Doll Parts by Amanda Lepore; Regan Arts Press, $39.99
She sings and dances, she dazzles and glistens with glitter and glam. She's the ultimate celebutante, a fixture of New York City gay nightlife and international venues from Austria to Australia. She is Amanda Lepore, and for those not familiar with her life as a platinum blond, socialite transgender model and performer, the author's art, opinions, her buxom, bodacious body, and everything in-between are exposed in Doll Parts, a new, exquisite pictorial memoir that will leave no doubt about her legacy or her outspokenness. Lepore's glossy memoir spans a life from early confusion to a reawakening that led her to doll-like, body-enhancing plastic surgeries and the emergence of the woman known as Amanda.
At 49, she boasts of having "the most expensive body on Earth," yet her beginnings were humble. She was born Armand Lepore in 1967 into a suburban New Jersey family, a chemical engineer father and a mother who was elegant and sophisticated in looks and demeanor. Lepore became drawn to the feminine aspects of life: Barbie dolls, long, luxurious blond hair, a sexy style of carrying oneself across a room, and the ways a slinky seductress can captivate a man's attention. While this predilection infuriated her father, Lepore refused to deny her yearnings as she doted over her mother, who suffered with paranoid schizophrenia. Though her parents eventually separated, Lepore marched on with her own agenda, including a shocking sex-change operation at the tender age of 17 in Yonkers, NY. Clearly, this is a woman who knew what she wanted right from the beginning.
The book, ghostwritten by Thomas Flannery, Jr., is more than a retread of the author's history. There are tips on everything from makeup application to style choices, hair bleaching, nails, the rules of femininity, how she satisfies men visually and sexually, and, directed at readers who may be embarking on their own gender transformation, the ways and means of female hormones.
Lepore is honest about her failed teenage marriage, her abandonment of that marriage, and her arrival in Manhattan, where she began working as a dominatrix at an S&M club, The Key. She had the strength and perseverance required to overcome her critics and conquer the see-and-be-seen party scenes of 1990s NYC. She is credited with fueling the print campaigns for M.A.C. cosmetics, Armani Jeans, and high-fashion photographers like David LaChapelle and Steven Klein. Not liking to be out of control of how she looks or behaves, Lepore rarely drinks alcohol, and completely abstains from drugs.
Intimate details include Amanda's 38-22-38 measurements, standing at a diminutive 5'2", and a series of grueling cosmetic enhancements ranging from eye surgery, nose and breast augmentations, forehead lift, and lip enlargements to achievement of an hourglass figure through her diminished waistline. This meant Lepore had to endure broken bottom ribs, performed in a Mexican clinic. She doubts she will ever remarry, but she's on Tinder and dates often.
Readers who invest in this lavish book should come for the words but stay glued to the page for the parade of flawlessly styled, posed, and flesh-revealing photographs, proving that the hyper-feminine Lepore (who has been called part Jayne Mansfield, part Jessica Rabbit) is a connoisseur of skintight fashion, glamour, makeup, and attention-attracting attitude. She proves herself a flashy, fearless, cat-like transsexual chanteuse with this must-have coffee-table memoir resonant for its story, and memorable for its provocative imagery.