Jeanne In A Green Room

Interviewing Jeanne on The Shaun Proulx Show, centre. Also pictured: Barbara Budd and Sheila McCarthy / Image: Shaun Proulx Media

This morning I was out the door early for an appearance on Canada AM and then I shot a segment on CTV Express to air later. I was interviewed about my recent marriage to Eddie vis a vis the emergence of gay wedding shows, one of which I hosted yesterday afternoon.

Between interviews I waited in the green room, when who should come in to wait for her segment but CTV’s Jeanne Beker. Most famous as the long-time host of Fashion Television, I’ve met and interviewed Beker a couple of times so it was fun to see her.  It’s Fashion Week here in Toronto; Beker was in to chat on the national morning show about it.

Jeanne’s a personal hero and I’ve told her as much in the past. I am inspired by her tenacity, the way she grabs life by the balls. I once asked her about her delicious career and what the driving force was within her (besides being a jet-set TV host she’s written books, edited magazines, has launched two clothing lines, raised children and volunteers at many a fundraiser). Jeanne explained:

“It has all been such a fantasy, I really do feel like pinching myself every minute.  I have met so many of my idols.  Did I ever think I would meet Paul McCartney or Keith Richards; I grew up with posters of them over my bed.  Or last week, I was in Venice with Karl Lagerfeld and then I hopped over to Vienna for that great Life Ball.  I’m jet-setting, I’m living the life.

I’m gonna get all schmaltzy: my parents were holocaust survivors.  And their lives were nipped in the bud.  They were young teenagers with all kinds of hopes and dreams and aspirations and one day their world blew up when they lost all the members of their family.  They had this really horrifying existence.  And I look at them and say ‘Boy, it really is up to me to live the kind of fantastic life that they never had a chance to even have a crack at.’”

Chatting today, I asked her if she’d seen the Alexander McQueen exhibit in NYC this summer.  I did, and actually thought of her at one point because I know from her writings how much she admired McQueen’s genius and it seemed like she had a nice connection to him.  She said she deliberately had not gone. She’d seen the dresses in their original presentation already, and felt a museum exhibit might take away from the magic of what she’d witnessed.

On my desk at the office is the coffee table book Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty. Like Jeanne, McQueen continues to inspire me. With him it’s the shocking breadth of his imagination and creativity. I keep it close as a reminder of just how expansive own my creative spirit can go. Also close by are my framed autographed photos of two other similar inspirations: Oprah and Madonna. No arguing how far those two have come and why they too serve as personal inspirations every day.

It’s important to do this, to surround yourself with that which uplifts and sparks and affirms you – whatever form that takes. Whoever you admire automatically serves as example of what you can do, they resonate for that reason, to show what heights are possible for each of us.

And so today, I appreciate that I got an unexpected extra dose, live, before the sun was even up, in a green room with the force of nature known as Jeanne.

Connect with me