Shall I Compare Thee to a Tournament Rose Dipped in Whipped Cream?

by Matt Haber

• “She holds out her right arm to show me her tattoo of Marilyn Monroe. All that remains of Marilyn is a few drops of black against skin that is the color the moon possesses in the thin air of northern winters.” — Stephen Marche on Megan Fox, Esquire, February 2013.

• “Her skin is lined and slightly worn and depends on light from other sources — from her eyes, from her smile, even from the hounding incandescence of television.” — Tom Junod on Hillary Clinton, Esquire, February 2008.

• “I can’t help but notice her skin. It’s the smoothest skin I’ve seen outside of a Clinique ad.” — A.J. Jaocbs on Rosario Dawson, Esquire, April 2006.

• “[T]he soft light makes her skin look as creamy as café au lait.” — Leslie Bennetts on Nicole Richie, Vanity Fair, June 2006.

• “[T]he sting of emotion that starts, always, in her nose and restores, instantly, the freshness of her face and the color of her eyes; the shimmer of her skin, which is so white since she’s forsworn the sun that it can light his way in a very dark room….” — Tom Junod on Sharon Stone, Esquire, November 2005.

• “[H]er skin is akin to some sort of dairy product (a pale kind, pick your brand)….” — Bill Zehme on Heather Graham, Esquire, April 2000.

• “She’s wearing gray slacks, black shoes with no socks, and an unbuttoned white man-tailored shirt over a T-shirt so short it reveals the stripe of her belly, which is so pale it’s almost blue, the color of ice milk…. She will clutch at herself self-consciously and twist her body in provocative fashion, or at least in a fashion that lifts the hem of her shirt and reveals the ice-milk border of her belly…. She is painted in four colors, and four only — red, pink, blue, and ice-milk white — and now there was creamy brown froth on her lips, like something left by the tide. She licked it off with her tongue’s dainty pink tip…. Nicole is ice-milk white…. We assumed various positions: head to head, head to feet, curled up, straight out, staring at the ceiling, staring at her, eye to eye, pillow to pillow, her ice-milk belly, her ice-milk ankles.” — Tom Junod on Nicole Kidman, Esquire, August 1999.

• “[Gretchen Mol has] a face like a tournament rose dipped in whipped cream” — Ned Zeman on Gretchen Mol, Vanity Fair, September 1998.

Matt Haber also has some skin.