MK & A = Inversion of Homeless Chinese Man

Ever since Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen stopped shooting kids' movies and Full House episodes, they have created a sensation in the fashion world due to their artful ability to layer sleep clothes with street clothes. This "homeless chic" look seems to result from their lifestyle of constant jet-setting, which forces them to wear some of the contents of their luggage directly on their bodies. MK & A dress like they are ready for anything: rain or shine, lunch with Martha Stewart or downtown rave with Jay-Z.

In China, instead of idolizing billionaires who dress like vagrants, style gurus are making a fashion icon out of an actual homeless man. Talk about gauche. He has been dubbed "Brother Sharp," for his striking good looks and his finesse for sporting multiple jackets at once. His followers say that he looks more like "a vagabond" than "a beggar," and fashion critics rave that he does an affordable version of Dolce & Gabbana menswear. If "Brother Sharp" is anything like the Olsen twins, I see a lucrative collaboration with Wal-Mart in this homeless man's future.

Pimp of the Week: Kathryn Bigelow Rocks It

I was delighted and dismayed to realize that Kathryn Bigelow was the first woman in history to win the Oscar for best director. 2010 strikes me as a late date to start recognizing the creative artistry of women in cinema, but such is life.

Kathryn Bigelow strikes me as a person with her head on straight. She makes ballsy action films, even in Jordan, and she doesn't preach about being a "feminist filmmaker." Maybe that's why she was the first woman director to be recognized by The Academy.

Never mind that she was married to a famous Hollywood director and womanizer, because Bigelow is just a woman with a talent for making movies, and she doesn't focus on feminine issues or designer shoe brands. But why is it so illegitimate/un-Oscar-worthy to make movies about 'female trouble'? A war movie about men deactivating bombs is considered serious, but a film about a divorced woman raising her daughter is labeled "melodramatic." Maybe next year a female director will win for making a movie about a girl who is fired from her day job when her boss finds out she is pregnant, forcing her to sell cupcakes door-to-door in order to save enough money to find true love. Wait--that cliché just got horribly confused.

Wanker of the Week: Misinformed Modelizer

While hovering on the Parisian sidewalk with my pro-health signs up against the crowds of fashion editors, photographers, and models, a man shouted out to me, "Size zero kills -- I have to disagree. Designers should be able to do whatever they want!" I argued with him, rambling on about the fact that top designers have a responsibility to consider the broader impact of their aesthetic decisions. To put it plainly, requiring models to fit such tiny measurements is sadistic and creepy. To put it elaborately, the prevalence of size-zero models spreads body dysmorphic disorder in consumers the world over.

As I battled it out with this modelizing fiend, his nonsensical rant quickly devolved into the wanker-worthy comment: "But thin girls just look beautiful in clothes! It looks better!" I quickly realized that he was not a reputable fashion editor or artistic director but merely a random straggler taking his Sunday stroll through the Tuileries Gardens. Perhaps he was lurking outside the Karl Lagerfeld tent hoping to find a wafer-thin waif to stand in front of him and "look beautiful in clothes."

Size Zero Kills: A Performance Art Piece Part 2

My experience on the fashion frontlines at the Karl Lagerfeld show in Paris was full of unexpected good fortune from strangers. After an hour of lying frozen in the same position on the ground of the Tuileries Gardens, wearing nothing but tights and a few trash bags, my limbs were trembling and I had lost all feeling in my hands and feet. I had my eyes closed to maintain the image of being dead, when all of a sudden I heard male voices circling around me.

One Louvre security guard crouched down close to me and started saying that I had to get up and clothe myself, because he was worried that I would become gravely sick. Since the Tuileries Gardens are the property of the Louvre Museum, it is the security guard's problem if some deranged performance artist freezes to death on the premises. They scooped me up off the ground and seized my "Size Zero Kills" signs, refusing to give them back and threatening to call the police. But the young, adorable security guard who helped me off the ground seemed to be genuinely worried about my health, and said, "It's a great cause!" He escorted me to the gates overlooking the Obélisque de Louxor in the Place de la Concorde and advised me to exhibit my signs at this strategic entryway.

