All Dressed Up: The Moth Radio Hour

This episode originally aired on December 13th, 2022. Don your finest duds! This week, The Moth Radio Hour is all about clothes -- from DIY threads to silk blouses, from a prison visiting room to a runway in France. This episode is hosted by Moth producer and director Chloe Salmon. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media. Storytellers: Tween Horace Sanders creates a homemade Halloween costume. Deepa Ambekar is caught off guard by a prison's dress code for visitors. Zakiya Minifee fails to heed her mother's fashion advice. Adrienne Burris is certain that her new husband has ruined her favorite blouse. Graham Shelby joins the football team as a gentle teenager. Model Norma Jean Darden participates in a historic catwalk battle. Podcast # 795

• 0:13Speaker 00

  This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Chloe Salmon, one of the directors at The Moth. If you're tuning in for the first time, I'm pleased to meet you. If you've been here before, welcome back. In this hour, stories of clothes. To me, the perfect outfit is like the perfect song. Wedded to the moment and capable of expressing something that words alone sometimes can't quite match. My mom is a talented seamstress, and one of the many ways she showed her love was by sewing me and endless supply of dresses when I was a kid. My favorite was a swingy spaghetti strap number made of the most divine holographic pink material.

• 0:57Speaker 00

  I loved it, but was self-conscious about wearing it outside of the house because it felt like an occasion kind of dress, and I didn't often have one of those as an eight-year-old. So instead, I'd only wear it every once in a while, and soon, I outgrew it. I was reminded of the dress on a recent trip home to Kansas when I made a point of raiding the family photo albums to take some pictures back with me, and one of my mom in her twenties caught my eye. In it, she's wearing a black satin tuxedo with a hot pink cummerbund and bow tie and a black velvet bow sweeping back her hair. The event for this ensemble? A night out with her friends at their grungy neighborhood pub.

• 1:41Speaker 00

  She looked amazing, and her smile was a mile wide. Turns out, there's no need to wait and dress for an occasion if you are the occasion. Looking back, I wish I had channeled my mom's energy and worn that divine pink dress every day, because when I put it on, I felt like a star. In this hour, stories of the clothes we wear and the moments they make.

• 2:19Speaker 00

  Our first story involves a classic childhood dilemma: choosing the perfect Halloween costume. Horace H.B. Sanders told it at a Grand Slam in Detroit, where we partner with public radio station WDE2. Here's Horace, live at The Moth.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  Thank you. I was 12 years old, and I got invited to a party. This was a big deal because it was in October, and it was this young lady, Tracy. Now, Tracy is a big deal because I was going to church in my neighborhood, and she was the niece of the organist, Sister Matthews. So she would bring Tracy with her maybe twice a week. And this was a big deal for me because she was about three years older than me. She was really pretty, fine to me at 12. But I could impress her because by her only coming twice a week, only seeing me two times out the month, I could wear that one suit I had every other Sunday at church, and she figured I had a bunch of them. So Tracy is having this birthday party right around in the middle of October, so she's

• 3:25Speaker 01

  gonna make it a costume party. So all of my cousins go to church, too, and they're like, "Hey, we're all gonna go." Because I grew up on the east side, she's way on the west side, which is a big deal to me back then. My parents didn't do a lot of traveling on the west side, so, hey, it seemed like out of town to me. We got on 94, and it said, "Eat Chicago West." I thought Chicago was over that side of the river. Like, when are we ever gonna go to Chicago? It's right over there. Always in Detroit. So she's having this party, right? So I find this a costume party. I'm talking to my cousins. I'm the youngest of them. I'm like, "Hey, y'all going? Y'all gonna get a costume?" They're like, "Yeah, we gonna dress up." I'm like, "Y'all going? For real?" So I'm excited. I'm building this up in my head.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  And I'm like, "I'm not just gonna buy a costume," because every year before this, I was only Dracula. I'll be Dracula, get the little widow's peak, which I already had. My mama would emphasize it. I'd get some of those fake teeth and a black tile as a cape. And a dress shirt. It was pretty raggedy, but it was sweet when I was nine, 10, 11. But 12, I had my own eye set on one thing: I was gonna be a ninja. So I told my mom, I was like, "Look, let's check out ninja costumes." She's like, "Boy, we ain't got no money for no ninja costume." I was like, "What you mean? Come on, mama, it's a big deal. It's a party. I ain't got no money for no ninja costume." My mama had one of them things where she made you think it was different kinds of money. She was like, "You got some ninja costume money?"

