Media star makes first official hometown visit promoting her new book
By Rick Bird
Post staff reporter
Tara will be coming home to see family and friends.
Carmen will sign books on “How to Be Sexy.”
Welcome to the split personality world of Carmen Electra, raised Tara Patrick in the Cincinnati suburb of White Oak, a 1990 Princeton High School graduate, who also attended the School for Creative and Performing Arts.
It would be Prince who gave Tara her stage name after spotting the dancer in Los Angeles, then signing her to a recording contract. It was up to Tara to provide the stage persona.
That she has done with a 15-year career in movies, as an MTV host, a “Baywatch” TV babe, a Playboy spread (May 1996), singer, dancer and aerobics video instructor. And now, author.
Carmen Electra will be at Joseph-Beth May 15 signing copies of her new book “How to Be Sexy,” released Tuesday.
Remarkably, it will be the first time in her celebrity career that she has had an official public appearance in her hometown.
“It is. I’m so excited,” Carmen said in a recent phone interview. “I’m excited to get a chance to see my family, have Skyline Chili and, hopefully, go back to Kings Island, which was one of my first jobs.”
Since dancing on a Kings Island stage after high school, Carmen Electra has become sort of a queen of all media, even as Tara says she remains a Cincinnati girl at heart. She still has plenty of extended family in the area, including her father, Harry Patrick.
After recording one CD with Prince, she started getting acting roles. She has over three dozen movie credits, hundreds of TV show appearances and numerous commercials, including Max Factor, Taco Bell and Ritz Camera. She has a best-selling DVD series, “Aerobics Striptease” (not quite as risqué as the title suggests) and is a character in video games.
Tara admits being Carmen is “sort of like having a brand. I’d like to do a clothing line. That’s next.”
She also says having a stage name and persona has helped her deal with being “painfully shy.”
“People that really know me know that I’m super shy in real life. And actually kind of quiet,” she said. “That’s surprising to people who have seen me on camera or read articles. For some reason when the camera’s on, I know how to turn it on. Maybe it is a stage presence and having a fun name to play off of.”
As for the new book, Carmen acknowledges calling her “author” is a stretch. In fact, in the book she says, “I hate to have to read books. Even now, I will never read a novel.”
Her writing style? Well, there were lots of phone chats with Sheryl Berk, who actually wrote the book (Berk has co-authored books with Britney Spears and Jamie-Lynne Sigler).
“Every day we got on the phone together and she just asked me a lot of questions. We’d talk all day. I’d give her ideas and she’d give me ideas.”
The book is part autobiography, with Tara sharing some of the tough times in her life, like the death of her mom from a brain tumor in 1998. She says sharing how she dealt with the experience was therapeutic.
She also remembers her first role model for being sexy was Ann-Margret. At 12, Tara appeared in an SCPA production of “Bye Bye, Birdie,” the movie role that made Ann-Margret famous.
“I remember my mom bought me the movie and I just thought she was so amazing,” Tara said. “I’d try to copy her moves and the way she danced.”
The book is obviously aimed at teenage girls (guys of all ages will enjoy the multitude of Carmen pictures) with chatty, practical advice on hair, makeup, clothes, body language and style that could come out of a Seventeen magazine. Carmen says the book is not to be taken too seriously and, in truth, there is little danger of that happening.
“The book is fun and campy,” she says. “It’s just sharing some tips. Silly stuff. Girl stuff. Like what happens if you have a zit and have to go out on the red carpet.”
She said she was inspired to do the book, remembering old Glamour magazines her mother had around the house. “I felt the images, some from the ’50s, were sexy, but cute, and that’s what I wanted to capture - keep it classy and sophisticated.”
The book’s unapologetic how-to approach to pleasing, seducing and attracting men will likely drive feminists apoplectic. But in the end, Carmen’s philosophy (if you can call it that) is a traditional wholesome and positive message of finding your inner beauty: “Just being strong and confident is sexy…. It’s learning how to embrace your flaws as your own individual characteristic.”
Tara said one of her earliest memories of understanding sexuality was actually watching her mom work out. She was a third-degree black belt.
“I grew up as a little girl watching her competing and breaking boards, being this super strong woman. I wanted to take karate so bad, but she wanted me to be a dancer. She put me in dance classes. I thought karate could be very sexy in the sense that it’s about being a strong woman and in control and fending for yourself.”
While Tara shares plenty of personal stories and career moves in her book, there are some she doesn’t discuss. Like her strange on-again, off-again marriage to Dennis Rodman, her decision to have breast implants or her most recent divorce, finalized in February, from Dave Navarro, guitarist with Jane’s Addiction.
Planning their wedding was the subject of a 2004 reality series, “Till Death Do Us Part: Carmen & Dave” on MTV. Ironically, it was packaged with the second season of “The Newlyweds” starring another Cincinnati celebrity, Nick Lachey, and his then wife, Jessica Simpson. (Tara says she was in a SCPA production with Lachey of “Peter Pan” where she was Tiger Lily and Nick was a Lost Boy.)
As it turned out, the reality shows would prove more successful than each couple’s marriage. Lachey and Jessica Simpson were divorced last summer.
“People do ask all the time if you regret putting your marriage out there and doing a show like that,” Carmen said. “We don’t. Dave and I are still really good friends. We were both really proud of that time of our lives. We’re so happy we were able to share that moment with everyone and have that footage forever.”
Her next project may be how to be sexy and pregnant. Carmen, who turned 35 two weeks ago, says she would like to start a family.
“I’ve always dreamt of being a mom. I definitely look forward to that. To me it puts everything in perspective.”
No word on possible candidates for Mr. Carmen Electra. But, as they say, stay tuned.
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