A friend recently told me she had seen a woman in Paris who looked so much like me she did a doubletake. I enjoyed the image—maybe the woman was headed for wine with a friend at a café along the Seine. Meanwhile, here I am, waiting for the snow to get plowed from our driveway so I can go out to buy eggs for the kolaches Joe is making.
It’s likely we all have at least one doppelganger, or body double, out there amidst the 7 billion people in our planetary neighborhood. Would we recognize our twin if we met her? We’d probably at least take notice.
In the eighties, several students told me I reminded them of the actress Joanne Woodward. By the late nineties, it was Bea Arthur, as Dorothy Zbornak on The Golden Girls. A colleague once said I resembled Glenn Close. And when we watched The Sopranos, Joe said I reminded him of Lorraine Bracco, who played Dr. Melfi, Tony’s psychiatrist.
What do all these actors have in common? They’re white women born long enough ago they learned World War II as a current event. Their resemblance to me hinges on whatever the beholder has in their eye. If you are looking for clues as to what I look like, these should help not at all.
Linking the familiar to the unfamiliar helps us make sense of new people and things. We got the phrase “waves of grass” when settlers accustomed to the sea moved to the prairies of the Midwest. It’s an apt description. Those who’d never seen the prairie could envision it better if they imagined it moving like the waves they saw at home.
It’s the same with people—we use pattern recognition to zoom in on similarities in the face, coloring, shape, voice, and mannerisms between people we don't know and those we do. It’s a bit of a social simile. We can relax around those who remind us of others—we know what to expect. I think new students saw the Joanne Woodward resemblance as a way of knowing they could trust me. With Bea Arthur, maybe it was because I made them laugh with the same brusque manner. I assume my colleague admired Glenn Close, and Joe found Lorraine Bracco appealing.
This causes a bit of an identity crisis for me. I watch Bea Arthur in The Golden Girls and I’m not sure whether I am flattered or appalled at the resemblance. I do remember wearing those oversized clothes, and it’s hard to convince myself they were flattering. I am a tall woman of Eastern European descent and I tend to speak my mind, so there’s that. Does it matter to who I actually am, whoever that might be? Am I overthinking this? Of course. Maybe my doppelgänger does that too.
When Joe and I were first married, I visited the dry cleaners almost weekly. The staff there insisted I looked exactly like another customer. They didn't want to give me her name, and we never met, so I don't know who it was or whether I would agree with the resemblance. But they said we could be twins, or at least sisters. A few years later I started shopping at an upscale resale clothing store and the same thing happened. The staff said I looked just like a woman who often brought clothes in to sell. Turns out she was my same size, and her clothes looked great on me. The staff would direct me to her latest and I would usually buy them all. It was like I had a ghostly personal shopper.
The shop has since closed and who knows what happened to the woman with great taste who could literally walk in my shoes. Or, more likely, me in hers. Maybe she’s still out there, sitting next to me at the restaurant or standing behind me in the grocery line. I might compliment her on her jacket, thinking it would look good on me, and she might say thanks and we’d move on, none the wiser. Maybe one of use would say to our companions, “She reminds me a little bit of Bea Arthur.
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