ORIGINAL CINDY

Letters

Incendiary Crawford

Herb Ritts's pictures of supermodel Cindy Crawford are superb, and Cathy Horyn's article "Absolute Cindy" [August] is delightful and one of the best depictions of Cindy that I have read recently.

JEANNE DUELL Los Angeles, California

Your cover of Cindy Crawford is the best cover I have ever seen, anywhere, anytime. Cindy defines the word "beautiful," for beauty truly comes from within. Her sense of self alone is an amazing achievement.

CATHERINE RASMUSSEN Toms River, New Jersey

My heart goes out to kind, sweet, wonderful, rich Cindy—a bandage on her foot you say? Really? How horrid!

LANA BERGEN New York, New York

I just wanted to drop you a line to tell you about two things I never thought I would do. I never thought I would write a letter to a magazine, and I never thought I would purchase a magazine because of the cover photo. If all your cover photos are as fantastic as your Cindy Crawford cover, I will continue to do both.

MIKE GOLDIE Redlands, California

While I think Cindy Crawford is to the 90s what Raquel Welch was to the 60s, I have just one request: the next time an incredibly lucky and naturally beautiful goddess like Miss Crawford starts to moan about life at the top, why not just go ahead and slap a gag order on her before all those superfluous insights go to print.

Come on, Cindy! Compared with O.J., you've got nothing to worry about!

CAROLINE PIKE New York, New York

Page 10 of your August issue credits Mafia Mills as the bikini designer on your cover photo of Cindy Crawford.

I've spent a considerable amount of time (hours) studying this lovely photo and simply cannot find the bikini.

BARRY J. MATTHEWS Moraga, California

In the year of the 25th anniversary of man's first walk on the moon, I find it especially painful that today one of the most celebrated women in America is a supermodel. In the 1960s, little boys dreamed of being astronauts; in the 1990s, little girls dream about being supermodels. By the way, we don't care if Cindy is insecure about her looks.

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I bought this issue because of the Bret Easton Ellis article.

RUTH HOVICK Chicago, Illinois

Marilyn, Inc.! Elvis, Inc.! Imagine that we might still be enjoying their company had they understood what Cindy Crawford was smart enough to recognize and is wise enough to accept and market. Sometimes a talent is simply to have been born (and have a great manager) and nothing else. Marilyn was not a great actress, nor was Elvis a great musician (and vice versa). Rather than accepting their limitations and making hay with their marketability, they opted out.

I look forward to decades of the beautiful Cindy, Inc., and wish Marilyn and Elvis had permitted me the same.

ELIZABETH DUNLAP SABIA Oreland, Pennsylvania It takes a lot of lights and makeup to be in a Playboy centerfold, which is certainly anything but practical or downto-earth, let alone real. It may have been a business move on Cindy Crawford's part, but it definitely was not a pragmatic one.

TISHA ELLIOT Portland, Oregon

The media portray her as virtually perfect. She's gorgeous and supersawy in business. How refreshing to know that on top of everything else she's human. Thank you for writing a profile that shows that even Cindy Crawford gets the blues.

BONNI KOGEN BRODNICK Pound Ridge, New York

To compare Cindy Crawford to Jackie O is to compare lobster and truffles to a Happy Meal. Cindy Crawford, you're no Jackie Kennedy!

ANGELA LUCERO-REED Pueblo, Colorado

Cindy Crawford has succeeded Madonna as the media version of Chinese water torture. I don't want to be her and I don't want to do her; I just want to slap that mole right off her face. Overexposure has rendered her less fascinating than Demi Moore's belly. We already know she makes an unconscionable amount of money and is married to what's-his-name. We've seen her posing pouty-lipped next to the Dalai Lama. We stand advised to consider her a role model, though she has neither authentic talent nor a shred of mystique. Please defer further mention of this woman until the next millennium.

CAROL L. SMITH Lompoc, California

I can't tell you how relieved I felt after reading your Cindy Crawford profile. I had always assumed that doubt and worry plagued only middle-class plain Janes with balding, beer-bellied husbands. Now I discover that even obscenely wealthy supermodels with hunky movie-star husbands have problems. To be faced with such mind-numbing issues and pressures each and every day is almost too horrible to contemplate: Is this the right time to launch a "Cindy doll"? Should I pose nude to widen my demographic appeal? What must I do next to ensure that my $7-million-a-year income keeps rolling in?

Before devouring your article, I admit, I often felt that my troubles were insurmountable. Now, before the first pangs of anxiety can even take root, I breathe deeply and remind myself, "Jeanne, it could be far, far worse. You could be living the nightmare that is Cindy Crawford's life." Thanks, Vanity Fair, for helping me put my insignificant troubles in perspective.

JEANNE M. FRAZEE Livonia, Michigan

Bill Of Right

I found your recent story on the Bennett brothers ["The Fabulous Bennett Boys," by Frank Deford, August] interesting. William Bennett, former secretary of education, recently compiled an Index of Leading Cultural Indicators to get a practical grasp of the condition of America: statistics on 19 aspects of American social life were sampled at five-year intervals from 1960 to 1990.

Over the last 30 years, there has been a 560 percent increase in violent crimes, a 400 percent increase in illegitimate births, a quadrupling of the divorce rate, a 200 percent increase in the teenage-suicide rate, and a drop of almost 80 points in S.A.T. scores, to cite only the (Continued on page 74) most dramatic bad news.

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This social deterioration, Mr. Bennett believes, "is due in large part to the enfeebled state of our social institutions and their failure to carry out a critical and time-honored task: the moral education of the young."

