Beyond Beauty: Summer Phoenix
1997
Jane Pratt
At 18, Summer Phoenix has lived in Argentina, Mexico, Los Angeles, Florida, and
New York. She's traveled to Australia and Costa Rica, and to Ecuador with some
"eco-warrior" friends of her mom's, and she's acted in a couple of
movies, although she says she'd like to consider the one she just finished,
Arresting Gina, her first. "That was
pretty ace," she says. Also, she's a brand-new aunt.
"It was amazing" says Summer, who was
with her sister, Liberty, when she gave birth at her family's home in Florida.
"She had the baby in water-- it's more soothing for the mother. And the
baby lives in water for the first nine months, so it was an amazing, simple
transition for him. He came out eyes open under the water. So cute. I was crying
the entire time, but Liberty didn't cry once. She didn't even take an Advil for
the pain." They named the baby Rio, which is Spanish for River.
A huge chunk of Summer's otherwise nomadic childhood
was spent in Florida, where she attended a progressive school. "It was
totally chill," she says. "There were only 23 kids for four different
grades, and we had different animals -- peacocks, lambs, dogs. We didn't start
till 10:00 in the morning, and we had, like, a morning meeting where we'de
'share stuff'. I loved it." When she finished up there, Summer decided to
get her GED rather than go to public school. "I couldn't have dealt,"
she says. "I mean, I'm different, and a lot of kids like to pick on that,
you know? Like, 'Ooh, your gross! What are you eating?Tofu salad?!' And I knew I
would get that kind of shit there." After she got her diploma, Summer did a
semester of film school at NYU --"and that's been the end of my education
so far." But she thinks she wants to continue acting. "It was always
something I did when I was younger," she says. "I mean, my whole
family did it, and I totally enjoyed it and loved it. I did a lot of TV -- one
really bad cheesy movie. Then I moved away to Central America, and I totally
didn't think about it. But when I came back to America, I started to think, Oh,
what am I going to do with my life?"
Summer knows that some people see her as
something of a hippy chick, and she pokes fun at this image constantly. She
picked our meeting place because it's vegan, which means it serves no meat and
no dairy. Yet when I showed up, she was lounging at an outdoor table, smoking a
cigarette. "I know!" She exclaims. "Such a shame!" She
laughs. "Me and my older sister were picking butts off the ground and stuff
when I was about 14. I've been smoking way too long. But," she adds
unapologetically, "there's nothing better than coffee and a
cigarette."
And though you'de probably picture
her in crunchy, earth-toned, flowing hippie outfits, her style's much more
complex: today she's wearing a fitted, kind of demure light-floral print dress
with an excellent tailored navy blue coat and an old-school white fuzzy hat
ringed with a band of fake diamonds -- all thrift store finds. "I do wear
pretty much all secondhand junk," she says. "There are tons of old
people that die -- estate sales and stuff like that. Then there's tons of people
that just don't know how cool their shit is, so they just give it to the
Salvation Army. And I'm, like, there."
Her personal style, she says, is called
"stugly. It's just like finding the ugliest piece of clothing you can and
then just taking a step back, breathing, taking all the colors in, and just
going, 'Yeah, that could look good," she explains. "I think I'm a bit
eclectic, and I'm just so not into everybody wearing the same thing. I like to
wear lots of different things all together. I like wearing tights and socks and
leg warmers," she says. She looks serious, and I have no reason not to
believe her. As for makeup, she says she never wears it. "But I always wear
glitter," she explains. "It's just always been my thing -- I don't
know why." She closes her eyelids so I can see the light dusting of white
she's sprinkled on her lashes. "I mean, makeup was never in the house. My
mom doesn't wear makeup, she doesn't wear jewelry, she doesn't shave her legs.
So the sun was always my makeup -- I'm that skin tone that never gets pale. And
I have dark eyelashes and dark eyebrows, so I never needed mascara, or to pencil
in my eyebrows. I've always felt uncomfortable in makeup, like, 'God, it's
runny' or something -- it just makes me self concious. Glitter is different,
because it can go anywhere. Get it in my hair, get it on my cheeks, its
fine."
We finish our lunch, so Summer and I walk a few
blocks to Porto Rico, her favorite coffee shop. She loves it because it's dark
and smoky and the air is thick with a coffee-bean smell. She sits down and pulls
a small cardboard container of soy milk out of her purse as I stir whole cow's
milk into my cup. "Does regular milk taste good?" she asks. I tell her
yeah, and she squirts the soy milk out of the containerand all over her dress.
