Looking Good and Loving It

As gawky pre-teens, my friends and I had the embarrassing hobby of going to the department store in the mall and trying on fancy dresses that never quite seemed to fit right. My dream was much larger than the high school prom, however; I wanted to go to the Oscars and walk down the red carpet in whatever dress I was examining in the fluorescent-lit mirror. This fantasy of attending the Oscars centered around a never-realized project of adapting Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle and winning the award for best screenplay adaptation. Burgess Meredith was to have a lead role of Uncle Julian. "Oooh, look! This one's more than $100," I would proclaim. "This one's the fanciest of them all."

When Burgess Meredith died, a little piece of my dream died with him.

My love of Academy Awards fashion did not, however. I'm a big fan of the dark tie and classy suit as opposed to the tuxedo. I have an actual opinion on the scrap of a black dress Sarah Jessica Parker wore last year (as Sheryl Crow would say, "This is Elll-Laaay.")

For those who say paying attention to Academy Awards fashion is fake, pretentious, and completely materialist, I say no kidding. So are the Oscars. No one really thinks an Academy Award nomination or win means much, do they?

The mostly undeserving Marisa Tomei has two, for goodness sake--a win in 1993 for My Cousin Vinny and a nomination this year for In the Bedroom--but the only memorable events in that win were the Jack Palance/Vanessa Redgrave controversy and the gorgeous white and black Vera Wang dress Tomei wore.

Uma Thurman was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for a one-note role in Pulp Fiction in 1995, but she arrived at the ceremony in one of the most beautiful dresses the Oscars have ever seen: a stunning lavender ball gown by Prada. What has she done for us lately?

Same for Penelope Cruz, who wore a beautiful sky-blue gown two years ago to present the best foreign language film to Pedro Almodovar's All About My Mother, in which she starred. This year, she's made virtually no impression in Blow, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, and Vanilla Sky. In those films, she could not measure up to the real exuberance she showed when she jumped up and down for Almodovar. She now consistently plays roles that require her to stand around and look pretty, whisper "open your eyes" sexily as some sort of deep message to Tom Cruise, or maybe freak out on cocaine.

So it's a great feminist statement that these women are judged on what they're wearing and how pretty they look and not on their acting ability? Right, because the Oscars measure acting ability, especially in women, who are often nominated for conforming to traditional cinema gender roles like nuns, prostitutes, or repressed wives. That's great fodder for the clip file, but rarely are the nominations for anything that's worthwhile. Just play a conflicted prostitute, and you'll end up on the cover of one of People magazine's 50 different issues about Hollywood style.

Not that there's anything wrong with it--if we agree the Academy Awards are a guilty pleasure and we care only because it's a cultural event to coo at, we should have no problem rooting for Sharon Stone to win, whether she's wearing Vera Wang or her famous $26 Gap turtleneck.

The Academy Awards are about stunning personalities, and there are plenty of them on display this year, from the incredible Dame Maggie Smith (nominated for Best Supporting Actress in Gosford Park), who is always the classiest person in the room, to the wonderful Will Smith (nominated for Best Actor in Ali), who wore a chartreuse open-collared shirt with his suit in 1996.

It's gonna be great this year, both in fashion and in the awards themselves. It's gonna be great--sort of like when you see a dress on the hanger and then you step into the dressing room and suddenly you're 12 again. Something won't go right. It happened to Gwyneth Paltrow in 1997 when her bra pad slipped in her bubblegum-colored Ralph Lauren gown and her father, Bruce Paltrow, had to stand in front of her while she fished around for it. Kate Winslet ruined her shoes and train on a wet red carpet at an awards show earlier this year. In any case, I'll be keeping Barnard alumna Joan Rivers' legacy alive next week by being just as catty as I can be.