If I Could Be Anyone, I'd Be... Watching Willow Watts Websplash

Source: peoniesforme.tumblr.com via Beverly on Pinterest

Talli Roland has invited a couple hundred of her closest blogging friends to join in this websplash party.

And our prompt is, if I could be anyone, I'd be...

Her character, Willow Watts, has let herself in for a world of trouble...

About Watching Willow Watts

For Willow Watts, life has settled into a predictably dull routine: days behind the counter at her father's antique shop and nights watching TV, as the pension-aged residents of Britain's Ugliest Village bed down for yet another early night. But everything changes when a YouTube video of Willow's epically embarrassing Marilyn Monroe impersonation gets millions of hits after a viewer spots Marilyn's ghostly image in a frame.

Instantly, Willow's town is overrun with fans flocking to see the 'new Marilyn'. Egged on by the villagers -- whose shops and businesses are cashing in -- Willow embraces her new identity, dying her hair platinum and ramming herself full of cakes to achieve Marilyn's legendary curves.

But when a former flame returns seeking the old Willow, Willow must decide: can she risk her stardom and her village's newfound fortune on love, or is being Marilyn her ticket to happiness?

So I started there - would I want to be Marilyn Monroe?

Well.  She was stunningly beautiful, warm, funny, achingly vulnerable.  I wouldn't mind being Marilyn - if I could be a little stronger and more secure, not messed up by pill-pushing doctors, and obviously, surviving my thirties would be a big plus.

In other words, not Marilyn.

Marie Curie?  Brilliant scientist, Nobel Peace prize winner for both physics and chemistry.  Widowed when her daughters were very young.  Died of leukemia due to constant exposure to radioactive elements.  Not sounding like a party in a box.

Babe Didrickson - amazing athlete, baseball star, track & field gold medalist, one of the best LPGA players of all time, with 31 tournament wins.  Golf every day for years, really?  [shuddering]

Angelina Jolie - she's beautiful, wealthy, has Brad Pitt and all those children.   Yep, she has Brad Pitt and all those children.

Dorothy Parker, famous wit, two Academy Award noms, three marriages.  Alcoholic, suicidal, blacklisted as a Commie... Could I take the talent straight up, hold the tragedy?

Cleopatra?  Queen Elizabeth (Tudor)?  Mother Theresa?  Eleanor Roosevelt?  I 'druther have a more successful sex life, thank you.

I scrolled through list after list of amazing, talented women - comediennes, politicians, athletes, singer-songwriters, fashion designers, princesses, activists, saints and businesswomen.  I found much to admire, but nobody I'd really rather be.  Not if I had to take all the bits of their lives, the tragic childhoods, the cheating husbands, the constant cameras up the backside...

Men?  Oh, please.  (See successful sex life, above.) 

For all the challenges, sorrows and frustrations I have - I still love my own life.  I wouldn't want to be anybody else (well, maybe for an hour or two.)
 
I think the idea of "trying on" another life, short-term, sounds like fun, and certainly Talli's book sounds like an entertaining read.  It's in my TBR queue on my Kindle this minute.

Just like in real life, I am one of the last to the party, even one that's online.  The link to find the rest of the party people participating is here on Talli Roland's blog.

Think the book sounds great?  Of course you do!  You can buy it:

Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/nIygHP

Amazon.com: http://amzn.to/riMpmH

So, who would YOU be, if you could be anyone else?

What if you just got to try on his/her life for size for a little while?