• 4:51Speaker 01

  I'm like, "What is ninja costume money?" Funny to me. Okay. So I'm like, "I could do..." My daddy, he had his own business. He started his own business from the time I was born. He had his own business. I was like, "Well, fine. You wanna buy me one? I'll make one." I was like, "I'll make my own ninja costume." Now, I couldn't order it online because there wasn't none of that back in the day. I was 12. So I was like, "I'll do the next best thing." I talked to my grandma, who we all called Nanny, who was like 30 years older than everybody we knew. No matter what your age was, she was 30 years older. So I was like, "Nanny, what can I do?" She's like, "Baby, you can get this dyed and dye whatever you got."

• 5:35Speaker 01

  So I had these white pajamas set, plain pajamas set. It was like Scooby Doo or something. So, white pajamas with brown, blue Scooby Doo right here. Only thing black on it was the wrists, right here, the waist, and the ankles. So I'm like, "I'll dye it black. It'll be black." So I dyed it, right, and I'm like, "I ain't got no black hood, but I can make my own hood." So I got some black material. I didn't know I needed black thread. I got white thread, and sewed the hood. Got some black footies. So I dyed it, but the Scooby Doo was still, you could see it. And really, if we had better lighting in our house, I would've noticed it was a dark gray. It wasn't really black, so. I got my daddy's work markers, those marker lock, you know, permanent markers? So I'm like, "I'll just color this all out."

• 6:17Speaker 01

  I used about three of those permanent markers, right? So then, I make the hood. It's looking like Ultraman, if we got any old-school people in here. Big point here, totally different material. This don't match this. This all nappy. This all smooth. And we only had one family car. My brother was going out that night, and he was like, "Okay, I'll drop you off at the party." I was like, "Good. This is what you do. You got a date. Stay out as late as you can. That way, I can blame it on you that I'm coming home late." He was like, "Perfect." So I was like, "Stay out late as you can." So he takes me over there. I call my cousin before I leave, like, "Y'all gonna be there?" "Yeah, we gonna be there." So I get dropped off, right? I got my costume on. I walk in the house. Aunts and mothers and all upstairs, because the grown people upstairs. Like, "Hey." They're like, "Hey, baby, how are you?"

• 7:01Speaker 01

  And I was like, "Hey, is anybody else here?" I go downstairs. I look and see it's just Tracy and like three other people. I'm like, "Where my cousins?" So I call them on the phone, like, "Where you at?" They're like, "Our mama said we can't come." I'm like, "What you mean, y'all can't come? All I know is Tracy here." Then people start coming in, right? But nobody else is dressed up. This is October. I'm 12. We got guys coming in. Run DMC is hot. They got Levi's crease, Adidas leather jackets, Bama silk shirts, all they best going-to-school first-day clothes, right? And I'm in this ninja outfit. So I'm in the basement. I'm like, "Well..." I can't get home, you know what I'm saying?

• 7:46Speaker 01

  It's only one car my brother got. There ain't no cell phones back when I was 12, so I'm just stuck there. I was like, "Well, at least I got this hood on." I'm like, "I'll really be a ninja tonight. I'll be low-key. I'll stay away from the food, because everybody's coming over here. I'm kinda getting the corner by the washing machine or something." So then, as all the neighborhood people are coming, the west side, they're like, talking. They're like, "Well, Tracy, who is that guy? Who's that over there? Is it a guy? We can't see nothing. No part of the skin is showing, just a little ankle right here. Who is that?" And I was like, "Oh, oh, they're talking about me. This is under the hood. Oh, they're talking about me." She's like, "I don't know." And Tracy was always real aggressive. She's like, "I don't know. Let me see."

• 8:30Speaker 01

  She walks over, just snatches the hood off. "Oh, that's just Horace. My auntie made me invite him." But you don't get the bad part. Then she was like, "And what's that smell?" It was the marker. Ooh, it stinks so bad. I spent the rest of the party upstairs in the kitchen with all the grown people. And three weeks later, I still had black marker on my chest. Thank you.

• 9:10Speaker 00

  That was Horace H.B. Sanders. Born and raised in Detroit, he's a stand-up comic, a husband, and a father.

