Spring has officially sprung, the foliage shifting from barren to blooming; skies, from gray to blue, and temperatures, from chilling to thrilling. Yet nature holds no exclusive on transformation. It’s everywhere right now – from fashion to politics to pharmaceuticals.
It can be an unsettling notion – the thunderbolt of change. The fashion-obsessed felt it deeply this past week, unleashing gasps of dismay up to the heavens at the news of two seismic shifts: the parting of ways between Pierpaolo Piccioli and Valentino, and the impending retirement of Belgian master Dries Van Noten. For more than a decade, Piccioli’s color-drenched elegance has kept the house of Valentino at the pinnacle of high fashion. Van Noten’s oeuvre is, perhaps, more niche. Long a master of insider cool, his cultishly beloved work is the go-to choice of legions of uber-chic adult women (read: not necessarily young, and of various body types) as well as girls and boys in the know who offer a wry, appreciative “Dries!” when they see it in the wild. It’s an uncertain sartorial future without these two. What will replace Pierpaolo’s dramatic, flamboyant flou? And sans Dries, from whom might one procure a say-something coat or wardrobe-staple shirtdress-y schmatta?
Change can be painful, sure, but taking on new forms isn’t exactly new. “In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas corpora.” If that snippet doesn’t trigger a traumatic flashback to being yelled at by a stern Latin teacher, congratulations, you were cool in high school.* It’s the opening line to one of the biggies of the Western canon, Ovid’s Metamorphoses. “Of bodies chang’d to various forms, I sing,” Ovid writes, before singing on for almost 12,000 lines. (Let it not be said that the Roman bards couldn’t stretch a theme.) Metamorphoses looks at change from just about every angle imaginable. Order becomes chaos. Gods become animals to cavort with humans. Humans become trees (and stones, and bodies of water). Traveling salesmen become giant cockroaches (oops, right idea, different book). Transformations happen for all sorts of reasons, from lust to rage to foolishly challenging a vengeful goddess to a weaving competition. Ovid’s version of change becomes a framework for looking at the entirety of history, from creation to Julius Caesar.
Last week offered a similarly multidimensional look at transformation from another historic cultural titan whose name begins with O. Oprah Winfrey returned to prime time for the first time in three years with “Shame, Blame and the Weight Loss Revolution” on ABC. Winfrey explored the conversation around the new wonder drugs of the moment – Ozempic, Mounjaro and Wegovy. Her personal connection to the matter has made headlines everywhere, from People to Forbes.
The special attempted to reframe the dialogue around pharmaceutically assisted weight loss from celebrity-gossip hot topic – Who’s taking it? Who isn’t? – to major healthcare story with potential life-changing impact for millions of people. Just like Ovid, Oprah covered many facets. Unlike Ovid, she did so concisely, in a tidy, tightly packaged hour-long (give or take a few minutes of Eli Lilly commercials) network-primetime slot. Subtopics ranged from the once-humble Ozempic’s trajectory from unsung diabetes treatment to the buzziest prescription request in years to Winfrey’s career transition from WeightWatchers spokes-icon and shareholder to WeightWatchers share divestor. (WeightWatchers CEO Sima Sistani attended the proceedings with all of the taut, smile-for-the-cameras energy of someone who simply had to be there.) The special’s overriding message was the critical shift in framing our notion of weight loss from a willpower issue to one of medical management of a disease. To that end, an essential transformation was hinted at, but not fully explored – access. Ozempic and its ilk are currently not covered by insurance for weight-management purposes, a roadblock to access for many. And Oprah made no mention of the celebrity transformations we’ve witnessed via social media – those of countless Hollywood types who have whittled from already-svelte to Ozempic-skinny seemingly overnight. But, hey, some changes take longer than others.
