A former colleague once told me about when she and a friend, sometime in the seventies, had talked heatedly about the stars of the time, in the manner of teenagers. Her mother had been listening to the conversation, with increasing confusion. “But tell me,” she said at last, “what is this Bianca Jagger really doing?” Bianca Jagger is naturally mentioned in “Down the Drain”, the memoir of that Julia Fox. If my colleague’s mother had been surprised by Bianca’s fame, she would probably have been drooling over Julia. According to the blurb on her own book, Fox is famous for a small role in the movie “Uncut Gems” and for starting the trend of bleached eyebrows and exaggerated eye shadow. NEW FAME: Rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, was in a short-lived relationship with Fox that made her a household name in the tabloid press. In her memoirs, she simply calls him “the artist”. Photo: AFP She was also in a relationship with the artist Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, for five minutes. Okay, then, it was about two months. But still. What is it that allows Fox not only to publish his memoirs at the age of 33, but also to be interviewed about the book in “The New Yorker”? It could, of course, have something to do with the outfits. For a number of years, Fox has appeared at various events dressed in more or less the most sensational and wildly inappropriate you can imagine. At an event for Room to Grow, a charity that provides baby equipment for poor parents? Fox comes in a “dress” that is shaped like a kind of bow tie that almost, but not quite, covers her lower abdomen. At the launch for supermodel Naomi Campbell’s new clothing collection? Fox comes in a “dress” that is shaped like a kind of chain that almost, but not quite, covers her tits and lower abdomen. And so on. DRESSED FOR THE CAMERAS: Julia Fox at an event for the charity Room to Grown, which helps disadvantaged families with children. Photo: Shutterstock editorial Given this, it seemed most likely that her memoir would be like her outfits: Self-centered, attention-seeking. The strange thing, it turns out, is that “Down the Drain” is self-centered, attention-seeking – and quite fun. “Fun” may seem like an out-of-place word, it must be said. For Fox describes a downright terrible childhood. The parents neglect her when they are not directly violent. The mother sticks. The father locks her in the children’s room so that he can go to work, without access to the bathroom. Julia notices early on that her parents are arguing about money. She interprets the situation to mean that poverty is the reason they are unhappy, and decides to become rich. She steals like a raven from childhood, and builds up an incipient fortune under the bed. When she wants a computer to chat with her friends, and her father says they can’t afford it, she pulls out the box full of money. The father sighs, says, “I don’t even want to know what this is,” and buys the computer. PARK AVENUE: Fox grew up with little money, but near the rich neighborhoods of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and could always compare herself to the girls of Park Avenue. Photo: AFP Thus begins a saga in which Fox is wandering, often drunk, often drunk, and linked to a flicker of controlling and violent men. She makes a living working as a dominatrix when she is eighteen and doing homework between meetings with clients. She gets a sugar daddy to get her a Mercedes and an apartment in SoHo and has been through three life-threatening overdoses. Overdoses also claim the lives of her friends, if they are not hospitalized or take their own lives. On top of it all, Fox comes across as strange, but liberatingly unsentimental. It will be the reader who has to remind himself that she is in many ways a victim, even though she does not want to be. And although her attention always seems to be directed a maximum of fifty centimeters in front of her own nose, she manages to be a funny and sharp observer. Like so many good storytellers, she also presumably embellishes her story a little. On the internet, there are plenty of people who have pointed out details in the book that cannot possibly be correct. But they’re there, anyway, and they make a number out of arresting Fox’s retelling of his own life. That alone says something about the fact that she has, after all, achieved something. She has become someone that people want to talk about. To which they are not indifferent. STUNNING: The eye-catching outfits of Fox can be read as a kind of meta-commentary on the red carpet, here from the party to celebrate the TV series “The Idol” during this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Photo: AP And Ye? He is only referred to as “the artist”, yet another controlling man in Fox’s life. He wants to control every detail of their relationship, how she dresses, how they describe their relationship outwardly. When the relationship does not last, according to Fox herself, it means that she no longer wants to be an admiring decoration for insecure men. He’s the one with the talent and the money. But she can use him, and the others she meets, to create a story that people want to hear. In this way, “Down the Drain” is almost reminiscent of one of the 18th-century picaresque novels. The picares novel is seen as a genre of its own, a story about a cunning hero or heroine who travels from place to place, who gets into trouble again and again, but who gets out of them all together. Often the stories have a satirical purpose. Society does not always look so good through the eyes of the action-oriented hero. The world isn’t looking too good in “Down the Drain” either. Humans are vain, uncontrolled, lovesick, slaves to their lusts. There is a satirical comment in this as well. Also Fox’s outfit can actually be read satirically. They are simply so elaborately grassy that they appear as a kind of metacommentary, an ironic middle finger to the entire red carpet industry from a woman who has a couple of art exhibitions behind her. THE TALK: In 2019, Julia Fox had a hit with the film “Uncut Gems”, in which Adam Sandler played the lead role. Photo: Alamy Stock Photo Naturally, they too have her own life as a starting point. Fox has managed to become famous, or infamous, by doing more or less what the glamor models did in their day. At the same time, she has preserved an artistic vibe by being associated with interesting people, such as “Uncut Gems” creator Josh Safdie, and by flirting with the ugly at least as much as the pretty. There have always been people who have been famous for being famous. It-girls, socialites and glamor models have come from very different starting points and managed to turn the spotlight on themselves for a few years, a few perhaps longer than that. ALSO FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS: Bianca Perez Morena de Macias became world famous when she married Mick Jagger in 1971. Photo: Ap But they are perhaps more visible now than before. The public is filled to the brim with influencers and YouTubers. And most reality shows now rely on a bunch of celebrity contestants, who cook and go on trips until no one remembers what they were famous for in the first place. It is not certain that Julia Fox will be remembered either. But now, when everyone is looking at her for a while, she has a story to tell, which is shameless and quite fascinating and which says something about the kind of shakiness that characterizes our time. It might not impress my colleague’s mother, but it’s something.
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There have always been people who have been famous for being famous. – Speech