• 9:25Speaker 00

  Sometimes the clothes we wear are less about style and more about what they mean to us. Deepa Ambekar told this story in 2014 in New York City, where WNYC is a media partner of The Moth. Here's Deepa.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  So I'm walking back to the Visitor Center of federal prison. My hands are sweaty, my stomach's churning, and my heart's beating really fast. I wasn't nervous because it was the first time I was there. In fact, I've been to prisons before. I'm a public defender, so it's not uncommon for me to go to jail and visit my clients. But it was the first time I was going as a visitor, a friend, and a loved one. Seven months prior to that day, my friend, Michael, who was going to visit, was arrested for immigration violations.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  On a tip from a scorned ex-lover who had sent a letter to Homeland Security, he was picked up because 20 years earlier, he was deported, re-entered the country to be back with his two children, his wife, actually, no, his girlfriend, his several siblings and parents. He was now awaiting sentence for re-entry charges, which held a maximum sentence of 20 years of incarceration before he would be deported back to Guyana. I knew that once he was transferred to a sentencing facility, it would be sent anywhere within the US, so it was the last time I'd be able to see him.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  I had waited seven months to finally get on his visitors list, and I was going to have my last hour to say goodbye to him. I got to the front area. The officer turned her attention to me, and she shoved some papers at me. She asked for my ID. She takes two seconds, she looks at me, and she's like, "Ma'am, you can't wear that outerwear in there." And I was like, "What?" I mean, I was dressed in a cardigan with a long maxi summer dress, and I was like, "But ma'am, this isn't outerwear, it's innerwear. In fact, I'm wearing it inside here in case it's a little over-air-conditioned. I just want to make sure that I'll stay warm." She's like, "Ma'am, I don't care if that's outerwear, innerwear, or underwear.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  You can't wear that in there." I was like, "Fine." So I took it off, and I threw it in my locker. And I stood against the locker, hoping to blend in. And then another woman, who was another visitor, a little bit older, comes up to me and was like, "Ma'am, you know you can't wear that in there." And I was like, "Well, what do you mean? I mean, they just took my cardigan." And she's like, "They're not going to let you in there. You have bare shoulders." And I was like, "I don't know what to do." I looked up at the clock, and it was 2:30, and they stopped processing visitors by 3:00. And I couldn't possibly make the hour and 45-minute round trip that I had made there to go home, change, and there certainly wasn't any bodegas around there.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  And I was like, "What was I going to do? The fact that I had bare shoulders was going to stand between me and saying goodbye to my friend." And I started crying. So the woman took my hand, and she's like, "It's your first time, isn't it? Don't worry, it gets easier." And she turns to her grandson, who was about 10 years old next to her, and says, "Johnny, go to the car and get this lady a shirt." And a few seconds later, Johnny comes back and gets me a long-sleeved shirt. And the lady explained to me, "I just keep a wardrobe in my car. I never know when the officers are going to let me in, so I always have extra clothing to let me in." Just then, my number gets called to go in. And I turned to the woman, and I say, "Well, how am I

• 13:25Speaker 02

  supposed to get this shirt back to you?" And she's like, "Don't worry, sweetie. Just pay it forward." So I was like, "All right." I put it on, and I go back to see Michael. It was a short hour. We tried to talk about neutral subjects, talked about, like, "We're going out to dinner." It was nothing major. And at the end of our visit, I tried to choke back the tears so he wouldn't see me cry, and I just said, you know, "See you later." So I couldn't grasp the finality of the situation. And I leave the visiting area, and I'm in the glassed enclosed area to be processed out with hand stamps and everything. And there's a small girl next to me, maybe about four years old, and she's crying.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  And she's crying not tears of, you know, a temper tantrum, or someone stole her toy, but tears of sorrow. And she goes to her mom, who's standing next to her, and was like, "Mommy, I miss Daddy. I want to hang out with him some more." And the mom squats down and says to her, and whispers in her ear, "Just yell really loudly that you love him. He'll hear you." And so she presses her sticky little hands and her wet face against the window, and she screams, "Daddy, I love you!" And I look down at this girl, and I'm disgusted. I'm a public defender, and there's a lot of people that are bothered with what I do, or disgusted by my

• 14:54Speaker 02

  clients because they're charged of really heinous things. But I have always been proud of what I did. I try to keep people out of jail. But it wasn't until that moment, when I saw that girl, that I was disgusted with what I did, that I had any part of this system, that I had any part in this girl's sorrow. I left the prison, I took off my shirt, and I came home. A couple of weeks later, I took my shirt in to work, primarily because I didn't know what to do with the shirt, and it was just kind of sitting on my coffee table for a number of weeks. So I brought it into my office, and I put it into my bottom drawer. A few weeks after that, I get an email from a colleague that she had sent to a couple of the attorneys,

• 15:39Speaker 02

  explaining that one of her clients, a 17-year-old girl, had just been released from jail and was going to a shelter and needed clothing. So I opened up the bottom drawer in my office, and I looked down at that shirt. And that shirt was the only piece of goodness, kindness, and humanity that I felt that day that I went to go visit Michael. So I took that shirt, I gave it to my colleague, which she gave to her client to pay it forward. Thank you.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  That was Deepa Ambekar. She lives in Brooklyn with her family. She still works in criminal justice and enjoys hustle dancing in her free time. After serving his sentence, Michael was deported to Guyana. Deepa says that, these days, he's doing well and lives happily in Europe.

• 16:34Speaker 00

  Coming up next, a young girl pines over a pair of red pleather pants, and a newlywed is almost undone by laundry day, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.

