DOUBLEDEVITO

Danny DeVito Loves Our Body

Unpeel your metaphorical wetsuit

This morning I was swimming with Heidi Klum. Not The Heidi Klum. A Heidi Klum. We all have famous lookalikes. You might not enjoy who your famous lookalike is, but we’ve all got one.

Mine may look more like an exhausted housewife who became a murderer on Law and Order than a sexy Desperate Housewife in a cul de sac, but we all play a role.

I can’t tell you how many times I have flinched when someone said to me, you look identical to someone I know. I always fear that someone has fourteen ears and jowls hanging off their hooved foot. When I find out my lookalike is Charlize Theron, I am pleasantly surprised. It’s never been Charlize Theron.

Famous people have the same pastime. They’re always trying to figure out which unfamous person they look like. Once JLO showed up at my door. I only opened it a crack because I thought she was an impersonator looking for an audience.

When she said, “I heard you’re my look alike,” I recognized her voice and cracked the door wide open. She screamed and called her plastic surgeon.

It’s way harder for famous people to find their lookalikes because there are so many more of us to choose from. We only need to pick from like twenty famous people. They have to pick out their twins from billions of nonfamous people.

On the other hand, they have staff to seek out their doppelgangers. You’d think that job would be temporary — that as soon as the lookalike was found the job would end. You’d be wrong.

Their looks are always changing. Take Nicole Kindman. She used to be a curly-haired redhead woman. Now she’s the Olson Twins.

This brings me back to the article I wrote last week about Heidi Klum loving her body. I assumed she loved her body. She didn’t tell me, but who doesn’t think Victoria’s Secret models revel in their beauty?

Who hasn’t wondered how different their own life would be if they looked more like Heidi Klum and less like Martin Short?

Now, back to my personal experience of swimming with Heidi Klum.

Heidi Klum’s doppelganger is in my swim group. She’s an amazing swimmer. She’s a great person. She smiles easily. She has that look in her eye like she’d tell you there was toilet paper on your shoe.

Her husband is the male equivalent of Heidi Klum. Hunk Klumo or something. From the outside, you’d assume these are people who keep the lights all the way up when they look in the full-size mirror.

Today when Heidi Klum was removing her wetsuit, I noticed the new guy who had just joined our group. As soon as Heidi Klum started to unpeel, his head jolted in her direction — like his neck was alerting him something attractive was about to happen.

Removing sweatsuits is both sexy and awkward looking. If you‘re curious about the body underneath, it’s a slow roll, an aquatic strip show. If you don’t want to watch someone struggling to remove rubber while dislocating their joints, it can’t end quickly enough.

You could tell the new guy was interested in what was happening with Heidi Klum’s body beneath her seal skin. She was chatting away about a race in Florida called the Frog something.

Everyone was telling Heidi Klum how brave she was and Heidi Klum, as usual, shrugged like swimming miles in a shark-infested ocean was as uncomplicated as walking into a diner and ordering a black coffee in 1974.

As she unpeeled, I noticed Heidi Klum was wearing a bikini beneath her wetsuit. The new guy’s eyes dropped anchor in her direction.

One of the other swimmers said, “It looks so easy when you take your wetsuit off.”

Heidi Klum said, “It’s easy when you’re shaped like a boy.”

I was taken back. I am embarrassed to say, I assumed she thought her body was perfect. She was the spitting image of the photo women hand to their plastic surgeons. She was why people skipped dessert and ate kale. I looked at Heidi Klum’s face to see if she was being sincere about her self-loathing.

She was frowning while grabbing her small hips, thin legs, and narrow shoulders as if to show us their inferiority. Talk about a revelation. I’m ashamed to say I liked Heidi Klum better once I realized she was one of us —why did I ever think she wasn’t?

Yesterday afternoon Danny DeVito came by. He asked me, “Are you my Doppelganger?” I shrugged. JLo had wounded me. I was hesitant to be hurt again. Danny DeVito asked me to remove my outer clothing so we could compare and contrast our bodies.

We jumped and spun around in front of my ballet mirror for hours — turning to compare our butts, our knees, our bellies, our ankles, our boobs, our chins, our clavicle, our cheekbones.

Finally exhausted and sweaty, Danny DeVito fell into me for a hug. He smiled and said, “We’re not so bad, are we.” Danny DeVito loves his body and we’re identical twins. JLO didn’t know what she had.

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