As I stood with my shield-like signs in hand, my trash bags flapping in the wind, all the paparazzi, socialites, models, designers, and editors walked by to leave the fashion show, each with their own reaction of disdain, excitement, or merely a flash of their iPhone cameras. One statuesque fashionista smiled and shouted, "I'm not a size zero--I'm a size 4!"

Another woman approached me and commented, "But you're not a size zero." I replied, "No, I'm a size 4. I was a size zero and I almost died of anorexia." Her response was: "You look great. You're not too big, you're not too small, you're perfect!" She was so submerged in the fashion industry that even her compliment remained constricted by the 'thinness institution.' Nonetheless, it felt like a Chanel ballet flat in the right direction.

SIZE ZERO KILLS: A PERFORMANCE ART PIECE

Today I am doing a performance art piece in the Jardin des Tuileries Espace Ephémères, outside of the Karl Lagerfeld show for Paris Fashion Week. I will be lying on the ground feigning death, my body partially covered in black trash-bags crisscrossed with white ribbons and mesh covering my eyes. My face will be painted white with blue lips to accentuate the death imagery, my legs will be covered in black tights, and my feet will be in Chanel ballet flats. The white signs propped next to me on the ground will read: SIZE ZERO KILLS.

I spent my early adolescence poring over fashion magazines and skinny models, and by the time I was 20, I was hospitalized for anorexia. I finally realized that viewing thin models and absurd retouching contributed to the serious distortion of my own body image. When I was in the hospital, I was horrified to meet 13-year-old girls on feeding tubes, barely alive, still worshipping Chanel and Vogue as though the fashion industry was their savior.

Karl Lagerfeld has promoted the illegitimate claim that size-zero models are better at selling products than models at healthier weights. He famously lost 90 pounds in a year and uses the anti-obesity card as a way of deflecting from the anorexia issue. Our culture is struggling with a problem of extremes, and if the media's beauty ideals return to a more balanced vision of naturalness and health, then perhaps it will encourage the same in the general population.

We are bombarded with images of impossible perfections that feed on our insecurities, driving people to dangerous dieting, plastic surgeries, and in the extreme case, anorexia ending in death. Too-thin, too-young models perpetuate a culture that is afraid of embracing beauty as a thing of depth and variety that spans across all ages, races, and shapes. The new female beauty ideal starts with changing the sample size from zero. The concept of beauty has always been tied to the saturation of images in a given time, and if those images are created by society, then they can be changed by society too.

"shabby people"

While skiing in the French Alpine resort town of Val-d'Isère, I encountered many a Slim Aarons situation. From the lounge chairs at the foot of the slopes, to the Frenchies drinking mid-afternoon red wine in those lounge chairs, it was a surreally elegant ski experience.

From my early years, I recall awkward moments at ski school involving a combination ski suit with suspenders and a desperate need to go pee while riding on the chair lift. I always wanted to become that girl in the snow bunny outfit like some Bavarian ice princess at her chalet in Gstaad sipping slope-side champagne and wearing furry boots that look like animals.

This time around, my sartorial choices were more 1970s-pimp than 1980s snow princess. But no matter what sort of Italian magenta jumpsuit or rabbit fur chapka hat you wear, the awkward mountaintop experiences of youth still abound. Ski boots inevitably make you walk like you have a load in your pants, and falling on your ass is practically a requirement.

A Somnambulist

I recently attended an AIDS fashion couture gala in the Bois de Boulogne, a scenic area of Paris currently famous for its prostitutes and formerly famous for the opening scene of Gigi with Maurice Chevalier.

At this particular champagne-soaked evening there was a striptease spectacle involving men in hot pink Lycra and transvestites dressed as geishas. I have always had a penchant for beautiful drag queens, so I felt in my element, sporting a mink stole and gold leggings, which would be considered gauche in any other venue.

Surrounded by fashion designers, dapper gay men, and their fancy ladies in waiting, I decided that my favorite character of the night was a sixty-year-old man from the Great American South. He became a modern dancer and directed fashion shows in 1970s Paris. Now he leads a gospel choir and writes operas. When he returns from a nightclub or party, he makes a wistful comment about how 'things are not like they used to be, at Studio 54.'