• 16:55Speaker 03

  The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

• 17:06Speaker 00

  You're listening to The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Chloe Salmon. In this episode, we're bringing you stories of the clothes we wear. Our next story comes to us from Zakiya Minifee. She told this at a slam in Detroit, where we partner with public radio station WDET. Here's Zakiya.

• 17:29Speaker 04

  At four years old, I was absolutely appalled by the uncomfortable sandals I had to wear with my flower girl outfit in my uncle's wedding. And at six, I, regardless of the weather, was moved to tears because of my anger at having to wear the itchy tights with my birthday girl dress, because it did not go with the aesthetic of my outfit. And this may sound all kind of crazy, and a little bit of an oddity around fashion, but I 110% blame my mother. It is not my fault. She is the type that, when we are in a store, when we are at an event, when we are watching an award show, loves to say, "Ooh, that dress lays perfectly," or "That

• 18:14Speaker 04

  material looks cheap," or "The way those jeans are cut makes them look mass-produced." That's the kind of mom that I have when it comes to fashion. So there was a day when we were in a mall, shopping for my sister's some event or another, and she's in the dressing room, trying on her outfit. Thankfully, we were by the kids' section, so I got to go on a little adventure. As I'm looking through the racks, I find the sickest pair of pants I have ever seen in my entire life. They are pleather, oxblood-red bell bottoms, and they are in my size, so they're coming with me. I grabbed them right off the rack, and I run them to the dressing room to show my mom.

• 18:58Speaker 04

  I'm like, "Look at these, look at these sick pants." And she's like, "Yeah, you know, they're great, but they're pleather. And they're cute." That's all that matters to me. She's like, "Well, pleather doesn't breathe. When it's hot, it's really hot, and when it's cold, it's freezing." And I was like, "Well, I had to wear those uncomfortable sandals and those itchy tights, right? Sometimes, beauty is pain. You just got to do it." And to wrap it all up in a bow, these pants were on sale. They were well within my nine-year-old budget, coming in at a smooth $8. Wrapped them up in a bow, they were meant for me. And then, when I was a little girl, and still to this day, I have zero patience when it comes to new clothes in my closet.

• 19:41Speaker 04

  I am wearing them at the next available event, which at nine years old, happened to be my next day of school. You couldn't tell me anything in those red pleather oxblood bell bottoms and a nice, like, cool off-white sweater. I was killing the game. And I still don't know if everybody else thought they were as cute as I thought they were, but it doesn't really matter. I had the best day of school, and it wasn't until BNA, or before and after care, when things started to go a little wrong.

• 20:14Speaker 04

  Because I am an athlete. I'm a hooper. I always loved to play. And the boys were playing basketball in the gym. It was one of the rare days to be inside. And they asked me if I wanted to play. And I was like, yes, absolutely. Sign me up. After about 30 minutes of ripping and running up and down the gym, I realized that I was hot. Like, very hot. Like, sweat dripping down the bottom of my pants and onto the floor and in my legs type of hot. And I just could not wrap my head around this type of heat. So I decided to, like, waddle, run my way into the bathroom, which thankfully was single-use. And I made the executive decision that I was like, they just gotta come off. Like, I'm taking them all the way off.

• 20:58Speaker 04

  I'm gonna do like a pat-down dry, right? I'm gonna let them air-dry. We're just gonna have a moment to, like, collect ourselves and come back peacefully. So my mother had told me that pleather doesn't breathe. When it's hot, it's hot. When it's cold, it's cold. Well, what she did not mention is that when pleather is wet and hot, it can shrink.

• 21:27Speaker 04

  So these dope ox-blood-red pleather bell bottoms that had been fitting me like a glove all day would not make it up past my thighs when I was ready to leave the bathroom. And in all of these lessons that I had learned about fashion and style from my mother, none of them had prepared me for what you do when you are half-undressed in a public bathroom and need to leave. So as the adults who are monitoring BNA, as they should, come by and knock on the door. "Z, you OK?" "Yeah, I'm fine. Everything's good." 10 minutes later. "Z, are you sure you're OK?" And I don't know if it was by fate or magic

• 22:12Speaker 04

  or my tears that made the pants expand just enough for me to get into them. And I'd add, they did never, never really dried. They were still quite damp. It was a terrible experience putting them back on. But my mom showed up at the end of the day, and I waddle, ran my way out to the car. And there were the most beautiful, smooth, butter, comfortable cotton sweatpants waiting for me in the backseat of that car. And let me tell you, friends, if you've learned nothing else, check the weather. Check the environment of your event. Know how your fabrics breathe. And dress accordingly.

• 23:03Speaker 00

  Zakiya Menefee grew up in East Lansing, Michigan, and now lives in Chicago. She's a lover of live music and aims to create dance circles and hype up strangers at every concert.

