Michael Musto's Biggest Regret: Sending Out That One Pic of Him Wearing Dress
The HuffPo features Michael Musto in My Favorite Mistake, the column in which they ask luminaries about the big mistakes they learned from. The Village Voice gossip/nightlife columnist reveals that he "purposely sabotage[s] opportunities to get bigger" and is comfortable with being "the alternative weekly guy in the corner." However, he's really torn up about the massive ad campaign he could've been in—if only he hadn't sent the them that one pic of him in a hoop-skirted dress. The year was 1987. The ad campaign? Amaretto di Saronno liqueur.
"[They were] looking for different, supposedly "cutting edge creative types" to promote in a massive ad campaign... and it involved having your picture in every major magazine for a whole year, every issue, for an entire year, so this is like the Judy Holliday movie where she was a billboard of herself, but on a larger scale. And they wanted me, and asked me to submit a press kit, just to see me, I guess."
"[I sent them] a picture... of me in this big hoop dress. But not looking female at all, I mean, I wasn't in drag, I was just standing there with my bicycle, in a hoop dress, looking kind of clownish. But I included it because I thought I should be true to myself and present the full picture of me...."
"And they told me I had been chosen, we were all set to go forward with the photo shoot, and it never happened. Everyone else got their photo shoot and got their massive exposure, for a full year, and I found out a year later, that the reason I had been bumped from this incredible campaign, of supposedly cutting edge people, was that the Italian folks who ran the company were offended by the picture of me in the dress..."
But that's not all!
I had to sit there, and watch, for a year and watch this campaign explode knowing that if I'd only withheld that one clipping, I probably would have been in the campaign. The whole thing felt like a movie...
Because sometimes, the best way to fight the system is from within the system:
The best thing I could have done/would have done would have been to soft-peddle my subversive side in the campaign, and get bigger in the mainstream and that would have resulted in a higher profile. I should have tempered my subversive youth in order to go more public. I never learned. [Huffington Post]
