But Daddy I Love Him

Clara Bow

"Beauty is a beast that roars/ Down on all fours/ Demanding more// It's hell on earth to be heavenly/ Them's the breaks/ They don't come gently"

Ariel North: I don't know how much this next part has to do with your story... You have to remember, I didn't see the Pittsburgh crew for years after that night.

Interviewer: That's okay just talk about you. You started modeling in California...

Ariel North: My father had expanded the company to L.A, he was having my brothers run it. They bought up a modeling agency that they had me work at. [Sighs] I know people have said and written a lot of things about me over the years. Hell, most of it came from my own family, they owned a bunch of magazines and used the press to keep me in line. And I've written about it too...But no one really understands what was happening during those years.

Interviewer: Help us understand.

Ariel North: My family had to break me to control me, and they did everything they could do to do that. I quickly became a huge name in modeling. I saw none of the money I made. It all went to my brothers, they controlled everything on behalf of my parents. Even as an adult, they forced me to sign contracts without a lawyer. I was a baby, I was eighteen, and they figured out how to own me. I was always watched or if I wasn't they made sure I felt that way. I couldn't have a phone in my apartment or a car, I remember in the first few months realizing that the only way I was getting back to Hazelwood was by walking. They controlled my image, my publicity, everything... Sorry, I still get emotional when I talk about this [pauses, wipes at eyes]. They said and did the most hurtful things. My own family. And I think the worst part was that it worked. I lost myself in all that... 

Michael and Christopher North were asked to comment for this interview.

Both refused.

...

Ariel had lost track of her life over the last few years in California. She felt like a shell of the girl she once was. But everyday she did her best to pull herself from her bed and contort herself into the shiny happy girl they all wanted to see. The sex symbol. The starlit.

Everyday blended into each other. The pills didn't help that. It had started with diet pills as her family forced her into the modeling industry. This wasn't uncommon, she knew people in and out of the industry who took them. The dolls. Then, there were the sleeping pills. At first it was to counter out the other pills and to help her come down after late nights at parties or other events. But when she started taking them she realized she was sleeping through the night for the first time since she got to California. She wasn't dreaming about Hazelwood, about Warren. The pills quickly became something she needed.

From the outside, her life was a dream, something little girls saw in the magazines and looked up to. That thought made her sick.

From the outside all anyone would see is a smiling beautiful woman. They wanted to do their makeup like hers, style their hair like hers, wear what she wore. She was photographed with the coolest people. Shinning, sparkling, perfect.

They didn't know that she was utterly alone. They didn't know that she couldn't go a day without being on something. That she had no control over anything in her life. Or that she lived in fear of making a wrong move in the eyes of her family, knowing they would ruin her.

And then there was the press. She was afraid of the press and the worst part was her family could easily dictate what was printed and what wasn't. Some days it was all about how great she was, teasing rumors of a career in acting and telling everyone she could do anything. Some days it was that she was hard to work with, she was pregnant and didn't know the father, she was washed up. A star, a talent, a bitch, a whore. The worst part was she couldn't predict the pattern, she was always kept on her toes and didn't know how to act.