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November 14, 2008
Fashion guru advice: be original
Jeanne Beker remains down to earth, despite her job covering a glamor-based industry.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
In her most recent book, Passion for Fashion: Careers in Style, Jeanne Beker writes that she has "loved fashion's magical possibilities" ever since she "heard about Cinderella's amazing makeover." While her love of fashion may have begun in childhood, it has certainly matured and Beker has no illusions about the industry in which she works.
The award-winning host of Fashion Television began her long career as an actress. She told the Independent in a phone interview from Toronto that, while she was into fashion when she was young, she wanted to wear it, not design it.
"I wanted to strut it. It wasn't like I wanted to create it," she said. "I really wanted to be a performer.... That's why I love being on television and interviewing people and communicating in that way, in a very live kind of action way."
Beker has been a professional actress since the age of 16; she even studied mime in Paris with legendary performer Marcel Marceau.
Beker said she really appreciated "the art of corporeal expression. I thought was great. It was a kind of art form that really didn't have anything to do with technology. It was pure artistic technique and it just seemed like a great creative, artsy thing to do.
"It was the kind of thing you could either do or you couldn't, so you really had to have a strong technique. I was getting disillusioned with acting because I thought people were getting parts because they had the right voice or the shape of their noses was a certain way or the color of their hair and, I thought, I wanted to learn an exact technique that you could create the illusion or you couldn't."
Not surprisingly, Beker learned that it was hard to earn a living as a mime and she ended up in radio, reporting on the arts for CBC initially. She went from radio to television, at first as an entertainment anchor and reporter, then as the host of Fashion Television.
Beker helped pioneer fashion on the Internet with @fashion, the web's first fashion site. She is a magazine editor and a regular columnist with the Globe and Mail, a guest style correspondent on Canada AM and eTalk, an executive producer and a published author, including of an autobiography, called Jeanne Unbottled: Adventures in High Style. She has had her own clothing line and she is a judge on Canada's Next Top Model, a reality TV series in which aspiring models compete. She is the single mom of two daughters, now 19 and 21, and she herself is the daughter of Holocaust survivors.
"I wrote about that in my first book," she said. "Of course that totally shapes who I am and totally gives me my drive and totally fuelled my dreams and ambitions and they [her parents] were just such supportive, loving individuals."
Beker, who has a sister, continued, telling the Independent that her parents were "very much into encouraging us to dream and believe and teaching us to work really hard and be tenacious and be fearless and to never give up. That was my dad's motto; that was what saw him though the Holocaust, dreaming and believing and not being afraid and never giving up.... And I carry that with me all the time now and certainly that's what I try to impart in my kids."
While not a religious Jew, Beker said she does go to synagogue on the High Holidays and that she holds a big, formal seder every Passover. She went to Jewish day school as a child and can still read, write and understand Hebrew.
"I feel very Jewish in terms of my heritage and who I am, but I wouldn't really call myself a practising Jew," she explained, adding that her daughters, whose father is not Jewish, nonetheless gravitated towards their Jewish roots. Though she never sent her kids to Hebrew school, Beker said her youngest "did really want to learn about Judaism formally and I sent her to sort of pre-bat mitzvah lessons with the rabbi.... And now, interestingly, my eldest daughter is taking Hebrew at university ... because it's important to her. The two of them really identify strongly with the faith but, as I say, not in a formal way."
Like their mother, Beker's daughters never dreamed of being in the fashion business.
"They are very talented, they had their fun with fashion on that level, but they certainly never aspired to become models or anything [like that], thank God," said Beker. "And they certainly realized that it's show business.
"I think it's the girls or the kids that look at the fashion industry and take it literally, whose parents don't explain to them that it's all about artifice and it's all about a heightened reality and these images are not meant to be taken literally; those are the kids who get into trouble."
Beker noted that a few models have had a relatively "longish career," but compared that goal to trying win the lottery.
"One in a zillion get to that level," she said. "You know, here I am, a judge on Canada's Next Top Model, and we're about to do another season and I'm astounded at these girls who want to be models because they think it's glamorous or they need that kind of self-affirmation or someone else's confirmation that they really are beautiful, that they really do deserve to be put on a pedestal like that.