Pushing The Envelope

One afternoon in India while wandering an ancient cave site, a great deal of Indian tourists started asking to take my photograph. One young man's mother was delighted when I agreed to stand next to her son and smile into the camera, like we were sitting for an arranged marriage portrait.

After months of being an impossibly un-French American expatriate in Paris, it was refreshing to be around some Indian people who relished my American appearance.

A harmless adolescent creeper approached me and asked where I was from. He quickly exclaimed, "America! Wow! Amazing ... America is the most disciplined country in the world. To us, that is what we believe." I guess they haven't watched very much American reality television in India.

"antiseptic perfumed cream"

My friend and I were recently pashmina-bartering in the splendor and squalor of Calcutta's New Market, where you can find stacks of eggs in extraordinary bulk, baskets of chickens, butchered animals, spices, and loads of Indian fabrics. After we purchased a rainbow of pashminas for about 2 dollars each, an overly solicitous man whispered in our ears about a secret store in the basement where we could buy shahtoosh -- a type of shawl woven from the finest neck-hairs of endangered Tibetan antelopes, making it the most coveted (and illegal) scarf in the world.

Our salesman claimed that his shahtoosh was "all natural" so it was not technically illegal. But during my entire time in India I never saw a single policeman (only a few traffic directors in uniform), so I don't think the salesman was too concerned about legal issues.

He was so determined to sell us his shahtoosh that he started recounting stories of his childhood as an orphan and being raised by Mother Theresa. Apparently all his shahtoosh profits go to "the children." He and his troop of associates swarmed around us for almost an hour, offering us glasses of sweet chai and thrusting so many scarves, tablecloths, leather jackets, and jewels in our faces that we left the New Market feeling dazed and endeared by these charmingly brazen salesmen.

Dressed For Dinner

I was wandering the crowded banana-stand-filled market streets of Puri, India, when I turned onto an alleyway to admire a lovely broken-down air conditioning unit and a typical vendor selling Lay's masala-flavored potato chips, chewing tobacco spices, stacks of cashew nuts, and other essentials. I paused to snap a photograph of an old poster for a Hindi movie whose tagline was "THE PLEASING TOUCH!"

Suddenly a young man popped out at me and said, "3 rupees and I look at you." He proceeded to undress his unique lower-body sarong ensemble. And that was my cue to return to my vehicle. He was offering me the equivalent of 6 cents to look at me as he fondled himself. He was a creeper to be sure, but somehow the interaction was less threatening than the Western World equivalent -- especially since it was a colorful sarong being undone instead of a zipper.

Pimp of the Week: Graydon Carter

Over the sea of Botoxed brows and candy-coiffed diners at a posh restaurant, I spotted the billowing plumage of none other than Graydon Carter. The Vanity Fair editor-in-chief exudes laid-back New England suavity, even though he is a political, literary, and cultural king of Manhattan. He also dabbles in restaurateurism and co-owns New York's cozy-clubby celebrity dining spot, the Waverly Inn, along with Midtown's old school Monkey Bar.

As Carter was exiting the restaurant, I dashed up to him like the desperate young pseudo-writer that I am and handed him my email address on a scrap of paper. All I could muster up to say was, "I'm a huge fan -- I'm a starving writer," but then I corrected myself, "Well, clearly I'm not quite starving, but you know..." I told him about the unpublished novel I wrote and let him go on his way. You never know when a humiliating experience will spin into gold. Perhaps Graydon Carter will be my Rumpelstiltskin.

An Uncanny Resemblance

The best thing about being a tourist is ogling other tourists and deducing their nationalities. In a bar with a distant view of the Taj Mahal, I found myself culturally confused: the American girl, in India, with a French man, at a British-colonialist-style resort, observing two Italian women sipping cocktails (or perhaps they were Spanish, or Greek ... it was hard to discern at first).

