What Happens When 4 Women Dress as Golden Girls
Dorothy Zbornak
The morning of our Golden Girls shoot, I had an appointment with my dermatologist. It was a routine checkup that ended with me learning I have rosacea and an aging neck and chest. The doctor gave me two prescriptions for the former and some advice for the latter: Apply sunblock every day and thank myself later.
This visit put me in the perfect mind-set to play Dorothy, my favorite Golden Girl, and not because it made me feel old. I’m not old (I'm 34), and griping about age is giving in to the patriarchy, so I won't do it. (In reality, I obsess over my wrinkles daily and I’m an unreliable narrator.) No, I felt closer to Dorothy because I wanted so badly to respond to my doctor, “Sunblock? Is that what they’re calling a time machine these days?” Drop my voice three octaves and give me a laugh track, and I’m basically Dorothy. I saved my disdain for the office, where I immediately told everyone within earshot about my impending doom: crepe-paper cleavage.
This whole “dress like Golden Girls” idea came about when a few of us learned that a 24-year-old in our office loved Betty White but hadn’t heard of her iconic TV series. Peculiar. Was it possible other young people didn’t realize that before Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha, there were Dorothy, Sophia, Rose, and Blanche? Or that before brunch, there was late-night cheesecake? And before Manolo Blahniks, there were silk nightgowns? This had to be remedied.
Once we had our staff volunteers, it was time to cast ourselves. Alex Brown - the woman who didn’t know that Betty White was a Golden Girl - would play Rose Nylund. (It helped that Alex is a genuinely sweet person.) Hannah Smothers, our sex and relationships editor who hails from the South, would play Blanche Devereaux. Eliza Thompson, a short-but-powerful woman who doesn't suffer fools, would play Sophia Petrillo. And I, the crank who likes to drape herself in layers, would play Dorothy Zbornak. Note: We tried to get Alex Rees, the only true diehard fan on staff (he has Golden Girls wallpaper and a cat named Bea Arthur) to cameo as Stan, but he declined.
My personal experience with Golden Girls comes mostly through my older brother, another diehard, and my grandmother. They’d watch the “program” (S/O grandma) as I sat somewhere off to the side, probably brushing doll hair and subconsciously learning about sex from senior citizens in Miami. My brother and I would also play a game we called “Apartments” - it was just us storming in and out of each other’s bedrooms, pretending our bedrooms were apartments. His "character" was named Blanche, mine was Rose. That's right: My brother created a Golden Girls spin-off and he cast me as Rose.
Watching the show as an adult, I'm old enough to realize two things: Blanche fucks a lot - and my brother was very wrong about me. I'm not a Rose. While I didn't have many epiphanies during this shoot, other than that I look unattractive with gray hair and I have no idea how to apply foundation, the experience did reaffirm that essential truth. I'm a total Dorothy. - Patti Greco
Rose Nylund
When I was asked to dress up as a Golden Girl for a day, I had my reservations. The first being I had no idea who the Golden Girls were. Judge me if you will, but six weeks ago, I’d never heard of the The Golden Girls. Was I living under a rock my entire 24 years on this earth? Apparently. Was everyone in my office shocked to find out I had no idea who these four iconic women were? Absolutely. Even when I asked my boyfriend if he’d heard of them, he looked at me as if I were an alien. “Who hasn’t?” But when a group of us decided I'd be dressing up as Rose, played by the fabulous Betty White, as penance, I was stoked.
Of course I knew Betty White - and I adored her. You might be asking yourself, “How the fuck can you call yourself a Betty White fan and not know about The Golden Girls?” But honestly, step off.
Doing research to play Rose was almost as fun as playing her. She’s certainly the ditzy one of the group; most of the time, her mind is elsewhere and she doesn’t catch on to things very quickly. But she has a heart of gold and genuinely wants the best for those she loves. (That said, she'll occasionally toss in a little sass when the situation is right, as you do.)
Personality-wise, she reminded me of myself (and not just the future, 60-year-old version of myself, but the current, 2017 version). But it was her style I was most excited to take on. She dresses exactly how you’d expect a classic grandma to dress. She loves a good blazer, collared shirts, and knee-length shift. She also enjoys accessorizing, but keeps it modest with a simple pair of gold earrings or some beautiful pearls.
The minute I saw the outfit our fashion director picked out for me to wear, I was pumped, and the entire look was topped off with a perfect gray wig that, honestly, I never wanted to take off. Being Rose for a day made me appreciate how fun-loving and hilarious the Golden Girls really were. Not only were they constantly cracking jokes, often at the harmless expense of one another, but they genuinely valued their friendship.