"It just astounds me, the psychology of it, why girls want to be models and part of me feels a bit guilty because, here I am, perhaps I'm propagating a certain myth, by having a TV show where I make it look like it's the most glamorous, divine thing you could do," she continued. "But people want to watch TV and look at it on that kind of a superficial level. There's nothing really we can do. I'm just in show business and it's not my job to really analyze why people do what they do, and it does make for pretty pictures and I guess that's entertainment, too, but I would be really dismayed if my girls wanted to pursue careers as models."
Beker said that she could understand that dream "if that's the only way you're ever going to see the world. Then I would say, OK, pursue a career as a model because it could open up some really interesting worlds, because you would get the opportunity to travel and meet people and get out there. For some of these girls who want to get into that business, I don't understand why – the amount of rejection one has to take is extraordinary. You've really just got to be tough as nails."
On Canada's Next Top Model, Beker sees that reality firsthand. She said she enjoys being on the program "because it's the kind of show that brings the family together, mothers watch it with their daughters, and it's fun. And I also believe that it really teaches people a lot about what it takes to be a model and there is a lot of hard work involved and there is a certain art to it. I'm glad to be demystifying things a bit.
"However, it makes me feel horrible to be squashing these kids' dreams or what they think their dreams are; saying, 'No, sorry, honey, your butt's too big, you'll never make it as a model.'... It does require a certain physicality. It's a fact. If you're a certain height, chances are, you may not make it as a model, but that's just the way it is.... Sometimes I feel so badly because I get attached to these girls and I see what beautiful people they are and I wish I could just say to them, 'You have so much going for you, why are you putting yourself on the line like that?' But, at the end of the day, it's really all in good fun and, I suppose, that you can't really take it all that seriously."
Beker told the Independent that she has a number of projects on the go, including a couple of shows on the drawing board with CTV, an updated version of her autobiography and a dramatic series based on her life.
"Beyond the gloss and the glam and all that wonderful stuff that I get to roll around in," Beker said her life was "just a story about surviving as a woman and as a single mom and as someone whose life hasn't gone as smoothly as it may have looked on the surface; a story about the kind of tenacity and the guts and the strength of character that you have to have to survive, not only in this business, but just in life in general."
She said that young people will come up to her and say, "'We want your job. We want to follow in your footsteps' and I really get my back up when they say that because it's so not what I'd like to encourage people to do. I think people really have to sit down and think [about] what kind of contribution they can make and in what way, and really try to be an original."
Beker noted that some of the jobs she has had didn't exist until she had them. "You've got to really be open to opportunities and you've got to try and see things in new and unexpected ways. You've always got to be thinking of the next tier.... I think that's really important, so whether it was constantly reinventing myself or thinking of new ways of expressing myself or working and honing my skills in a variety of media, I think that's something really more important than ever today for kids to do.... What happens these days is that kids are really goal-oriented and they just set their sights on one thing and that's what they want and they don't understand that there are different incarnations of that or there are different ways of getting to certain spots."
Beker said she had no connections when she got into the industry and that her parents couldn't even speak English when they came to Canada. While they supported her, they couldn't help her and she had to take the initiative to become an actress and figure out how to make that career work. Nowadays, she said, she gets so many parents asking her to help their kids get into the fashion industry. "It's not bad to have a little help sometimes," she admitted, but said that making your own way, "That's the kind of thing that really builds strength of character, not when you're handed stuff."
Beker said she's "been very, very blessed. It has been a lot of hard work and there have been sacrifices in some ways, but it's been so rewarding and to really feel now that I'm part of people's lives because they've grown up watching me or [have] followed my adventures in my columns for all these years, it really is quite a blessing to be able to share my stories with them."
Beker will share some of her stories in an interview with Vicki Gabereau at the JCCGV Jewish Book Festival opening event Nov. 22, 7:30 p.m., at the Norman Rothstein Theatre. For tickets, call 604-257-5111 or visit www.jccgv.com.
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