They were both well-dressed, well coiffed, dripping in designers, young, brunette, and pretty. One of them wore a threateningly large emerald ring, had a haughty look on her face, and sipped a mimosa. The other girl wore a headband embellished with a satin bow and had a sweet smile. She opted out of her friend's prissy champagne cocktail and ordered various ingredients from the bartender to create an odd concoction of tomato juice, beer, Tabasco sauce, celery salt, and Worcestershire sauce. Talk about gauche. We finally asked her about her custom drink and discovered that they are from Mexico. And when I saw the Worcestershire sauce, I was about to guess Great Britain.

But how much can you really tell about a person from what they drink? In Chile, Argentina, and India, I noticed ads for Johnnie Walker everywhere. I guess globalization turns international people watching into true detective work.

"fortune hunter!"

Heidi Montag is the 23-year-old reality television celebrity who went from sweet and natural Colorado girl to botched and butchered Los Angeles pop star ... all in a matter of minutes. She recently underwent 10 different plastic surgery procedures in a day, saying that she wanted to become the "perfect" version of herself.

She's always indicated signs of derangement: she married a sociopathic mimbo-creeper, Spencer Pratt, and the two of them were baptized in the jungle by a born-again Christian minister (a.k.a. the youngest Baldwin brother) on public television. After they were absolved of their sinful hard-partying lifestyle, Spencer and Heidi (a.k.a. "Speidi") decided to make a series of music videos featuring Heidi's enlarged breasts on the beach. Well, now her lips (and cheeks, and eyebrow arches, and butt) will be bigger too. And her thighs (and ears, and nose, and chin, and neck) will be smaller.

She might be a talentless celebrity past the brink of sanity, but in a culture saturated by image obsession and body perfectionism, Heidi Montag might also be a dreadful alarm call for a future lived in plastic.

Pimp of the Week: François Pinault

In terms of billionaires in the world, François Pinault is apparently around number 39. He is the ultimate Frenchman of luxury, owning Gucci, Christie's auction house, the Vail Ski Resort, and that sort of modest NGO-based work. But the best thing about this capitalist pimp is that he bought a beautiful old customs building and a marble palace on Venice's Grand Canal, and then he turned them into museums for his extraordinary contemporary art collection: the Punta Della Dogana and the Palazzo Grassi.

His son, François-Henri Pinault, is married to Hollywood hot actress Salma Hayek. In fact, they got married twice -- first in Paris and then in Venice. Just for good measure. There are some things money can't buy (like marital bliss), but there are other things (like a Venetian-masquerade wedding reception, or a Felix Gonzalez-Torres installation), where a lot of money can't hurt.

"an ungarnished colonial"

The excessively civilized Caffe Florian, overlooking the Plaza San Marco, is the Venetian equivalent to the eternally posh Café de Flore on Paris' Left Bank: there are waiters in white jackets and it is generally inadmissible to look or act like a tourist (though tourists inevitably abound).

Gauche Things to do in a Chic (Elitist) European Café:

1. Bringing a Starbuck's thermos and telling your waiter, "Fill it up!"

2. Wearing sweatpants, or any garment involving an elastic band.

3. Taking a picture of anything, especially your waiter's head as he is serving you.

4. Informing other diners that you find the décor a bit outdated -- and that you think the IHOP on Route 1 has a much more contemporary flair.

5. While en route to the WC, pilfering large quantities of wrapped house chocolates (customarily served as an accompaniment to the espresso drinks).

6. Exclaiming in horror, "10 Euros for a Coke!"

"are you enfianced?"

Nestled underneath the arcades of the Place Des Vosges, I debriefed on my underwhelming impression of Berlin with a couple of true Parisians. The zany stranger seated at the neighboring table overheard my less than complimentary comments about Berlin, and we delved into a discussion of urban gentrification (and the irritating characters who accompany it). There are the bobos in Paris's 17th arrondissement ("Bobo" is a term for Frenchies who are simultaneously "bourgeois" and "bohemian"); there are the yuppies in Manhattan's Murray Hill; there are the hipsters in Brooklyn's Williamsburg.

But nowadays there is something more offensive than yuppies or hipsters: the yipster. Yuppie + Hipster = Yipster. Yipsters tend to reside post-college on the Upper East Side (where they live rent-free in apartments formerly occupied by their grandmothers). But the yipster quickly accumulates enough wealth to move to Williamsburg, where they stock their kitchens with Whole Foods groceries and frequent the gym in their full service river-view buildings.