• 23:17Speaker 00

  Zakiya says that after they betrayed her, her once-loved red pleather pants never saw the light of day again. All of these years later, even the mention of pleather makes her sweat and makes her mom roll around with laughter. As an adult, Zakiya still takes fashion risks, though now her runway is a corporate office instead of her elementary school hallways. Her advice? You can get away with almost anything if you pair it with a pencil skirt or a blazer. Tassels and sparkles are her personal favorites. To see some photos of Zakiya and her stylish family, head on over to themoth.org.

• 24:09Speaker 00

  Our next story comes from our Story Slam series in London. Here's Adrienne Burris.

• 24:16Speaker 05

  OK. So it's November 2011, and I just got married. So everything's pretty much perfect in Adrienne land. I have a kitchen that's full of gadgets and gizmos I don't even know how to use. Things like a bread tube. I don't know. But I'm a wife now, so I'm gonna figure out how to use it. I have a closet full of just gorgeous new clothes that I had to buy for all the bridal showers my church threw for me and the rehearsal dinner, including this sleeveless, real silk ivory button-down blouse with pearl buttons that made me feel so sophisticated. And all of these things are in our first home, which is this three-bedroom house in the suburbs with a creek on the side and hydrangea bushes in the back and birds and trees.

• 25:00Speaker 05

  And it's the picture-perfect start to a marriage, which is something that was really important to me at the time because I didn't have that growing up. My parents got divorced when I was 11. Then my dad married his mistress and then divorced her. And when I was a teenager, my mom thought it was a great idea to date my high school principal. Spoiler alert, not a great idea, Mom. Thanks. So a lot of my expectations for marriage and my values for what it should look like came from Jane Austen novels and romantic comedies. But I was really doing the best I could. So it's November. We've been back from our honeymoon for about a week. And my brother comes over to visit in our home. And I'm playing little hostess.

• 25:44Speaker 05

  And we're on the couch watching TV. And I've got snacks out. And I'm showing off all of our gifts that we got for the wedding and pictures from the honeymoon. And my husband, Ben, pops out of the bedroom to say he's going downstairs to do laundry. And I think, of course you are because you're the perfect husband. You're going to do laundry. And he goes downstairs. And I keep talking to my brother. And I just start to get this feeling that I think he probably, he might have forgotten something. Because he's just a husband. He probably just forgot, like, an item in the bedroom. So I leave my brother and I go into the bedroom. And I realize that there's something missing. And he's taken my real silk, white blouse with the pearl buttons for my rehearsal dinner and put it into the washing machine with the blue jeans.

• 26:28Speaker 05

  And I flip my shit. I'm like, I'm screaming, "What have you done? What have you done?" And I run out. And by this time, he's back up from the laundry room. And like a sane person, he says, "What have I done?" And I start yelling, "The shirt! The shirt!" And what shirt? And this only incites me further. So I push him out of the way. I run down into the basement, throw open the lid to the washing machine, and throw both arms into the running washing machine. The powder's like being against my arm and the studs are, like, coming out. And I'm throwing wet blue jeans, like, into the air, onto the floor of our basement, trying to save this shirt. And I'm throwing things and I'm cursing. And I start thinking about how this shirt was like the new shirt. And it was beautiful. It's the nicest piece of clothing I've ever owned. It was to start this marriage.

• 27:13Speaker 05

  And I start crying. And I'm throwing clothes. And I cannot find it. And I know it's in there. And then I'm about to start screaming again when I hear the door slam upstairs. And I just stop. I had forgotten that my brother was there at all. And it wasn't Ben who had left. It was him. I'm immediately taken back in my mind to Valentine's Day, 1999, when I had my little heart-shaped box of chocolates and a bear. And my brother had like a little Valentine's race car or something. And we were waiting for my dad to get home. And he never did. And I woke up in the middle of the night, at like 3:00 AM, to hear them yelling at each other. And it was almost immediately after that I found out they were splitting up. And I know when my brother came to visit

• 27:57Speaker 05

  and heard me yelling at my husband like that just a week after we got married, he was thinking, "This is obviously what marriage is gonna be like in our family." And I had an epiphany with my arms shoulder-deep in a running washing machine that my marriage was not going to be like that. Love isn't about having the marriage that's from a sitcom, from having the picture-perfect postcard because we're gonna make mistakes. But it's about loving each other through those mistakes and actively choosing to love each other and choosing to forgive each other. So I pull my arms out of the washing machine. And I close the lid. I just leave all the clothes on the floor. I'm like, whatever, at this point. I sacrificed the shirt for the sake of the marriage.

• 28:42Speaker 05

  I turn to walk upstairs to make my shame known and find my brother and apologize. And I don't even make it to the top before I see Ben standing there, looking tired and frustrated, rightfully so, holding in his hands the crumpled, white silk shirt with the pearl buttons he had found behind the bathroom door. Thanks.

