Sex, drugs and damaged souls: 'Damaged Beauty, Joey Superstar'

This time last month Margaret Gardiner's new book Damaged Beauty, Joey Superstar entered the Exclusive Books bestseller list just two weeks after its launch at a Pretoria event, at which Gardiner introduced South Africa to her titular and titillating character, an international model named Josaphina Brinkley (Joey) who's life is unravelling faster than a snagged stocking.

Gardiner, who jetted in from her base in Los Angeles, was at pains to point out that Joey is not based on her own life, but is an amalgamation of people encountered by the previous Miss Universe, now journalist and author. If you read the book, you'll get why Gardiner wants there to be no confusion about whether Joey's life and her own overlap; Joey isn't the most likeable character. She's impetuous, impulsive, carnal, selfish, emotionally immature and gorgeous — but the last characteristic is the only one Gardiner and her character have in common. Joey's life is a mess, she's deeply unhappy and has no idea how to behave in ways that will ameliorate her circumstances. Gardiner, on the other hand, seems to me when I meet her after years of e-mail correspondence, to have her life firmly under control. 

Damaged Beauty, Joey Superstar is one part of a trilogy of books that focus on the modelling industry. “The other two are ready to be published,” she says. “The protagonist in each book is a damaged beauty, a good girl who's nice but gets damaged and ends up learning how to fight back. Joey was intended to be a wild, sexy small character, but the more I wrote, I realised she demanded her own book.

Damaged Beauty doesn't have a reliable narrator. You get the point of view of the person who's focused on in each chapter. “The story has three levels,” says Gardiner. “What the characters are doing, what Joey thinks they're doing, and her perspective, which is sometimes warped. I constructed the book like a puzzle so that every scene makes the picture clearer. You have to piece the puzzle together to understand the psychology of the characters.”

Gardiner says she initially wanted to write a light, Devil Wears Prada kind of book but as she started writing, complex tales started pouring out of her. “I was 16 years old when I first went to Paris, uninitiated. I'd never been away from home [Cape Town]. I'd never been on a plane. I saw so much so quickly. When got to Paris, the chaperone the agents had promised didn't materialise. I used the idea of this experience in one of the three books where the character is like a fish out of water.”

Her inspiration for writing the books came after spending years in the glamour industry. “The stories were in me; they just came up. I’ve been exposed to a lot of things I’ve kept buried,” she says. “Sometimes these experiences get regurgitated and I write them down, throw them into a bundle and at some point they come together. I didn’t have a set plot. Instead, I listened to the characters. What came out was that women are taught to be pleasers. We don't speak up for ourselves, not because we can't, but because society has pressured us to question ourselves. We weren't taught to be strong. I understood that the characters were dealing with emotional, psychological self-doubt and as women, we're expected to make people happy. If you’re a lady, that's what you do.”

The reader is introduced to the main character in a crisis. Joey's husband, an Italian aristocrat, wants to divorce her, he won't have sex with her and he has a string of lookalike Joeys lined up. Joey has a mental breakdown and is put into a sanatorium called The House of Rest. While she's there she experiences the effect of psychology for the first time as Dr Brand starts to unpick the threads of her life. When she goes back into the world she knows she reverts to her unhealthy, toxic behaviour, but because of her time in The House of Rest she reframes her motivations, becomes aware of her behaviour and tries to change it. As the barriers start to crumble, we see who Joey used to be, who she could be and why she does what she does. She changes, and the people around her reveal who they really are. “The book is about revelations,” says Gardiner. “The reader is confronted with behaviour they wouldn’t support. Then you start to understand the character and perhaps forgive her.”

Gardiner hopes the book starts conversations. “As a model, I had positive experiences. For me, the modelling world wasn’t competitive; we supported each other. It’s when I got into the real world as a journalist that I understood the other side — for some men, women are interchangeable, just there to fulfil a need.”

But Gardiner doesn't believe that men and women have different sexual appetites. “Joey has sex ‘like a man’: if she’s bored, rather than masturbate, she’ll find sex. She does damage to herself, has sex not for closeness but because she’s having troubles. There are roles that have been foisted on males and females by society that don't reflect our real natures.

“Sex is also about the ‘power funnel’ — the higher up, the more privileged you are (in any sense), the more potential you have for influence, because people want things from you. People make exchanges and transactions according to their levels of power in society. Everyone gives a little to get a little. When you deal with different power bases, like a billionaire with contacts and a 19-year-old model, the power exchange is that she’s fresh and beautiful and he wants that in exchange for money and access. What's the negotiation going to be? How much of herself does she give away to access what he has? These are the questions the character must deal with. But as we know, the more you give away your soul, the more you need drugs and alcohol to cope with the repercussions.”

Gardiner wants readers to take a message from her book. “At every stage in life people ask you to do things you’re not comfortable with. It’s OK to say ‘no’, to have personal boundaries. How often do we set boundaries and give them away? When you start saying no, the dynamics change.”

In the end, is Joey a victim? “No, she doesn't think, ‘poor me'. In fact, what she tells herself is, ‘this is life'. She thinks it’s normal,” says Gardiner. “I don't like people who play the victim, it's manipulative. In the beginning she goes through difficult things and reacts badly to them. You don't like her: she's explosive, has knee-jerk reactions and can’t control her emotions. Her husband doesn't care for her, he cheats on her, replaces her with other women. The power dynamic is skewed — she's a victim of that, but in the arc of a story, she doesn’t see herself that way.”

Gardiner is aware most readers won't like her character. “They get irritated with her and want me to get in there and tell her what to do. Of course, she does things that are unacceptable... especially with regards to her sexuality. Some people are shocked — it was difficult knowing how far to go, what to take out and what to leave in. People have different ideas about what’s acceptable for a woman. Are people with bad coping mechanisms victims? Are people with addictions victims? You become a victim of your own bad decisions and your own negative experiences. She didn’t have any healthy role models and she takes the wrong paths, so every decision is the wrong decision. It’s heartbreaking but illuminating, because Joey gives you permission to go to emotional places you wouldn't usually go to.”

A big challenge for Gardiner was figuring out what would be too much for the reader to believe. “I know these women exist,” says Gardiner. “I worked with them. I understand why they act like they do. But if I put everything into the book people would say it's too much. I arrived in New York with three labels at the height of the women’s movement: the most beautiful woman in the universe, stupid because I took part in pageants, and I was a white South African. The job was defined by labels and power funnels, perceptions and preconceived notions and I began to understand that. Initially, I felt inhibited about writing the story because I feared readers would think that Joey is me — her behaviour is outrageous even though it’s what the girls in the industry did at that time… but it’s not me.”