That, to me, was the most incredible thing about these women. They each had their own personalities, styles, families, and men that came in and out of their lives, but the one thing that always reigned true was that their bond truly was golden. They remind me to prioritize the beautiful and important relationships in my life. If aging means strong friendships, badass blazers, and wonderful memories you’ll share for a lifetime, sign me up. - Alex Brown
Sophia Petrillo
When I was in grade school, Lifetime used to air a back-to-back block of The Golden Girls and Designing Women right when I got home, and I’d watch it with my mom every day that I didn’t have dance class or some other horrible extracurricular activity. Even though most of the jokes were over my head and the women were many times my age, I think I responded to both shows because of the characters’ friendship, independence, and fearlessness in the face of male idiocy. This was before Sex and the City, Girls, or even, like, Ally McBeal, so I had to take whatever examples of proto-feminism I could get. The Golden Girls has stuck with me into adulthood, if only because it still comes on cable when I can’t sleep and it’s on Hulu now too. (For the love of all that is holy, can someone please pick up the streaming rights to Designing Women?)
Though I didn’t quite know how it would go down, I was enthusiastic going into this, because how could I pass up the chance to dress like my golden queens? I’ve always wanted to be a Blanche - she’s sassy, she’s from the South, men love her - but I know in my heart that I’m a Dorothy. Once I went against my instincts and told someone I was a Blanche, but they stopped me mid-sentence and said, “You’re a Dorothy.” I knew I couldn’t dress like a Dorothy, though, because I’m only 5 feet tall on a good day. Instead I chose Sophia, the second-crankiest Golden Girl, who never met an occasion she couldn’t relate to her youth in Sicily. If my own grandmother is any indication, I am definitely headed for Sophia-dom.
I thought going into this that it would just be a fun, kooky little experiment, but what actually happened is that I found out that (1) I look terrible with old-lady hair and (2) my neck is already a fucking disaster. You know Kybella, that thing that makes your neck fat go away? I do, because I Googled it while I was still in costume. If this is what my neck looks like now, what kind of monster am I going to be in 30 years? I thought I was fine with aging, and that my retinol cream and sunblock was going to be enough to take me into middle age, but being Sophia taught me that I’ve been deluding myself for the past five years. Is my eye cream even working? How can you tell? Do I need to exfoliate? Should I even be going outside at all? Body positivity or whatever, but let me go back to 25 and stay there forever.
The good news is that I can’t actually afford Kybella, so I’m not getting it, but the bad news is that I still hate my stupid neck and know that I must keep my hair boob-length for the rest of my life even though I did want to try a bob one more time before I died. Treasure your necks while you can, ye sweet babes. - Eliza Thompson
Blanche Devereaux
My family didn’t really watch The Golden Girls when I was growing up. Though, to be fair, my parents didn’t let me watch anything remotely scandalous (so, like, nothing with a TV-13 rating), and after watching a few episodes, I would say The Golden Girls certainly qualifies as “too scandalous for my parents’ taste.” Which is what makes it so great.
Nonetheless, when I heard there was an opportunity to dress up as a Golden Girl for a day, I was incredibly down. Dress like an older lady from the late ‘80s? Look, I live in Brooklyn. If anything, this wardrobe change would be admired by my neighbors, who would assume I was just wearing normal clothes (full disclosure: I wanted to sneak these yellow pants home in my bag and wear them out to my neighborhood bar). Honestly, my Blanche outfit was probably even a bit more ~risqué~ than my normal look - but of course it was. Blanche is a firecracker and is definitely more fashionably adventurous than I am.
There was never a single question that I would dress as Blanche. For starters, I’m from the South. But also I’m a sex and relationships editor here, and when my friends and I compare ourselves to the other famous female foursome (the girls from Sex and the City), I’m always labeled a Samantha. Blanche and Samantha are not exactly the same, but is Samantha a Blanche? Absolutely. Both Blanche and Samantha know what they want and are unashamed by that. They’re shameless in their sexual exploits and they have a penchant for the dramatic, but they’re also ultimately devoted friends. That’s what’s so great about both shows, or really any show that puts female friendship at the center of the narrative - men come and go for Blanche to tease, but ultimately, her loyalty is with the Golden Girls.
I love Blanche’s style (both in clothing and in overtly hitting on old dudes). That said, she wears a lot of yellow (a very flamboyant color), and that is not my best color. But I absolutely loved the look our fashion director picked for me. Can you wear yellow on yellow on yellow? Apparently so. I loved my outfit so much I never wanted to take it off. As a woman from the South who spent a lot of time watching my granny and mom put makeup on, I know a thing or two about a bold, Southern makeup look. I also tend to hate that sort of look for myself. While I’d wear my outfit daily, I never want that much dark eye shadow on my face ever again.
The best part of playing Blanche wasn’t my beautiful pleated yellow pants though. The best part was pretending I had even an ounce of the trademark combination of unabashed confidence and charm that makes Blanche my favorite Golden Girl. She reminds me a lot of my own Southern grandmas, if they weren’t too genteel to discuss sex or dating around me. If I can age as boldly as Blanche, BRING IT ON. - Hannah Smothers
Video by Jason Ikeler, Josh Archer, and Asha Parker
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