The yipster drinks Red Stripe beers out of the bottle at the local backyard bar venue on Friday nights. The yipster probably went to Harvard but prefers to hang out on weekends with up-and-coming artists who went to RISD. I suppose I am similar to a yipster, except that yipsters usually have real jobs so that they can eventually buy a house in Westchester County, forget the "grunge" of Brooklyn, and buy the paintings of their former 'artist friends' who gain credibility from Christie's contemporary art auction.

Wanker of the Week: Apicius Restaurant Encounter

While dining on frogs' legs at Apicius Restaurant, one of the most elegant and hidden-away culinary delights in Paris, a mysterious man caught my eye. He seemed bored at his table of stuffy, well-coiffed, Chanel-dipped elderly relatives. After an hour of exchanging glances, I made an exit for the ladies' room -- he brushed past me in the hallway and I slipped a piece of paper into his hand. It was a perfectly timed encounter between two creepers.

Moments later we were texting, and a few days later we were doing the standard email writing procedure: he is a banker, his family has a house in Paris, he thinks New York is a wonderful city, he is not one of those 'emotionally unavailable men,' he is enamored of my long hair, and OH, one more thing -- casually, at the end of the email he mentioned:

"What else ???? I'm married (no point in hiding that !!)."

So maybe I didn't find true love at Apicius, but I certainly found a Wanker of the Week (no point in hiding that !!), and the chocolate soufflé was delicious.

Pimp of the Week: Helmut Newton

Helmut Newton is a total pimp. He was a seminal fashion photographer in the 1970s. I visited the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin and was spellbound by Newton's pictures -- always erotically charged, slightly deranged, subversive, and sinister in a way that exposed the fallacy of the luxe lifestyle.

His handwritten letters to various fashion editors are particularly amusing. He once wrote to Anna Wintour, "I love high riders like Gary Cooper used to wear." And he tended to sign his letters with: "From the old naughty boy!"

Newton once said about his preference of models, "Please make sure you get a gal with some muscle and meat on her -- none of those starved females!! Horrible matchstick women." He knew that the whole heroin/anorexic-chic look was useless in artistic photography, and useless in general.

The Showcases

I had a true Bavarian Christmas with my endlessly entertaining German cousins. They are my third cousins, so technically they are considered "kissing cousins," which is an expression that either denotes "distant cousins familiar enough to kiss" or "cousins that are distant enough in relation that it is not the end of the world to kiss them." Either way, the expression is gauche, and probably not the best holiday dinner-table conversation.

After we celebrated Christmas with a roast goose at an old-school Bavarian golf, polo, and hot-air-ballooning club, my cousins and I continued to the bar where many of the German guests had brought their dogs with them during after-dinner drinks. One older man and his wife, who seemed Russian in temperament, had two Chihauhaus in tow (very 'Paris Hilton' and un-German of them). When the couple exited the lounge, my cousin asked, "What kind of dog is that?" and the portly man responded, "A very expensive kind." When we commented on the tiny dog's pink diamond-encrusted collar, the owner responded, "Yes, the collar was more expensive than the dog."

I guess on Christmas some people have kissing cousins to keep them company, and some people have their blonde wives and very small dogs.

Pimp of the Week: Hugh Grant

Hugh Grant is apparently quite the "Renaissance man," as he is proficient at both golf and tennis, buys paintings, is reasonably literate, and even dabbled with novel writing. Since Did You Hear About the Morgans?, a new romantic comedy premiered last week, USA Today did a little interview about the wonders that make up Hugh Grant. His "rakish" persona has charmed me ever since I saw him acting like a complete wanker in Bridget Jones's Diary. He cozies into, and perhaps even invented, the 'emotionally unavailable men' roles.

In the USA Today interview, Grant, admitted to the dangers of vanity: "I stopped Googling myself. Life improves exponentially. I think the same thing applies to reviews." He also confessed to his penchant for showering girls with expensive accessories and shopping at Chanel. But I think it is mostly because he loves the way the salesgirls make him feel about himself.