Victor Victoria

By Margaret Hicks in Arts & Entertainment on Jan 18, 2007 6:04PM

We love stories of people donning an outfit and going into the world undercover. Remember when Tyra put on a fat suit? Maybe Tyra should put on a “normal person” suit and see what that’s like? Just an idea.

Piggybacking off of John Howard Griffin and more recently, Barbara Ehrenreich, former Los Angeles Times columnist, Norah Vincent, left her job and went undercover as a man for a year and a half.

For her book, Self Made Man, Vincent stuffed herself into sports-bras, glued stray hairs to her face, pumped up her body and worked with a vocal coach to take care of that ladies lilt that drive men crazy. Vincent or “Ned” goes to strip clubs, joins a bowling league and goes to work in an overly masculine sales office.

The assumption would be that the book would be a diatribe on the mistreatment of women and the misogyny of men, but according to reviews, Vincent goes way past that and feels the emotion and friendship of the men she meets.

We can’t get enough of books like these, there’s something about learning about a whole new world from someone who’s usually on the other side. It’s such a simple idea and such a good one. We’re thinking we might go undercover too, but we want to do it as a famous, rich socialite. We already know what it’s like to live like a poor soul, now we want to see what it’s like as a rich, poor soul.

You can see Norah Vincent on Friday, Jan. 19th at 7:30 p.m. at Women & Children First, 5233 N. Clark Street.