• 29:10Speaker 00

  That was Adrienne Burris. She now lives in Greenville, South Carolina, with her husband Ben, two kids, and a very mischievous cat. She's a poet who teaches creative writing to elementary and middle school students at her local arts center. I asked her if she still has the shirt. She said that sadly, she doesn't, as she wore it so much that it was eventually too frayed and stained to keep going. She still remembers it fondly, but now strictly buys clothing that is machine washable. After more than a decade, Adrienne and Ben are still married. To see photos of them on their wedding day, Adrienne with her brother, and a picture of the shirt, head on over to themoth.org.

• 29:59Speaker 00

  After the break, a mild-mannered teenager joins his high school's football team, and a young woman breaks into the modeling industry with a catwalk battle for the ages, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.

• 30:15Speaker 03

  The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

• 30:26Speaker 00

  This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Chloé Salmon. Sometimes, the clothes on our backs are more about fitting in than standing out. Graham Shelby told this story at a Grand Slam in Louisville, Kentucky, where we partner with Louisville Public Media. Here's Graham, live at The Moth.

• 30:47Speaker 06

  When I was 15, I had a growth spurt. And it left me 6'3" and 200 pounds. So I decided to join the high school football team. I did this partly because people kept saying things to me like, "You play football, son?" And I could tell that "no" was not a satisfying answer. I also did it to impress my dad. He'd been an all-conference wide receiver back in the day, and he taught me the game. And we didn't just go and throw football. No, we would run plays in the yard, you know, the post pattern, flea flickers, button hooks. And I guess I did it because I wanted to kind of solidify our connection, because at this point, I was 5 inches taller

• 31:31Speaker 06

  and 50 pounds heavier than he was. And that was weird. On the first day of practice, the coaches led us down to this dark, dank, grimy weight room for a strength test. And I'm getting ready to do my first set of squat thrusts. And one of the coaches comes through and just announces to everyone, "Now, remember, gentlemen, football doesn't build character. It reveals character." Okay? And that inspired the guy next to me to kind of get in my face and say, "Come on, man. Don't quit. Punish yourself. Punish yourself." And I really wanted him to shut up. Because I really didn't want everybody

• 32:16Speaker 06

  to notice that I was struggling with a barbell that had weights on it the size of doughnuts. And I also was afraid that if they saw that, they would see right through me to the fact that I didn't feel big. I felt like the same goofy, awkward kid who'd gotten picked on, who'd avoided confrontation any chance he could. You know, I still lived mostly in the world in my head, thinking about Superman, and Captain Kirk, and Woody Allen.

• 32:52Speaker 06

  And I wanted football to help change that. I wanted it to help me stand up for myself and feel as big on the inside as I looked on the outside. The next day, I went to the trainer to get fitted for, you know, the pads and equipment and everything. And after a while, the trainer just said that there was not a helmet in the building that would fit in me, because my head was too physically large. He said, "Coach, we're gonna have to special order one for this guy." "No, I'm huge, really, no." I was assigned to work with the offensive line. These are big dudes who try to block the defense and protect the smaller guys who have the ball. And I was sort of trying to get the moves down. And the coach came over and gave me some tips. And he said, "Son, when you get in the game, what you want to do is, you know,

• 33:37Speaker 06

  get your elbow in there and kind of bloody the guy's lip a little bit." And I thought, "That's so mean."

• 33:48Speaker 06

  And I almost said, "Coach, I don't really want to hurt anybody. Is that gonna be a problem?" And then, they gathered us all at the end of practice for an announcement. They said, "Gentlemen, we are holding a fundraiser to get some new weight equipment. We want each of you to take a pledge form, go around, talk to your friends, your neighbors, your relatives, and get them to agree to give a little bit of money for each pound that you lift, because we're going to have a public weightlifting display next Saturday at the mall."

• 34:27Speaker 06

  And this was just multiple layers of humiliation just running through my head. I thought, "What am I gonna do?" And I get home, and I'm like hyperventilating. And I hear this voice in my head. And it sort of sounded a little like Woody Allen circa 1986. And it just said, "You know, Graham, you don't have to play football. It's not required." And my dad comes in. And he says, "How was practice?" And without thinking to, I revealed my character. "Dad, this isn't me. I'm quitting the team." And I didn't know what he was gonna say. He looked like he was thinking 100 things at once. And he left the room,

• 35:12Speaker 06

  and he came back a little later. His eyes were kind of shiny. But he said, "You do what's right for you." And I felt like a weight the size of a grimy barbell just fell right off my shoulders. And I decided to start putting those daydreams on paper. Became a writer. I founded my school's literary magazine. And Dad and I, still, every once in a while, would go out and run a few button hooks and flea flickers. It turned out that was the kind of football player I wanted to be. And that was good, because I'd already made the team. Thank you.

