No Filter
The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful
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- 5,49 €
Description de l’éditeur
“A book about a rare life, profound love, profound grief, anxiety, self-assurance, empowerment, aging, loss, and joy. It is nuanced, complex, insightful, helpful, and constantly surprising.” —Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author of These Precious Days
Writer and former model Paulina Porizkova pens a series of intimate, introspective, and enlightening essays about the complexities of womanhood at every age, pulling back the glossy magazine cover and writing from the heart.
AN OPEN FIELD PUBLICATION FROM MARIA SHRIVER
Born in Cold War Czechoslovakia, Paulina Porizkova rose to prominence as a model, appearing on her first Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover in 1984. As the face of Estée Lauder in 1989, she was one of the highest-paid models in the world. When she was cast in the music video for the song “Drive” by The Cars, it was love at first sight for her and frontman Ric Ocasek. He was forty at the time, and Porizkova was nineteen. The decades to come would bring marriage, motherhood, a budding writing career; and later sadness, loneliness, isolation, and eventually divorce. Following her ex-husband’s death—and the revelation of a deep betrayal—Porizkova stunned fans with her fierce vulnerability and disarming honesty as she let the whole world share in her experience of being a woman who must start over.
This is a wise and compelling exploration of heartbreak, grief, beauty, aging, relationships, re-invention and finding your purpose. In these essays, Porizkova bares her soul and shares the lessons she’s learned—often the hard way. After a lifetime of being looked at, she is ready to be heard.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Model, actor, and writer Porizkova (A Model Summer) shares her thoughts on beauty culture, the end of her marriage, and honesty online in this solid collection of memoir-driven essays. Much like her social media presence, the writing is simple to a fault but disarmingly honest. Porizkova's scene setting is consistently vibrant enough to draw readers in, though the notes she hits can become repetitive. She describes everything from growing up as a poor Czech refugee in Sweden and her habit of reading palms as a young model in Paris to secretly dating (and later divorcing) Ric Ocasek, lead singer of the Cars. Some of the insights—especially those about social media, the beauty industry, and the fetishization of youth—are sharp, crystallized by more than four decades in the spotlight. One particularly interesting essay, "Nude, Not Naked," delivers a striking treatise on feeling free vs. feeling exploited while posing nude; here, Porizkova delineates the nuances of choice and power in a nude photo shoot in a way that few others could. Other insights, such as the idea expressed in the essay "Childhood" that women marry men like their fathers and men marry women like their mothers, are more banal. Fans of Porizkova's work will enjoy this glimpse into her life, but ultimately little sets it apart from other celebrity memoirs in the same lane.
