From this link:

http://www.gobelle.com/p/articles/mi_m1264/is_n11_v23/ai_13459177

THE HOTEL, THE LATEST IN NEW YORK CHIC, IS A PALACE OF GLITZ AND
GLAMOUR. THE WOMAN WHO BECKONS ME INTO HER SUITE, WITH A
BOISTEROUS "HI, THERE!" AND A WIDE SMILE, STANDS IN STARK CONTRAST
TO HER ELEGANT SETTING. NO GLITZ OR GLAMOUR HERE. POPULAR SINGER
Patti Austin is dressed in a gray sweatshirt and old, funky, baggy
black pants. She is without makeup, hair weave, jewelry or shoes. In
a business where image is everything, Patti Austin is daring to just
be herself. And her statement is a powerful one that takes guts and
a strong sense of identity.

But this external display of comfort has not always been her style.
During an afternoon, as the noted Austin wit takes a backseat to
honesty, she admits that she once lacked self-esteem and sought
an "in-your-face" kind of stardom to shield herself from the
insecurities that she didn't realize she had. It took disaster and
near tragedy to turn her head and life around.

Austin's self-discovery took her by surprise. The time was the early
eighties. "I was making a buck and a big splash. I was partying
nightly in high-rent districts with highly visible people," Austin
recalls. "My main concerns were looking good, the parties I would
attend and the size of the limousine that would take me to them. I
was solely focused on making it, and making it to me meant status,
having it all, and 'all' meant stuff.

"And I had stuff, including my own huge, lavishly decorated home,
which was visible proof of my success and worth, particularly in a
business that measures a person's success by the size of her house
and car and the amount of her stuff. In my mind, I was happening. I
was big!" she says.

And then came the disaster. Her home burned to the ground in a flash
fire that destroyed everything. Her stuff was in ashes, as were the
symbols of her success--the crystal, the china, the silver. All was
lost except for her parents, and they, too, would have died had they
remained in the house ten seconds longer.

Austin becomes emotional when she recalls how near she came to
losing her parents, to whom she has always been very close. Even
today, in the new home she has built in upstate New York, her
parents, Gordon and Edna Austin, married 45 years, live with her.
They are a stabilizing force in her life and have been since her
childhood.

"Something snapped in me when I saw how close I had come to losing
them," says Austin. "The near tragedy made me turn inward to examine
my priorities and examine myself. It was as if my eyes opened for
the first time, and I didn't much like what I saw in myself or in
those with whom I was hanging. Yes, they were the 'happening' people-
-on the charts and in the news--but they were miserable in their
persistent bed hoppings. They were all doing too many drugs and too
much booze. They all had lots of stuff but not much soul or heart.
And I looked at these people and thought, Who are they? Why am I
with them? Why am I living with a man who does tootski every night?
Why am I so preoccupied with stuff instead of being occupied with
me, the real me? And who is the real me?

So she embarked on what proved to be a slow and often painful
metamorphosis. She "cleaned house," dropping friends and her cocaine-
abusing boyfriend. She decided not to party with people whose only
reason for being in her life was to further their careers. And she
further declared her freedom when she refused to record bad songs--a
position that angered record companies that believed those songs,
bad or not, might sell. Her position so enraged one famous record
producer that he actually threatened, "You'll never record in this
town again!" To which she replied, "So?" And when that same record
company requested she diet for promotional pictures and album
covers, she refused. "It's my singing people are buying, not my
body," she told the company.

Austin says her income and status fell when she stopped "trying to
please the powers that be because I wasn't pleasing me." As she
restructured her life, she realized just how out of touch she had
been with what is important in life. "Rather than face how bad I
truly felt about me, I stuffed myself with stuff, puffed myself up
with a false sense of power and importance," she remembers. "Finally
I just couldn't hide from the fact that I felt I simply wasn't
enough, that I was lacking in some essential way."

Patti Austin has been performing for 40 of her 44 years. She was 4
years old when family friend and godmother Dinah Washington led her
onstage at the Apollo Theatre to sing a duet of "Teach Me Tonight."
The applause was deafening and addictive. As a young child Austin
sang on Star Time, a weekly network variety show.

At 20, after an uneventful teenage turn as a recording artist, she
became a premiere singer of jingles in commercials. It wasn't until
the 1970's that she resumed her solo career.

Today, despite two top-ten classic duets with James Ingram--"Baby
Come to Me" and "How Do You Keep the Music Playing"--many critically
acclaimed albums, concerts and TV dates, Austin has yet to achieve
the superstardom she once ardently pursued. But she is revered by
her peers: Everyone from Quincy Jones to opera diva Kathleen Battle
sings her praises.

James Ingram suggests that because Austin's talents are so diverse--
she can switch effortlessly from R & B and soul to pop to jazz--
record companies don't know how to market her. Most music-industry
pundits agree that it is important for an artist to establish
herself in a particular market in order to achieve an "in-your-face"
stardom.
But there may be other reasons for Austin's middling success.
Becoming a superstar often takes simple-minded determination. Austin
admits she didn't have it. "Even as I flirted with and courted fame,
I had a love-hate relationship with it," she says.

"Over the years, I saw too many women handle fame well, women who
drifted into excesses of drugs, drink or sex. An African-American
woman needs a very firm hold on herself to survive in this business.
Not many of us have that, and even fewer of us are aware that we
don't.