• 36:03Speaker 00

  Graham Shelby is a writer, storyteller, and filmmaker. His documentary, City of Ali, about how the death of Muhammad Ali brought the people of Louisville together, is streaming now. He lives with his wife and three teenage sons, who are, by the way, triplets. Graham doesn't regret quitting the team. He sometimes imagines what it would have been like to have had the whole experience: the lights, high fives, and cheering crowds. But he's been more than happy to play for fun in the slightly lower-stakes world of flag football leagues. To see some photos of Graham and his dad, head on over to themoth.org.

• 36:47Speaker 00

  Our final story comes to us from a participant in the 1973 Battle of Versailles fashion show, which pitted French and American designers against each other in a catwalk showdown for the ages. Norma Jean Darden told it at a Moth main stage at Aaron Davis Hall in Harlem. Here's Norma Jean.

• 37:10Speaker 07

  I was a fashion model for many years. And I got this dream when I was very young. My father used to give fashion shows in our backyard to raise money for the NAACP. And he was quite a character. He managed to get Sammy Davis Jr. to come be the emcee. And I was a teenager, and I got to see these gorgeous creatures in our guest room on sheets. And they had paint. They painted their bodies. They had false eyelashes. I'd never even seen these things. And I got this idea that I would love to be a model. And I told my mother. But I was a bit of an ugly duckling. I was so tall. I was taller than everyone in the class, the boys included.

• 37:54Speaker 07

  And I wasn't exactly a raving beauty. So she said, "No, you're going to college. That's what you're doing." And I went to college. And I did finish. And my teachers noticed that I was as happy with my outfits as I was with my books. And so they decided to get me to represent art college, Sarah Lawrence, at Mademoiselle magazine. So, this is in the '60s. So I had my little shoes to match my bag, my hat to match my gloves, a suit, and a red boucle coat with a cape. And I was very dramatic. So I dashed into Conti, Nash, went up in my little high-heeled patent leather shoes.

• 38:39Speaker 07

  And I got to the receptionist. And she said to me, "What are you doing here? Why didn't you use the delivery entrance?" And I said, "Well, I'm here to represent my college." And she said, "There must be some mistake. We only use white models here." And I was so stunned and really flabbergasted. So I called my college. And our person who had sent me was a Southern white person. And he became outraged. And he carried on. And he finally got them, the next year, to use a black model. But it wasn't me. So I came to New York after I graduated with the idea of being an actress.

• 39:23Speaker 07

  But there again, I was looming over the leading men. And I was always too something. Once, I was too dark for a part. Then I was too light for a part, too tall for a part, too thin for a part, not then enough. So I was having a hard time getting cast. And they told me, "Try modeling. Come through the back door." So I was trying that. And then people were telling me in the '60s, "Well, we would love to use black models, but the Southern people wouldn't buy our products, so we can't do it." I thought that was such a phony argument. But couldn't do anything about it. And then one of the models from my father's fashion show,

• 40:08Speaker 07

  Audrey Smalls, got this idea that we would picket Harper's Bazaar. So we went down with our little placards, and we marched in front of there. And there were only six of us, but we created quite a stir. And they came down. They told us that that wasn't necessary and that, you know, the magazine was changing. And sure enough, they hired a black model, but it wasn't us.

• 40:36Speaker 07

  So we felt like we were opening doors, but we weren't getting anywhere. And I guess that's the way we called ourselves the pioneers. Then along came an agency called Black Beauty. And Black Beauty made a big imprint. They got Life magazine to do a cover with Naomi Sims. We were inside, and suddenly, we were the rage of the town. Along came the black designers like Stephen Burrows and John Haggins and Scott Berry. And we were suddenly the in-girls. We were everywhere. So along came Eleanor Lampard, who got this idea to take American fashion to Paris.

• 41:21Speaker 07

  So she hired all the black models to represent some of the American designers. And the French people got everybody to represent them. And off we went to Paris. And the French took two hours on their rehearsals. And they had Nuryev leaping into the balcony. And they had Grace Kelly as the emcee. And Josephine Baker, our favorite artist, as the singer. And we came in, and it was freezing cold, and they didn't have any food for us. And we were there all day. And this was the one day of rehearsals. And we had Kay Thompson, who'd written Eloise as a choreographer. And she gave up on us and quit.

• 42:06Speaker 07

  And no one was getting along. It was a terrible thing. And the show started. And the Paris went first. And they went on for about two hours with one show after another. And we had absolutely nothing but our wonderful music from Barry White and ourselves. And we had been working in churches, most of us, before we were able to work on 7th Avenue and make the magazines. So we had only our own exuberance. And when we hit the stage, they were astonished to see that kind of energy, because the French models were very stiff. And they just sort of moved around slowly.