One of Metamorphoses’ most famous tales centers on a celibate creative type who “In sculpture exercis'd his happy Skill.” Pygmalion’s talents are so great that he crafts a marble maiden with whom no flesh-and-blood woman can compare. He falls in love with his creation and is rewarded for his artistic self-regard by Venus herself, who brings the statue to life as a woman named Galatea. Crafting the “perfect woman” – challenging (and obnoxious) enough when the raw material is a block of stone; more complicated when you’re starting with a real human being. George Bernard Shaw tackled that notion in his 1913 play Pygmalion. Henry Higgins, a stuffy linguist, meets “common flower girl” Eliza Doolittle, and the two embark upon a six-month-long Extreme Makeover: Phonetics Edition. A war of wills ensues, as Eliza proves a quick temper, if not always a quick study. In an early attempt to pass for higher society, she nails the diction but not the content, her conversational contributions unconventional, to say the least. Still, one young man finds himself besotted with her. However, when he asks if she plans to walk home, she growls back, “Walk? Not bloody likely!” – the exclamation “bloody” a scandalous rejoinder, at least for 1913 audiences who had not heard it on stage before. Henry, for his part, remains something of a jerk throughout the whole process, constantly castigating a desperate-for-approval Eliza for not living up to his refined standards. When she bristles at his coarse treatment, he piles on the cruelty: “You’re an ungrateful wicked girl. This is my return for offering to take you out of the gutter and dress you beautifully and make a lady of you.” What a prince.
Makeovers have consequences for flower girls and political animals alike. Just ask South Dakota governor, and MAGA starlet, Kristi Noem. Madame Governor, whose telegenic vibe has been a well-known quantity for some time, recently debuted a new smile on social media. Her pristine pearly whites, necessitated by a years-old bike accident, came from the dental team at Smile Texas. In her testimonial, Noem heaped praise on the Smile Texas crew, perhaps too heavily. Her Instagram revelry sparked plenty of consternation in the comments – “Wtf is this a GD commercial?! I mean seriously this is a dumb thing to post,” wrote one concerned citizen – and has prompted a lawsuit from consumer advocacy group Travelers United.
Noem’s dental improvements appear to be part of a protracted makeover project, detailed by Vanessa Friedman in The New York Times last week. For those primarily familiar with Noem’s chicly mussed tresses from her “South Dakota Is Hiring” ad campaign, photos of her bubble-bob bouffant of yore come as a bit of a shock. In Friedman’s telling, Noem’s image renewal is designed to appeal to an audience of one – who else – Donald J. Trump. If so, her transformation from fairly standard governmental gal to rightwing glamazon is something of a one-woman GO-Pygmalion act, featuring the governor as both Eliza and Henry. The image rehab has worked in Noem’s favor (pending lawsuits aside). She has established herself as one of the firebrand faces of her party, and, if rumors are to be believed, worked her way onto Trump’s VP shortlist. Ideological talking points are all well and good, but gleaming new chompers and a fresh set of beach waves can give you the extra boost to go from small-state politico to national persona.
Sometimes external transformations leave space for real-deal self-actualization. At least there is for Eliza Dolittle. After a brief disappearance, she reenters Henry’s life, every bit the proper lady. They spar once again, and she threatens to strike out on her own by teaching phonetics, perhaps even bringing her services to one of his professional rivals. Henry has lost control of his creation, and it enrages him and turns him on in equal measure. “You damned impudent slut, you!” he spits, before admitting, “I said I’d make a woman of you; and I have. I like you like this.”
Pygmalion spawned a more famous musical adaptation, which spawned an even more famous big-screen version, 1964’s Audrey Hepburn Rex Harrison team-up, My Fair Lady. The movie ends on a sweet note. Harrison croons, “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face,” and Hepburn returns to him right before the credits roll. Shaw indulged in no such schmaltz, having resisted ample pressure to give his play an unambiguously happy ending. Instead, Pygmalion concludes with Galatea fully alive and wholly ungovernable. Henry, now fully besotted, demands Eliza go pick up a new pair of gloves and a tie for him. “You can choose the color,” he condescends. Instead of obliging, Eliza storms off with a disdainful, “Buy them yourself.” As the curtain drops, Henry remains convinced that she’s off to run his errands, but one senses that Professor Higgins will have to buy the “reindeer gloves” himself.
It’s an uncertain note on which to end. But transformations, by definition, involve uncertainty. Will Oprah’s drive to change the way we look at weight loss in America bear fruit? Will Kristi Noem ascend to Number Two in the line of succession? Will Dries the brand thrive without Dries the man? Who can say? Unsettling stuff, living in moments of change. But, hopeful stuff, too – at least according to the poet himself, Ovid, who embraced a world of uncertainty: “Omnia mutantur, nihil interit.” “Everything changes, nothing dies.”
*Mme. Taran, I am forever grateful – and fearful.