Reinvention

I watched a documentary last night on Max called Donyale Luna: Supermodel about a black model from the 1960s who had an interesting career, but that few people had ever heard of. I'd never heard of her. Donyale totally transformed herself from a black girl named Peggy from Detroit to an exotic, mixed-race woman whose origins were unknown. Donyale created an entire phony persona for herself. She was part Mexican, she was part Asian, she was from the moon, whatever. Back in the 1960s and 70s (and beyond) you could get away with that kind of thing, I guess. There was no internet. No one would peep you out for not being who you said you were, so Donyale (formerly Peggy) was able to reinvent herself without a lot of scrutiny. The documentary talked to friends and family members who knew Donyale and gushed about how great she was and how the racist modeling industry back then really crushed her. But what they didn't talk about (and what I gathered from the documentary) was that Donyale seemed to have some mental problems. She was briefly hospitalized at Bellevue in New York for a mental breakdown, but it seemed clear to me that this woman needed more mental help beyond that stay. Back in this woman's heydey, she was running with a crowd that did a lot of drugs and I'm sure a lot of her bizarre behavior was just excused or ignored due to the drug use (drug use that ultimately killed her). It's a shame she never seemed to get the mental help she clearly needed. And she ended up leaving her child motherless because she died so young.

The subject of reinvention is interesting to me. The fact that some people just become someone else is fascinating. I used to work with a woman who grew up in public housing, but transformed herself into a different person who shunned all of that and married a man who had a totally different (and more financially stable) upbringing. I think when people are younger, they're more apt to try and present a different side of themselves to others to fit in. Maybe you're ashamed of where you're from or how you grew up, so you give a different narrative to people. You create a diffferent upbringing for yourself to present to others. But doesn't it get exhausting being someone you're not? Keeping the lies straight must take a lot of mental energy. Telling the truth is much easier to recall and recite.