TNY: fun in the sun!
Click on the image to get to the cartoonbank.com’s page.
This is a first for me (a cartoon in the magazine three weeks in a row!), so I celebrated by doing some bartender training tonight. I finished my batch early, so I even stayed an extra half hour to have an aperetif afterwards, at The Bubble Lounge. Tonight I learned how to pour Grand Marnier for two counts with my right hand, while pouring brandy with my left hand for six. I also learned how to make a Mojito, an Expresso Martini, a Sidecar, and practiced my champagne uncorking. I’m pretty good at that, can do it with practically no noise at all.
Anyway, back to the cartoon. It was originally handed in once with a different caption, something snarky about one of these broads needing counseling for having no problems. It was rejected, naturally. I’d drawn it inspired by a sixties bikini ad I’d seen on the “inspiration” wall during a fitting at Peter Som’s about two years ago! Then, the next week on my way to drop off a new batch, I had a flash of inspiration while looking at an unnaturally fit much older woman on the subway downtown to the magazine. When I arrived, I dug the reject out of the reject pile (miles high), changed the caption, and sent it straight back in. It sold! I was afraid it had been killed (since I sold it so long ago and never saw it printed), so I’m all the happier today.
I might add that this is one of a series of breast-appreciation cartoons I was working on at the time. I guess doing bra fittings will make you really think about breasts in all their shapes and sizes, and I was always on the look-out for a great pair to draw at that time! Also, since I had to put on some weight for this client, I needed a well-padded but not too chunky image to aspire to. I was quite enchanted with their very slightly rounded tummies, and healthily curvy thighs and hips, which women used to wear proudly before deathly skinny became such the rage.
I dedicated it (mentally) to a lady we used to call “Robocop” for years when I used to do showroom at Jean-Paul Gaultier’s in Paris. It was obvious she worked out to terrible extremes, and would come in every new season with some new work done on her face or body, new boobs, new jaw, new cheekbones… We could swear she even had implants in her calves. She tended to wear skin-tight black leather that showed her bulging arm muscles. She was a sweet, sweet lady, with a slightly Kewpie Doll face, making her the more unnerving to look at. One season she didn’t come back, having died on the operating table during yet another procedure. We called her Robocop, but with tenderness, really. I never knew her real name, but I hope she’s perfect now wherever she is!
Meanwhile: Retirement age will someday need to be 85.
Related newyorkette posts: “Reject du jour: The untucked dress shirt and the original bikini girls”
June 27th, 2006 at 10:36 am
A hat trick! Congratulations. The “turning 80” cartoon is a classic. It’s both funny and poignant – a quality shared by all of your best work (or at least, all of my favourites of yours).
October 24th, 2006 at 9:46 am
[...] I’ve found a lot of lost things (and lost a lot of things as well), while unpacking in my new apartment. One of the things I found was this photocopy of the image that inspired my “I never thought turning eighty would be so much fun,” cartoon: [...]