Lucky Stripe

Be the doll you want to see in the world

Last year, I got a bee in my bonnet that I needed PICTURES OF MYSELF TAKEN. Why? Because life was out of control, and I thought it might be nice to freeze my physical image in space and time. Something exciting and freeing, that would make me see myself in a new way. Like many of my impulses, I did nothing about it. And then my sister gifted me a session at the JCPenney portrait studio for Christmas.

I told my sister that part of her gift needed to be art directing the photo, as I had no interest in exercising agency over my image, one of the many reasons I will never be Lady Gaga (others: not Italian, don’t love the feel of spandex). She agreed and landed on: me dressing up like and posing with one of my iconic Gene Dolls™.

For those of you unfamiliar with Gene Dolls™…well, where to begin? They’re like Barbies but more beautiful, and they come with nylons and their backstory is “Old Timey Movie Star.” I collected them throughout my childhood teen years (I have always been cool). A few years ago found one I didn’t have at a thrift store in Idylwild—“Lucky Stripe” Gene is dressed for a weekend in Palm Springs, away from the hustle and bustle of Hollywood! As luck would have it, I own several wardrobe items that are quite complimentary to Lucky Stripe, and so we trudged to JCPenney on a gloomy Saturday.

It was pouring rain, and the Galleria mall was definitely popping off. JCPenney takes up some primo mall real estate (an honor it shares with Target and the food court) and walking through it feels like time travel. The mall has become quaint, a nod to a pre-internet lifestyle. The nostalgia also may stem from the fact that the absolutely atrocious clothes of my middle school years are back in style. It felt like time travel.

We wandered around aimlessly looking for the portrait studio until a salesperson directed us to a distant corner, back near where we started. We walked past the salon (JCPenney has a salon) and a bleak returns center until we spotted consistent flashing in our peripheral vision. And there, tucked into a humble corner, was the portrait studio.

The studio itself is a glass-walled space in which you can see whatever is currently in session, which feels a bit sadistic for the camera-shy. Luckily, the current portrait subjects were infants, arranged on a sliver of shaggy carpet. They were being photographed aerially, attention-garnering coos coming from parent and photographer.

Upon checking in we were informed that it would be about a forty-minute wait, which was in keeping with some of the damning Yelp reviews I had read about the JCPenney Portrait Studio. We were behind a family in their Sunday best (the son, about four, wore a powder blue tuxedo with shorts) and a single man in a white button-down in search of a business headshot. There was also an unexplained teenage boy reading a book who didn’t seem affiliated with anyone.

We made the bad decision to kill time before our shoot at the Dunkin’ Donuts in the food court, and I can safely say that a mall Dunkin’ in Southern California is worse than regular Dunkin’, which is already awful. My plain glazed donut tasted like actual plastic. I still ate half of it.

We made our way back to the studio, props and costumes in tow, and prepared for the big shoot. Harmony, our photographer, wasn’t thrown by the Gene Doll™. She informed us that a couple had recently taken Christmas pictures with their Chucky doll. She turned out to be an enthusiastic creative collaborator and an expert in getting awkward people to direct the correct features towards the camera.

After fifteen minutes, our thirty-minute session was over. We waited briefly and then reviewed our digital prints. Olivia ordered a few paper versions, avoiding the wallet size because, according to Harmony, “the doll will look like a Tic Tac.”

We then ate at Din Tai Fung, which is a famous dumpling institution. It was extremely crowded despite the fact that it was actively flooding.

And here’s the result of Harmony, Olivia, and my efforts:

My physical image, frozen in space and time, like a doll.