Mr. Bennett's conclusions will not please all tastes, but he is saying things that are proven, significant, and momentous. Those who take refuge in simpler resolutions to.less sticky issues will pale in contrast.

MICHAEL LEVINE Los Angeles, California

It was thrilling to read in your August issue that Bill Bennett is considering running for the presidency—it's about time we had a mensch for a leader.

C. A. SPILLER PARESKY Marblehead, Massachusetts

Bret Noir

Thank you for your sublime article on novelist Bret Easton Ellis ["Who's Afraid of Bret Easton Ellis?" by Matthew Tymauer, August], a man too brilliant to be understood by just anyone.

LACEY LEVITT Baltimore, Maryland

During the pinnacle of the Ellis controversy, Tammy Bruce, the president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women, made the comment that American Psycho is "a how-to novel on the torture and dismemberment of women." She gave it far too much credit. It is actually a how-to manual on torturing readers. I don't know which was more painful, reading Ellis or reading about him.

KENYA McCULLUM Albany, New York

Finally a quasi-revealing profile (as much as we'll ever know, I'll bet) of one of the most talented writers of our time.

As a senior studying creative writing at the University of Arizona I can say that Mr. Ellis is among the most revered authors of my generation, admired for the fluidity of his prose style and his eye for context and detail, which, on the surface, appear ordinary enough but are really, under Mr. Ellis's microscope, threatening and truly unnerving. I quiver with anticipation for the arrival of his latest masterpiece.

JAIME CLARKE Phoenix, Arizona

Bret Easton Ellis belongs in a locked attic room with Jay Mclnerney, Tama Janowitz, and the entire cast of Less than Zero, where we can dust them off occasionally and say, "Weren't we silly to have bought into this crap?"

J. ALEXANDER GREENWOOD Midwest City, Oklahoma

At last, an interview with an author who doesn't force-feed us the "happy ending" novel. Bret Easton Ellis gave me the truth and a sense of realism in his first three novels. Censorship should be of no concern. After all, don't drug abuse, violence, rape, murder, and the aimless wandering of the twentysomethings exist? I keep reading Ellis because I know I won't get a perfect, happy, Danielle Steel version of my generation. The Rules of Attraction is a perfect depiction of what college kids are dealing with now. Thanks for the new novel, Bret.

JENNIFER KURELLA Clearwater, Florida

To say that I simply adore Bret Easton Ellis would be the biggest understatement I could ever make in my life. Mr. Ellis is a personal god to me. Less than Zero has made an indelible mark on my being. I have read it at least a hundred times, and when the movie version came out I was shattered. I literally cried hysterically when I saw the travesty that took place on film, Mr. Ellis is a literary genius who draws people into the worlds that he creates and no one leaves these worlds untouched.

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To me, Bret Easton Ellis epitomizes truth. He is not afraid to show the way people truly are, and he chronicles their actions and feelings in his books vividly, starkly, and without apology. Mr. Ellis is a man who feels things so deeply and acutely that there can be no question in my mind that he is one of the most magnificent writers of all time.

When I was a college student in Vermont, I would drive down to the Bennington campus and pay homage to the man who had brought so much into my life. I felt that he understood me perfectly and I secretly hoped that he would be there for some odd reason on the day that I was so that I could thank him for his words. Being a 21-year-old writer myself, I hope to meet Mr. Ellis one day, but I hope to have better luck in conversing with him than I did with Donna Tartt when I met her at a reading she gave in Northampton, Massachusetts. I was so in awe of the fact that she and Mr. Ellis were friends that I was struck mute as she spoke to me. Finally, I found my voice and gushed about how much I adored Mr. Ellis and how I thought her book was fabulous. She was the sweetest person, but my embarrassment over the situation has not diminished in the two years since I met her. I hope to have better luck with Mr. Ellis one day. I will always carry a piece of him with me wherever I go.

JANINE WILKINS Watkins Glen, New York

In Sol We Trust

Unfortunately the otherwise riveting article "Love and Obsession" [by Linda Wolfe, August], about the bizarre behavior of New York's top judge, ended with the words "mental illness." Those should have been the first words.

His madness has a name, which went unmentioned in the article—Judge Sol Wachtler has been diagnosed as a manic-depressive. This disorder affects about 1 percent of the population. Two of the four presidents depicted on Mount Rushmore, Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, were likewise afflicted. So too were Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf.

A brilliant jurist, Judge Wachtler has added much to the development of the common law in this country. I hope when the scales of justice hold him in the balance, he will be found to be not depraved but, rather, ill.

CARL BROWN Louisville, Kentucky

That Hamilton Man

George and Alana Hamilton ["George and Alana," by George Kalogerakis, August] are like Zsa Zsa Gabor, famous only for being famous. They have enjoyed more than their 15 minutes.

COLLEEN WHALEN Arlington, Virginia

George Hamilton has been my favorite actor/movie star since Where the Boys Are, and I say this without smirking or blushing. He plays Hollywood to the hilt.

Now, why did you people not mention Zorro, The Gay Blade, his tour de force?

SISSY WHITE New Orleans, Louisiana

Worth the Risko

I want to congratulate Risko for his illustration of the female anchors ["Kiss of the Anchorwomen," by Lloyd Grove, August]. It is incredible!

A. D. McCAFFERTY St. Petersburg, Florida

Letters to the editor should be sent with the writer's name, address, and daytime phone number to: The Editor, Vanity Fair, 350 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10017. Address electronic mail to vfmail@vf.com. The letters chosen for publication may be edited for length and clarity.