An Homage to Nora Ephron

By Piper Gray





Photo: Getty Images

Nora Ephron, in 1978.

Nora Ephron was responsible for, among other things, bringing "baby fishmouth" into the national lexicon and generating many screen-name iterations of Shopgirl and NY152, but to us, her journalism pieces and other writings (she launched her career with the New York Post after lampooning the paper) sparked many years of admiration.

We make many recommendations on this site—music, lipstick, what have you—but the heartiest one we can ever force upon you, even if you're without any editorial aspirations, that we just cannot let slide, is please, familiarize yourself with Ephron's oeuvre.

Here's a selection from our nearly-spineless copy of "Wallflower at the Orgy," in which she recounts getting made over for Cosmopolitan.





I spent about five years throwing desperate hints at magazine beauty editors about my passionate desire to be made over. When it finally happened it was one of the most depressing experiences of—well, if not my of life, then certainly of that month of my life… For years I have been reading about makeovers in magazines. I would look at the new girl, made over top to bottom, and would think, 'Fantastic. That girl will never wear brown shoes with a black purse again.' What I did not realize is that when the pictures are over, the dress goes back to the wholesaler, the new hairdo goes back to the wigmaker, the new face disappears with the first night's cleansing, and you are left with two false eyelashes in the medicine chest, one tube of false-eyelash glue, and your brown purse.





YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: