She stands next to her knotty-pine podium, a woman in her early 40s wearing a tight gold sequined dress. Her high heels are gold too, and she wears her jet black hair in a Jackie O. do. She says she’s our fairy godmother.
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Cinderella was a mercenary and we can be too. That’s Polo’s word for gold digger. She’s proud to call herself one. “But Cinderella couldn’t even get in the door if she didn’t look like she belonged there. You can go to the ball, but first you have to make some changes.”
Our problem is we don’t approach the world on the “emotional plane of the rich.” We don’t have enough self-esteem to go after the very best. She knows how it is. She used to be the same way, back when she was little Ginie Polo growing up in a working-class home in Big Springs, Texas. You could tell what night it was by what was for dinner. Tuesday was red beans night.
“Even if it’s in an attic,” she says. “I want you to think of your mind, your body, everything about you, as hot, steaming water. And the neighborhood of the rich is an exotic tea bag!” She closes her eyes and embraces herself, as if she’s being slowly immersed in hot springs. “Once you move into the neighborhood of the rich, you move it into you. It steeps in you, like the tea bag, and all the properties of the tea bag become the properties of the water.”
We can find swarms of RMs if we just know where to look. We can get all decked out and hang around a Mercedes dealership, pretending like we can afford one. We can nonchalantly crash a party or charity function. We can hang around regattas or golf courses. Golfers are especially good marks, she says, because by the time they get to the clubhouse they’re really blasted.
