be a reaction to that Q10 mask. It’s an unusual allergy, apparently, but there you have it.”

She sighed. “It could’ve been worse.”

After all of Clark’s work beautifying me, make-up and even flattering lighting wouldn’t make me look TV pretty. Tasha said, bleakly, that some people made use of their illnesses or injuries to further their PR. “Like that American Idol singer who had agoraphobia. That was mine. It’s a perennial idea — ‘overcoming adversity’.”

But that wouldn’t work in the case of a long-lasting but unexciting rash. Who would want to keep up with that story? I asked.

“This puts a damper on the talk show circuit. We can go back to radio... and we still have magazines.”

We talked about those projects and the next article I wanted to write, a piece for Men’s Health about the aphrodisiac qualities of men’s sweat. I told her I’d like to continue with those media, but TV was out, and, flattered though I was about the book advance, I simply didn’t have the time; it would be at the expense of my research. She understood and thanked me for our partnership.

“It’s been fun, and a challenge, licking you into shape — oh, I did not mean that the way it sounded,” Tasha said. “Let me know if you want to discuss things in the future. And I hope your rash feels better.”

I thanked her for all of her work and hung up. Looking back at the photo, I erased the Photoshop work I’d asked one of my students to do; voilà, the rash was gone. If only real medicine were that easy.

Before I went to the lab the next day, I met Cara at a nearby Starbucks. She was wearing sunglasses, which made it harder for people to recognize her, but she almost didn’t recognize me, as I’d expected. I was back to being a balding, middle-aged professor, wearing my old blue button-down shirt, making me almost indistinguishable from any other male professor on campus. I didn’t really make a point to use Clark’s “keys to confidence” voice and gestures, either.

Cara leaned forward as I told her that, while I thought she was wonderful, she wasn’t the kind of relationship partner I was looking for. We smiled shyly, shook hands and parted. It was one of the sincerest things that happened in my show business career.

Of all the things on my path to fame, image consulting was probably the most important factor. I’d perfected my posture, wardrobe, hair and voice — OK, maybe not perfected, but made much more telegenic. Due to my media appearances and articles, my investment in PR and image consulting had more than paid off.

If I wrote the book, Tasha promised me she’d negotiate an attractive advance, particularly if I could propose a second book. I’d become recognizable, had given a share of autographs and photos, and gotten lots of questions and letters from audiences in my email. And, yes, one or two hate mails about what I was encouraging men to do at women’s expense, but I was able to forget about those.

And fame? Well, it’s no big deal. Throughout my endeavor, I saw first-hand that celebrity wasn’t completely buzz and appearance. The emperor wasn’t naked as long as he had at least a g-string’s worth of talent.

Copyright © 2009 by Sarah Trachtenberg

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