Scavullo Women

Gia is my darling – old, young, decadent, innocent, volatile, vulnerable, and more tough-spirited than she looks.  She is all nuance and suggestion, like a series of images by Bertolucci …. I never think of her as a model, though she’s one of the best.  It’s that she doesn’t behave like a model; she doesn’t give you the Hot Look, the Cool Look, the Cute Look; she strikes sparks, not poses.  Out of doors, especially, I have never known anyone so excitingly free and spontaneous, constantly changing, moving (which drove me crazy until I got smart and learned to focus the camera faster) – she’s like photographing a stream of consciousness.

Gia –  her last name is Carangi –  is twenty-one (“going on eighty-four”).  She came to New York three years ago from a small town in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and landed like the Marines.  Everyone was nuts about her – editors, photographers.  “It was fun.  A lot of models have a rough time, but things started happening pretty quickly for me.”  Maybe too quickly; By the end of her first year, she’d been to Europe at least ten times, and could say matter-of-factly, “I’m able to buy whatever I want … if I see something, I can buy it.”  Well, why not?  She was booked to the eyeballs.  Only it wasn’t always so much fun.  “When you’re in demand, and people are saying, ‘I want you, I want you,’ it isn’t easy to say no.  I don’t like to disappoint people, I’m basically a satisfier.  So you find yourself working a lot – a lot.  And if you want to take a day off, because you need a day to rest or to get yourself together so you can be there and together and have your energy for the next day, it’s hard.  Models are never supposed to be down or be tired or have a headache.  They’ve got to be up all the time.”

Gia wasn’t.  And sometimes she turned up late or she didn’t show up at all, or she showed up and then vanished from the set.  The talk was, Gia was into drugs.  And the truth is, she was.  The more important truth is that she isn’t; as I said, there’s more toughness here than meets the eye:  “It wasn’t just a matter of stopping.  It was a matter of wanting to live in the world that I live in, and making it work for me instead of against me. 

“The world seems to be based on money and sex . . .  I’m looking for better things than that, like happiness and love and caring.”

I think the reason someone gets into something like that is because, for me anyway, there were a lot of unanswered questions in my mind about work and about life.  Money didn’t interest me.  I got to a point where I had all this money.  I had everything I ever wanted in life – or thought that I wanted – and I said, What the hell is this all for?  I mean, you need money to survive.  But I think people value it too much; the world seems to be based on money and sex.  And I’m looking for better things than that, like happiness and love and caring … I was really down on society, but then I found that I was part of society too.  And for me to be doing drugs made me as bad as I thought society was.  I think maybe society is kind of what I make myself.  And that makes me happy, happier than being high.

“If anything, I’m high on being straight because now I can feel my body, I can feel my head.  Before, I was like numb.  It’s really just selfish.  I don’t care if you’re on Quaaludes or you’re a nice housewife hooked on diet pills and Valium, it is just a selfish way to live.  I learned a lot from my experience, so I don’t regret it.  It was good for me, like a slap I the face…. I’m an extremist, you know; I had to go all the way.”

Now she has come back all the way back; she’s taking control of her life.  “I’m disciplining myself.  If I have a booking, I plan for it the day before.  I have to, if I didn’t, and if I were late or didn’t show up or something, they’d think I was goofing off, so the thing is to make sure that I’m together and that I get enough sleep.  I’m basically a night person, so it’s hard for me to go to bed at a normal hour.  Then, in the morning, I just want to keep sleeping.  I don’t want to get out of that bed because I’m hiding in that bed; it’s so nice and warm.  I’ve had this problem all my life; it’s why I was always late … I was really spoiled, you know.  I was a brat.  And that stays with you.  It’s a hard thing to change.  But once you know these things about yourself, you have to try to discipline yourself, because after a certain age, nobody else is going to do it for you.”

Some things – happily – haven’t changed.  The way she dresses, for instance, which is thrift-shop chic and pure Gia:  flat boots, tuxedo pants, and an oversized man’s jacket.  She looks marvelous.  “I just like to be comfortable.  I don’t do it purposely, but I have my own style of dressing, and it just comes out kind of different.  I don’t like to dress like anybody else, and I’m not into designer clothes … I’m not into anything.  I just pick up pieces here and there and throw them together.  Sometimes I go shopping in the nicer stores too; I buy a shirt or a belt or shoes.  But I like the things they have in the thrift shops even if they are old; they’re cut a lot better than the newer things.”

She thinks she is shapelier now than when she started modeling.  She’s right; it’s the difference between fabulous body and a more-fabulous body.  Exercise isn’t the secret.  “I get my exercise from walking or running or riding a bike or swimming.  I don’t go home at night and pump iron or something.”  And for sure diet has nothing to do with it.  “I eat a lot.  I eat everything – except, I don’t go for mixed salads.  I eat pizza and hamburgers, and I eat pheasant and Jell-O and steak and spaghetti.  Home cooking.  I hate going out to eat.  I think it’s a bore, sitting there and drooling over your food for hours and hours.”

Her skin-care regime wouldn’t tax a small child.  “I wash it with soap and water and a washrag, and once in a while I put a little Vitamin E.  I try to keep my face very clean.  I never leave makeup on – no, no, no, no matter what.  I couldn’t go to sleep without washing my face.  All that makeup!  I like makeup – just in photography, though.  I like the creativeness of it, what it can do, how it can transform you.  But when I’m finished working, I run for the soap and water.

“You have to try to discipline yourself, because after a certain age nobody else is going to do it for you.”

“You know, I thank God that I’m good-looking, or that people think I’m good-looking.  But there’s a lot of more to it than makeup and prettiness and all that stuff … there’s a lot more to being a woman than that.  When I look in the mirror, I just want to like myself, that’s all.  And if I like myself, then I look good.” . . .  Gia has got to be liking herself a lot these days.

~ The End ~