"The rejection can be killing, and it kills faster and more
effectively when its victim already feels she is lacking in some
vital way. And where does this feeling come from? From the culture
in this country, which makes it damn near impossible for a Black
child, and particularly a Black girl, to grow up thinking she is
beautiful just the way she is. From childhood we are bombarded with
images that erode our confidence and self-esteem.
"With rare exception, in the films or TV shows I watched, in the
novels I read, the heroines were all blonde, blue-eyed and white
with flowing hair and porcelain complexions. From the time I was old
enough to comprehend, the message was: Perfection is a white woman,
and anything less is lacking. And the message, because it was so
insidious, was received and programmed somewhere deep within my
psyche and soul.

"That message sapped my strength and sense of self. Now I understand
why I needed stuff. If you feel bad about yourself on the inside,
you'll cover the feeling with clothes, furs, things. But it doesn't
work. It can't. I didn't begin to feel good about me until I could
look in the mirror and say: 'Hey, I am what and who I am, and what I
am is a big, bold, beautiful Black woman with a good heart and a
good soul."

Although she says she is still "a work in progress," Patti Austin
has obviously come home to herself. She has come to accept her
weight, something that once devastated her but no longer does.

"I was 16 when doctors prescribed birth-control pills to offset a
severely aberrant menstrual cycle," she explains. "Within six weeks
I ballooned from 115 to 170 pounds, and it's been up and down ever
since. Now I am slowly dieting again, but for reasons of health --
my blood pressure, and asthma that is often quite severe--rather
than for vanity. Yes, I would like to look better, but now that I
feel better about myself, it's not as important as it once was."

She does not believe her size has hurt her career--"My voice is my
voice, fat or thin"--or hindered her meeting men. "Hey, when I was
115 pounds, I had trouble meeting men," she quips. "But I have never
had trouble meeting boys. Lots of boys. Too many boys." She explains
the difference: "Men are people who stop pointing the finger, stop
assessing blame and take responsibility for their lives. They get on
with it. Boys believe their realities are created by such
circumstances as racism and are set in stone. With so many boys out
there--and girls, this is not just a man thing--it can get awfully
lonely."
But not now. Austin is involved, and has been for the past three
years, with a man whose name she will not disclose but of whom she
speaks with warmth, respect and admiration.

"Frankly, I don't know if I'm in love or if I can be in love at this
stage of my life, or if it is even necessary that I be," she
says. "When I was younger, being in love was all I wanted. Now, to
be comfortable with a man who is bright, sensitive and seeking to
grow seems more important. At 44, it's become far less about my
crotch than about my brain. And this man gives me the best mental
shtupping I've never known."

Although she says they share common values and similar goals, she is
cautious about giving the relationship greater importance in her
life than it truly has. "Somewhere within me is the picture of Dinah
Washington. I watched her marry six to seven times because she felt
incomplete without a man, which is a malady most of us women have.
Dinah was so needy despite her enormous fame. Needy and lonely.
Okay, we've all been there, too, but Dinah never understood that in
some of us, a certain kind of loneliness will always be there. She
tried to fix it with stuff and men, and she couldn't. I'm trying to
fix it myself. I feel if I don't bring that kind of neediness to a
relationship, its chances for survival are that much greater. I love
the fact that this man makes me feel good. But I still think I
should be able to do that for myself, that I should be able to fix
me rather than ask that some man do it for me."
Yet, she admits, "I really do want to be happily married at long
last, and maybe to this man." She would also like to have a
child. "And soon," she adds, "as I not only hear my biological clock
ticking but the band marching and the symbols crashing. Some part of
me wants to run right now to the nearest foundling home and scoop up
some little brown baby and run for my house in the country. I do so
want to be a mother."

She resists her impulse "because I come from a home where my parents
always put their children first. We were their focus. Even though
both worked, one or the other always managed to be home, to be our
rock and shelter, and this, I believe, is how it should be if a
child is to have a shot at growing up reasonably sane and secure in
this often crazy world of ours. Well, right now I can't make a child
my sole focus, as I must work," she continues. "Not for the
expression--although I love to sing for people--but for the money.
Much of the savings I accumulated was lost by creative accounting
that has left me in a tax mess. There is no way I can support a
child right now and give him not only the basics but the assurance
that a college education awaits him when he grows up. And although I
chose to enter the music business rather than accept the scholarship
I won to Barnard College, I believe that an education should come
first.

"Even if I marry this man--and there is that possibility--there is
still no guarantee that I wouldn't have to work; he is involved in
trying to make his career happen, which means at this time in our
lives, neither one of us can make a child our focus, can be there
for it consistently. And in my mind, one of us must."

It is ironic that now when fame means less to her than it once did,
Austin must work. Ironic, also, because she is currently besieged
with offers. When producers are casting about for "names" for new
Black sitcoms, hers, despite her lack of acting experience, is
frequently mentioned. And it is not the producers who reject her
now, Austin does the rejecting.

"I found their products largely insulting to the intelligence of
Black people," she explains. "They promote racial stereotypes, and
I'm strongly against that." She has agreed, however, to host a talk
show on Black Entertainment Network. Thus stardom of the in-your-
face variety remains a distinct possibility for Austin. The question
is: Does she still want it?

"I don't think so," she says softly. "My goal today is not about the
stuff of which stars are made but the stuff that makes happy people.
Fame and its demands still scare me. What I want from life is to be
more centered, more happy, more peaceful. After all I've been
through, I'd have to be some kind of fool to think being a bigger
star, or any kind of star, would make me any of those things."

COPYRIGHT 1993 Essence Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group