Food and travel writing by Zora O’Neill

I worked as a freelance copy editor off and on for an awful lot of years at In Style Weddings. As a direct result, I eloped.

Not that I ever had dreams of a white princess dress, but after continued exposure to the minutiae of Tori Spelling’s signature cocktail, ways to insert your ethnicity into your ceremony, ways to insert your dog into your ceremony, gifts for your bridesmaids and other nuptial-alia… Just the thought of even the tiniest bit of wedding planning made me die inside. (And the word ‘nuptials’ still makes me gag.)

In much the same way, my other off-and-on copy-editing gig, at Us Weekly, has made me very, very sure I never want to be famous.

Well, OK–I don’t want to be Lindsay Lohan famous or even Meryl Streep famous. I cannot face having to smile at random people with cameras as I’m walking down the street. Nor the idea of some stranger coming up and saying, “Omigod! Omigod! Can you sign my T-shirt?”

I could stand being, say, Noam Chomsky famous. I would never recognize him on the street. Even if I did, what would I have to say to him? Smart, unrecognizable and with an air of intimidation–that kind of famous seems manageable. But still…why?

And it makes me wonder… Have the people who so desperately want to be famous–all those people clambering to get on reality shows–have they just never traveled?

Because let me tell you: Go stand on a corner in downtown Cairo, looking perplexed at the traffic and maybe wearing shorts. That’ll give you a taste of paparazzi-level fame in a heartbeat. It helps if you’re a woman, and have fairly light skin and maybe a little jiggle. But even without all that, you will still know what it’s like to have everyone in a five-block radius want a piece of you. Not necessarily in a sexy way, or in a money way, but just in a total-fascination-omigod-I-cannot-look-away way.

I have never been anywhere comparable to Egypt, where, for some reason, foreigners are still a totally mind-blowing phenomenon, even though they’ve been visiting the country for thousands upon thousands of years. You could make a good argument that Egypt has been courting tourists since ancient times, and yet still, no one is the least bit blase.

By contrast, when I was just in Spain… No one gave a damn. It was a little odd. I’d walk into a tiny bar in the middle of nowhere, and no one would bat an eye. I know I previously bragged about how I can pass as a Spaniard, but on the first trip I was with my white-haired mother (no dye job–obviously foreign) and on the second trip I had very obviously walked from the next village. No one even gave us a second glance. Ho-hum.

The strange emptiness I was a little embarrassed to feel may be what past-their-prime stars feel like when they go out in public. “Will they recognize me today?” they’re thinking, as they stroll the aisles of the drugstore. “Did that woman just double back to look at me again?” The closest we got to the glow of fame in Spain was occasionally in a tiny village, we’d be wandering around lost, and we’d pass an old man whose eyes were nearly bugging out of his head as you could see him thinking, “Ooh! Talk to me! Me! Ask me directions! Pleasepleaseplease!”

But in my experience, the sweet spot of famous–all of the respect, none of the sycophants and grabby crowds–is best simulated in Syria and Greece. Here, you’re accorded great respect and welcomed heartily. If people know something you may be interested in, they come up and introduce themselves. As a traveler, of course, these things are bit more pedestrian than VIP lounge access or whatever, but still, it’s nice to know where the best local spring water can be found, or which watermelon to pick from the roadside vendor.

And people give you lots of nice free stuff. In fact, I think this is much better than standard Hollywood fame. I would so much rather have a free glass of licorice drink than a crappy swag bag with a T-shirt and a few “luxury items” I’m never going to use. Extra sprigs of mint on my falafel sandwich, a “pay me next time” from the mini-pizza dude, a personal recommendation of the meaty pasta sauce from the train-station-cafe waitress–all these things make me feel like a Very Important Person.

But just as important: I don’t feel obligated. Getting crazy famous by definition means being blown all out of proportion–and when people find out you’re Just Like Us, well, they might be disappointed. And I imagine that could get nerve-racking for the famous person, leading to boozing, extensive therapy and Scientology. When you’re traveling, the attention you’re getting is based exactly on what you look like, right then, to the locals. If you’re not as thrilling as they’d hoped, well, that’s kind of their fault.

My dad has talked about traveling in Turkey in the 1960s, where he and my mom were often the most exciting thing to hit a village in years. People would come out and line the streets to look at them, and then when they got back to their hotel, people would be waiting, just to hang out and look at them some more. There were some long, awkward hours in their hotel rooms, while the locals waited for them to be interesting. That’s borderline bad famous, in terms of too much attention, but it’s also manageable–if these hotel-crashers got bored and left, so much the better.

So next time you feel like you’re not getting the public love you deserve, buy a plane ticket. It’s cheaper than a personal assistant, a Malibu mansion and the rehab you’d inevitably need after you made it to Hollywood. And in a foreign country, no one will take a photo of you while you’re eating.

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