The Flossy Flossy

My mom loves magazines. She always has a stack of them piled about, in the kitchen, in the bathroom, in her study. Like so many things, I've picked this habit up and adopted it for my own purposes. I was sipping coffee, leafing through W tonight, when I came across this unbelievable spread on China Machado. Unbeknownst to me, China was the first non-caucasian model to make it onto a major magazine's cover. The woman rules. She's the daughter of Peruvian and Chinese parents and she has eyes, nose, lips, legs, for days. She ran away with a bull fighter when she was 19, swept off her feet after he bumped into a tree and introduced himself. It took all of three days for their exotic romance to blossom and bloom. China is an idol for me, her life is the stuff of Garcia Marquez's pregnant magical realism, all glowing trees and gorgeous babies and silks and romance and haughty idolatry. Magazines often offer this type of escape: pages of architecture and general splendor. In our current Americana, land of dutiful minimalism and tailored pants, I think there's something to be said for juicy imagery and family scandal. As my great aunt Marilyn says, "just throw on some Chanel."