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Summary: A must read!!
Review: A wonderful can't-put-it-down book. I found myself so fascinated with this beautiful womans tragic life...talk about being up in life and then crashing down!!...Hard!! She lived a beautiful, yet dangerous life and died an ugly, horrible death...I think they should make this book into a movie, and not the one with Angelina Jolie...one that is more true to her actual life. Long live Gia in all our hearts>..
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Summary: This is the True Story
Review: After I saw the HBO movie "Gia" I found myself yearning to know more about this woman's life. "Thing of Beauty" not only presents the real and compelling story of Gia from her troubled upper middle class adolescence in suburban Phillie to her rise as the "first supermodel" to her downfall to heroin, which led to her untimely death from AIDS, but is also a great historical/pop culture account of the late '70s and early '80s. Instead of giving a one dimensional look at Gia and getting caught up in the whole sapphic side of her personality like the movie, the book presents a full view of a complex and very tragic woman literally eaten alive by the world of fashion. Had I not picked up this book I never would have known that Cindy Crawford, refered to in the early stages of her career as "Baby Gia," literally owes her success to Gia. (The pictures show an uncanny resemblance.) This book was over 400 pages of tiny text and I devoured it in two days.
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Summary: Gia was typical of modern youth
Review: As I learned more and more about this woman I was extremely taken by how much of her I see in so many of my young counterparts today.
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Summary: A disturbing account of a model's descent into heroin hell.
Review: At 19 Gia was a top model in the highly competitive world of beauty marketing, earning $100,000 in 1980, and was in constant demand. Industry experts expected her to hit the pinnacle of the business by age 21and earn the highest salary available to only a few models in the world - $500,000 per year. Other models envied her; her family and friends rejoiced for her good fortune.However, the surface beauty hid an emotionally distraught young woman. Raised in a clearly dysfunctional family, Gia had begun regularly burying her intense emotional pain with regular drug use and all night partying at wild clubs while in her teens. Her craving for artificial escape from life continued during her modeling career, where drugs and all night clubbing were routine and well tolerated within the industry. Her search for the solution to her emotional insecurities and enormous need for love was filled by heavy heroin use before she turned 21, but the industry became her enabler, hid! ing the track marks on her arms and hand with poses and airbrushing. Only when she stopped showing up to photo shootings was her drug addiction viewed as a problem, but she was still offered sporadic work. As Gia's consumption of heroin grew to massive amounts, she finally lost her career, money, and dignity, descending into the netherworld of sleazy heroin clubs, borrowing and stealing money from friends and family, and destroying her professional and personal relationships. She died at age 26 from AIDS - one of the first American women to be diagnosed and die from the plague that decimated the beauty marketing industry. Whether one feels sorry for her or that she brought all her problems on herself, one cannot read this book without feeling touched by her life and struggles. The sheer tragedy of her wasted life and her intense emotional fragility leaves one feeling "Why couldn't something have been done to save her?' Gia is dead, but not forgott! en.
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Summary: couldn;t put down the book....very real and well researched
Review: Exciting, realistic look at the beauty and drug scene so hidden in the modeling world. This could have been anyone's daughter, sister or friend who was lost and used for her looks. Where were the parents? Excellent reading.
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Summary: A tragedy even sadder because it could've been prevented.
Review: Fried did his homework well. The facts of Gia's life were very detailed, her life certainly was sad and tragic. It was a great book, well researched and written, but a bit on the cold, factual side when what I think we would RATHER have was a book that Gia wrote herself about her life, her feelings, her pain. However we know that is not possible as Gia was not capable of writing such a book. The tragedy of it all makes you wish you can go back in time and step in and help. Her life didn't have to go in the direction it did.
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Summary: What It's Like As One Of The Beautiful People
Review: Gia Carangi was the 'It'-girl of the fashion world, a super-model icon whose appearance in Vogue and other Conde` Naste publications shaped the trends of the 1980's. Yet she was more than a model, as a high school student she was a fervent David Bowie fan; to her parents she was a lynchpin; to her father specifically she worked in his subshop; to recovering addicts, she was just another victim of heroin abuse; in the hospital where she died, she was another nameless patient with the recent phenomenon of AIDS. Throughout all these identities a common-thread of the anguish that was Gia wound entities of various status and character, interwoven into the cyclone that was Gia's life. To those around her, it seemed Gia handled her rags-to-riches success with cavalier. Yet few knew that her reckless lifestyle only served as a narcotic in a frantic attempt to heal her inner, unresolved anguish of her parents' divorce when she was eleven, her feelings that her mother did not love her because she was too boyish, her homosexuality. As her modelling success mushroomed, so did the outrageous stunts and unheard-of (at least in the modelling world) behavior she pulled, likewise did the complexity of her relationships. There was often a triangle of Gia's mother, aunts, and lovers all fighting for what they thought was best for a woman who seemed totally incapable of caring for herself, particularly during the era of Studio 54 and Mick Jagger's "Sister Morphine". Yet everyone loved this model who was too short, too voluptuous, too ethnic, too rude, too sexy to be a model. Gia seemed to have it all, but then lost it. In 1986, she died a penniless heroin-addict of the new phenomenon (which was becoming all too common in the fashion world): HIV. This was a wonderfully thorough book and interesting portrait of the modelling world. I was hooked from the first page which juxtaposes a tabloid special about modelling with Gia's own commentary while hospitalized. You learn some truly amazing facts about the modelling world and meet many of its idiosyncratic personalities such as Way Bandy (the poster-child for the openly-gay makeup artist), fashion model-turned agency director Wilhelmina (after whose death Gia began to seriously abuse heroin), Chris von Wangenheim (the photographer of the "Fetching Is Your Dior" ad campaign featuring a doberman clamping its jaws on a model's arm), and many, many others. While Fried certainly has easy-marketing material on his hands, he always manages to balance points of view, acknowledging that Gia's domineering mother, Kathleen, was a remarkably strong person who fought for Gia's survival in many ways. He shows the love of many professionals, family members, and friends, who were always fighting for the favor of this one electrifying woman, whose time on earth was too short. Anyone who has an interest in knowing about what goes on behind-the-scenes in modelling really must read this book. The fact that I know what Conde` Nast is can be attributed to this book's journalistic merit.
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Summary: ALL THIS MONEY BUT NOT HAPPY
Review: GIA WAS THE BEST MODEL EVER. SHE HAD BEAUTY & ATTITUDE. I CRIED READING THE BOOK. MAY HER NAME "GIA" LIVE THROUGH MODELING. REST IN PEACE ALWAYS.... YOU WILL NOT BE FORGOTTEN....
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Summary: i love angelina and i love gia!!
Review: Gia's face and her story haven't been out of my mind since i saw it on HBO. She is really a sexy and attractive creature! Knowing her whole life not only makes me feel happy but also feel sad.......
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Summary: Are you there, God? It's Me, Gia Carangi...!
Review: Hi, I love this book. Gia Carangi, so brave, fearless, wild child/animal/humanbeing/spirit. as is Fried, who includes the good, bad and ugly of her life and the people around her. He's an amazing writer. No nonsense, so real. You'll fall in love. She'll break your heart. God Bless You, Gia. You're up in Heaven now. Raising Hell.... :)
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