• 42:50Speaker 07

  And we were just dancing and cavorting, and at the end, just posing everywhere. And they got so excited, they threw their programs in the air, and they were stamping their feet, and they were yelling. And the Americans were successful. Well, I came back to America. And not much was going on. No one seemed to have carried our wonderful success over here. And I managed to get the cover of Essence magazine. And for us, that was a very big deal. And the day before I was to shoot it, all of a sudden, I felt a terrible pain.

• 43:30Speaker 07

  And I took myself to the hospital, and they said, "Oh, my God, you're green." And they said, "This is an awful time for you to be ill, because all of our surgeons are in a seminar in California." So lovely. And I don't remember another thing for three days. And I lost my cover. And because of the operation, I was no longer able to be a fashion model. And this, for me, was just devastating. My dream was gone. But everyone knows that modeling is a rainbow career, and you don't expect to do it forever. But the next thing was, what to do?

• 44:13Speaker 07

  So I took a job as an assistant, working backstage in fashion. And I was asked to do a tango with John Haggins, who was the designer who had hired me. And he wanted us to tango out and then to do his show. So he didn't want to get the white runway dirty, so we couldn't practice. So when the day came, and he was so excited, the Vogue editor had come, the Harper's Bazaar editor was there. And we got out to do our tango, and the stage collapsed. And we fell into the laps of the Vogue editor.

• 44:57Speaker 07

  Needless to say, the show was not quite a hit. But he had asked me to bring some goodies to serve people after the show. And when I did, they liked what I brought. And Channel 13 was there, and they asked me to be a caterer. So my sister and I didn't know anything about catering at all. And they said, "We're going to pay you $5,000, and you're going to bring the food for the grandmothers and the grandchildren affair." And we said, "Yes, we will." So that turned out to be quite successful. And at that point, and we were in our 30s by now, we had found out that our grandfather

• 45:41Speaker 07

  was born a slave. We decided that we would interview our relatives that were then in their 70s and 80s and find out about what it was like in their time. And we managed to create a memoir cookbook called Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine. So in our journey to rediscover our family, we found the most precious thing to do is to collect photographs, to collect recipes, because that is all of our legacies. And that is what makes things so special, and it makes our contributions to society. And we feel they're small, but when we look back on it, they're really grand.

• 46:24Speaker 07

  And we're part of the fabric that makes the society work. And in my travels, I managed to work for President Clinton, for President Bush. For President Trump, money is money. And when one door closes, another can open if we're open to our destinies. And thank you for listening.

• 47:03Speaker 00

  That was Norma Jean Darden. She's had a long career in the food and fashion worlds. As a Wilhelmina model, her photos appeared in numerous publications, including Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Essence magazine. She's also co-author, along with her sister Carol, of the award-winning double-day book, Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine: Recipes and Reminiscences of a Family. She owns and operates Spoonbread Catering, New York's largest African-American-owned catering company, and the acclaimed restaurant Miss Mamie's Spoonbread, too. Norma Jean graciously invited me up to her restaurant in Harlem, where I asked her what style means to her.

• 47:47Speaker 07

  My father used to tell me, when he came out of Alabama and moved to North New Jersey, that people living in the most modest shacks on Sunday would come out with their clothes pressed, their shoes polished, even if they were walking on dirt roads. They were spectacularly stylish. When you went to church, you had your hat, you had your Sunday best, and you spent Saturday getting that together. So style has always been important in our community. We might not have had our freedom in the old days, but how we presented ourselves and what we wore was very important in saying who we were.

• 48:31Speaker 07

  So style was a precious part of the black community. And I think that's why we've had so many wonderful designers and models coming out of our communities, because we always had church fashion shows before we could be on 7th Avenue. We were still styling.

• 48:53Speaker 00

  That was Norma Jean Darden. That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. I hope that whatever you're wearing today, you feel like a million bucks, because you sure look like it. Thank you to all of our storytellers in this episode for sharing with us, and to you for listening. We hope you'll join us next time.

• 49:31Speaker 03

  This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, Catherine Burns, and Chloe Salmon, who also hosted this show. Co-producer is Vicky Merrick, associate producer Emily Couch. The stories were directed by Jennifer Hickson. The rest of The Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Kluch, Suzanne Russ, Brandon Grant, Inga Gladowski, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Kaza. The Moth would like to thank the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for their support of The Moth's global community program. Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour is from Epidemic Sound, Dicky Nolan, and Blue Dot Sessions.

• 50:15Speaker 03

  Podcast music, production support from Davey Sumner. We receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Special thanks to our friends at Odyssey, including executive producer Leah Reese Dennis. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us, your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.