Victoria’s Secret model Adriana Lima joins ranks at Madame Tussauds Wax Museum
ENLARGE
My recollection of Madame Tussauds wax museum, from a childhood visit, was that the emphasis was on historical figures. Folks likeWinston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
So it came as something of a surprise to learn that Madame Tussauds New York, in Times Square, would be unveiling a likeness of Adriana Lima.
While I was familiar with Britain’s wartime prime minister, even back then, and the father of the “New Deal,” I was unaware of Ms. Lima and her accomplishments.
I asked one of my daughters to bring me up to speed. “She’s the sexiest person alive,” or words to that effect, I was told. My offspring added that traipsing down the runway in angel wings, Ms. Lima was one of the most famous of the Victoria’s Secret supermodels.
I defer to no one in my respect for Victoria’s Secret or its workers. Nonetheless, I wasn’t aware the achievement qualified one for that small measure of immortality bestowed by a wax likeness in Madame Tussauds.
Ms. Lima’s elevation, and my ignorance, prompted me to pay a visit to the museum a few days before the official Nov. 30 unveiling of her statue. If only to fill the apparent deficiencies in my knowledge of popular culture.
I was slightly surprised that the first personalities I encountered in the lobby weren’t bygone giants, such as Gandhi or Marie Curie, butMatt Lauer and Al Roker of “Today Show” fame.
Indeed, the museum boasts two likenesses of the NBC weatherman—one seemingly pre, the other post, gastric bypass surgery—though not side by side.
I suppose I should have been encouraged when I saw a “Manhattan”-era Woody Allen seated in a corner, if only for his staying power. Though his downcast demeanor felt less shtick than reluctant recognition that all of us, whether flesh and blood or made of wax, are only fleeting players on this eternal stage.
The real action was upstairs—after passing the singer Pink suspended on silk ropes above the lobby—where an opening-night party was in progress. The A-list guests included Scarlett Johansson, Diddy, Brad Pitt and Sofia Vergara.
I recognized most of them, though Ms. Johansson seemed slightly more zaftig than I recalled from her many distinguished movie roles.
“We take all the measurements very seriously,” as many as 250 of them, said Petra van der Meer, Madame Tussauds New York figure maintenance manager.
Nearby, a visitor was taking a selfie with Kim Kardashian. “A lot of people, this is the closest they’ll get to celebrity,” I was told.
For some reason I found that a depressing thought.
I probably dated myself by being the only person in our party able to identify Bela Lugosi. Though my pride was short-lived. Since I didn’t recognize anybody except Taylor Swift in the music section.
The true magic seemed backstage, an area off-limits to tourists where I was forbidden to photograph, probably for good reason. On one worktable Nelson Mandela’s head stood side-by-side with Robin Williams’s.
Nearby, artist Hanna Umin worked on an unidentified figure’s skin tone. “I stare at people’s hands on the subway,” since joining Madame Tussauds, she confessed. “I see ears in a highly different way.”
Meaning that she’s perpetually checking out the proportions of the lobe to the rest of the ear.
The backstage area also seemed to do double duty as a final resting place for celebrities whose time, if not quite past, might have been accelerated by a public whose tastes change at Internet speeds.
Among them appeared to be Frida Kahlo, Jon Bon Jovi and a headless hockey player—might he have been wearing a New York Rangers uniform?—fallen on its side, as if the victim of a vicious cross-check.
However, the staff diplomatically made it clear to me that the figures hadn’t been terminated; their place in the constellation of celebrity was merely being rethought, or they were in the throes of major maintenance.
But any impressions about the transience of things were swept aside by the sight of the angelic Ms. Lima awaiting her debut. With her crimson wings, lingerie and tattoos, she was more inspired than anything even the kitschy imagination of Jeff Koons could conjure.
“She has two children,” marveled a publicist, as if we were admiring the real thing. “She’ll be the centerpiece of [the] opening-night party.”
An open bar wouldn’t hurt either.
—ralph.gardner@wsj.com