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Former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell is dressed down and made-under, and she regrets pinching the prince's bum. Tony Ramando offers his instead.
IN HER accountants office in East London, Geri Halliwell and I are facing each other across a long conference table. We're sprawled and spread out like eagles. Teacups filled with milk and cigarette butts are shoved aside to give us plenty of room to maneuvor properly. "All right-now I'm ready. Should I go this way or that?" Geri asks with her croaky voice. "Well, I think you should do it like this", I reply. "Okay then, your turn" she says, leaning flat onto the table to the point of showing the tattoo that stretches from the small of her back down, uh, a lttle farther.
"If someone were to walk in now, they'd be shocked", I say. "Stop talking: this is just starting to heat up, and your distracting me," the admitted schizophrenic says. "You know you could've jumped me earlier if you wanted to," I tell her. "Oh, come on, be quick, will you?" she urges. At this moment, Geri's yoga instructor, Kieth, arrives early for their 5:30 lesson. Geri glances up, trying to salvage on elast shred of dignity. "I've lost, haven't I?" she asks. Ah, the game checkers isn't as simple as it appears, is it?
Not as simple as, say breathing, or being a Spice Girl. Looking back, that's one of the main reasons she ditched the cartoonish super-group she once called her family. "Being with the Spice Girls looks like a short time on paper, but mentally those five years feel like 20 years" she says. For Geri Halliwell, life as 'Ginger' wasn't exactly challenging (what, exactly, was she expecting?), snd there were more pressing issues the she wanted to take a stab at - like breast cancer awareness, "which the scheadule wouldn't permit" a solo record and building a foundation of integrity.
"It doesn't take a brain scientist to figure out things weren't exactly perfect," she says. Maybe it does, but she refuses to elaborate. Geri Halliwell's strawberry blonde hair is pulled back, and she's not wearing any makeup. Is this proper lady the same overly made-up cleavage monster, who, at a business function where she couldn't find a bathroom, used some wadded- ip towels as a toilet instead? "I'll always be kicking myself for doing things like that and for pinching Prince Charles' bum- I wouldn't do that today," she says. "The louder you are, the more insecure you are, and that was me. Im a lot more vulnarable now." The trashy ones always seem to clean up their acts before I get to them.
At 5 feet 1 inch, she's a tiny and unbelievably skinny little women, modestly covered by a black sweater and black pants. And no, shes not wearing platform sneakers. Her head isn't disproportionatly larger than the rest of her body, as it appears to be in pictures; but her chest, even without a bustier, is alarmingly large, compared with her overall size.
But no cleavage-I feel cheated.
"I have to question my values and integrity now," she says. "Im trying to grow, desperately. When I left the Spice Girls, I really had to look at myself on all levels-physically and superficially-and wipe off my makeup and undress myself," Geri says. "Im really not sure who I was then."
Now Geri is rifling through her purse for her drivers liscence to prove to me how ridiculous it is that so many people think shes 35. A year ago, she was called many things-Podge Spice, Chin-ger Spice and Old Spice (oops, we called her that in our premier issue). "I don't have my drivers liscence after all -I gave it to my driver," she explains (although she doesn't explain why her driver would need her license). "When I joined the Spice Girls, I said I was 21, when I was actually 22. And now I look back and say, 'I know I looked old.' Im just a reflection of the way society makes us think its crap to get old. The other thing with the Spice Girls, as time went on, waas that I felt unhappy inside and not confident about my looks, so I put more and more makeup on to hide it."
"Your without cake face right now, so do you feel less than perfect?" i ask, "Yes, But the difference is... you hide behind the mask until you've had enough. I think image is fine, but image is also bullshit, and we have to acknowledge that. And I have" she says. She doesn't look 26, but she also doesn't look older than 30-and even if she isn't 26, who cares? Most people have issues about their ages. "Who gives a crap?" she laughs. Maybe im 66, and I've just got good wrinkle cream."
So why did Geri quit the Spice Girls? "I suppose it was quite a mad thing to do- why would anyone?" she asks. " I had to go onstage and do the Spice Girls thing, even though I was changing." But she is willing to give me a little Spice Girls gossip:
The reason Geri didn't attend Scary's wedding is because she wasn't invited. She is not a scientologist. On the pregnancy rumour: "I'd love to have a child one day, but right now all I'v got is Harry" she says of her purse-size dog. On the rumour on that she got a raw deal: "I kind of had to lick my wounds and rebuild myself, rebuild my confidence as a human being, not rely on my identity as a Spice Girl," she says.
And the feud between her a Scary Spice? Geri won't elaborate in words. But when I give her a T-shirt to autograph (for our managing editors daughter-not me!), I have to stop her from drawing a mustache on Scary.
Somehow, it becomes her turn to ask the questions. "Do you know what the meaning of life is?" Geri asks. "Beer and Women" [the interviewer replies] "Thats fine," she says, winking, "but you know when you're asking yourself the important questions in life? Thats me right now."
Geri Halliwell has put a cork in the 'Girl Power' for the time being. She says "Its more about people power." This, no doubt, is linked to her appointment as an ambassador for the United Nations; her responsibilities include supporting contraceptives awareness and a population control program.
"I'll tell you who I admire," she says, "hillary Clinton. I think shes Brilliant. I think she should run for president." As of late, Geri's been spending most of her time in a recording studio, rather than running her trap about condoms and sex. She's just finished recording her as-yet-untiteled solo record (due in late spring), which she describes as a "roller coaster ride with hormonal mood swings-more adult." As we near the end of our game, I have all of Geri's checker pieces except two. She moves a black checker and then takes her finger off of it (she wanted to be red because red is a power colour, but in the end chose black because "black is slimming").
She spots a safer play and quickly tries to move her piece back. "You took your finger off that, Missy." "I did not!...Okay, I did," she says. I think you pretty much finished" [The interviwer says]. "It ain't over till the fat lady sings, and I hate loosing," she responds. "I love the underdog. You know, checkers is a metaphor for life, isn't it? Don't move because it's take or be taken. 'I've taked the piss out of myself now, and I think thats very important," she says.
A few other quotes featured in the mag:
"I had a bikini wax and, God, that hurt. A lot of beauty things are really really painful. Men might be put off by this, but I don't shave my legs. I haven't got really hairy legs, and I think spikey stubble is worse."
"I go to sleep with my makeup on and things like that. One thing I do is scrub my skin with a nail brush to kind of massage it, helps get rid of fat. I don't really know if it works."