"Oh shit!" she says, laughing. "I do this all the time."
Summer's got a flight to catch in a couple of
hours -- one of her best friends is getting married in London. "I just
bought the dress I'm going to wear for $1.75," she says proudly. "But
I had to get it altered because it had a stain on the neck, and it was really
obvious, so I just had it cut and pulled in." And though Summer conforms
for no one, she's a little concerned about how her unshaven pits will go over at
the reception. "My friend, the one who's getting married, her father is
Pakistani," she says, "and his side is all conservative and proper.
And England is just very, you know, steeped in whatever. I was thinking, Wow,
I'm wearing a sleevles dress, God, I wonder if these people are going to be
totally bothered by my armpit hair." So she figures she'll wear a shawl.
But otherwise, she couldn't care less what other people have to say. "Guys
have come up to me," she says, "and they're like, 'If I gave you a
shaver, would you shave your armpits?' And I'm like, 'If I gave you a hammer,
would you smash your fuckin' face in?'"
The only time she does give serious thought
to the way she looks is when she goes on auditions -- but that doesn't mean she
acts on those thoughts. "I feel like when my attitude is great and
positive," she says, "it doesn't matter what I look like. At least not
to me. I mean, I totally walked into this one audition with huge pants on and my
hair up, which my agent tell me" -- she puts on a New York accent --
"NEVAH WEAH YAH HAYEH UP!" She cackles. "I don't know -- I guess
I'm more sultry
looking when it's down. But I was just bubbly and great, and I think it was
because of that. It was obviously not my looks, because I was totally skanked
out." So she's pretty pleased with herself, even though she doesn't know if
she's gotten the part.
When she was pretty young she noticed
physical traits she shares with her brothers and sisters. "Like, me and my
sisters are built."
she says. "No matter how much I did drugs, I would never be skinny. But I
remember just looking at my oldest sister's friends and my brother's
girlfriends, and just like, 'Yo, they're a lot different. They're really
skinny.'" Then there was the time she and her family were living in
South America and she shaved all her hair off, only to come down with a staph
infection. "It's like, an itty little sore gets, like, big and puss-y. I
got it from the water, and it was just all over my face and my legs and inside
my nose -- I mean, it was pretty tragic. Becuause there are a lot of babes in
Argentina."
I ask Summer if she considers herself pretty, and she
says she can't say it. "I think that when one looks in the mirror,"
she begins carefully, "you see what you don't like. I can never look in the
mirror and see my face. I always go, 'Oh, my eyebrows are really bushy, and my
nose is way too long.' But," she says, "I'm pretty comfortable with
myself. I know that I have a lot better of a time when I am, and that is always
pending on my mind whever I start to get down on myself about my physical
appearence. Because it feels shitty -- if you think you're too fat, how can you
go to the beach and have a blast with your friends? It's just not worth it. So
not worth it. It's a total waste, especially of youth. Time goes by way too fast
to take much time feeling shitty." She stubs out her cigarette.
"It's a fine line," she continues.
"There have been times when I was crying until I couldn't cry anymore,
where it's just complete grief and at the lowest low. I would've traded anything
not to feel that emptiness and that void. And that emptiness and that void is
just complete neglect of yourself and your soul." She pauses and eyes the
action at the counter. "I went from boyfriend to boyfriend -- I had doting
boyfriends, I had boyfriends that didn't pay me much attention -- one extreme to
the other. And I always felth like I was alone, no matter whether I was with
somebody or not. I could feel ugly if I looked fine or if they were telling me I
was beautiful. Then, finally, when I took the time out to try and start to love
myself, which is such an intense, hard process, that's when I...." she
trails off.
Summer checks her watch and suggests that we get
going; she's got a wedding gift to buy before she catches her flight. We grab
our coats and head out onto the street. But before she goes, she thinks one
other thing she wants to tell me. "The one thing I've learned is that you
have to do it for yourself," says Summer. "I think it's been proven so
many times that beauty comes from the inside -- that you have to realize it for
yourself, exude that and be that. Otherwise it doesn't make the same impact on
you or your soul or your ability to shine." She cracks a wide smile.
"You're as beautiful as you feel," she says."To quote Carol
King."