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Stephen Fried
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Thing of Beauty Mass Market Paperback – June 1, 1994

by Stephen Fried (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 726 ratings
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The “vivid…exhaustive” (The New York Times Book Review) account of the iconic and tragic life, career, and legacy of supermodel Gia Carangi.

At seventeen, Gia Carangi was working the counter at her father’s Philadelphia luncheonette. Within a year, she was one of the world’s top models, gracing the covers of Cosmopolitan and Vogue, partying at Studio 54, and redefining the fashion industry’s standard of beauty.

But behind the glitz and fame, Gia was a young woman in pain, desperate for her mother’s approval and facing a drug addiction that quickly spun out of control. With dizzying speed, she went from $10,000-a-day fashion shoots to using drugs on the streets of New York and Atlantic City before finally being blackballed from modeling. At twenty-six, Gia once again made history as one of the first famous women to die of AIDS.

This “chilling tale” (The Boston Globe), based on hundreds of interviews with friends, family, lovers, and fashionistas (the term author Stephen Fried coined for her industry colleagues), is comprehensively explored in this unputdownable biography that will introduce Gia to a new generation. It is also a powerful exploration of our society’s views of beauty and sexuality, fame and objectification, mothers and daughters, love and death.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    432 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Pocket Books
  4. Publication date
    June 1, 1994
  5. Dimensions
    4.19 x 1 x 6.75 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0671701053
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0671701055
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Trashy celebrity bios are usually diminished by the fact that we've already heard the stories about Lonnie and Burt, or Madonna and Sean, or whoever the current target is. Author Stephen Fried manages to get all the sleaze value plus a lot of surprises by choosing supermodel Gia Carangi as his topic. Although her face is widely recognized, Gia finished her modeling career in a blaze of heroin and disease just before the time when models became celebrities with name recognition. Her life is the perfect fodder for the exploitation market, but Fried goes beyond that with fluid prose and a reporter's nose for tracking down sources. His stories about her teenage years, with their mix of late nights in Philadelphia's gay clubs, manic worship, and glam-style imitation of David Bowie, as well as tales of Gia's ability to seduce her friends, male and female, are the product of a lot of work and make for very interesting reading. Gia's unabashed homosexuality and early death from AIDS make her story a palimpsest of life on the edge in the America of the 1980s.

From Publishers Weekly

Charts international cover girl Gia Carangi's descent from $10,000-a-day modeling jobs to heroin addiction and death from AIDS at age 26. Photos.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pocket Books; Reprint edition (June 1, 1994)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 432 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0671701053
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0671701055
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.19 x 1 x 6.75 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 726 ratings

About the author

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Stephen Fried

Stephen Fried

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Stephen Fried is an award-winning journalist and best-selling author who teaches at Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. His books include the acclaimed biographies RUSH: Revolution, Madness & Benjamin Rush, the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father (finalist for the George Washington Book Prize), APPETITE FOR AMERICA: Fred Harvey & the Business of Civilizing the Wild West--One Meal at a Time (NYTimes best seller & Wall Street Journal 10 best books of the year), and THING OF BEAUTY: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia (inspired Emmy-winning HBO film "Gia" & introduced the word "fashionista"); as well as BITTER PILLS, THE NEW RABBI & HUSBANDRY.

He was also co-author, with former Congressman Patrick Kennedy, of the NYTimes bestseller A COMMON STRUGGLE; their next book PROFILES IN MENTAL HEALTH COURAGE, will be published in May 2024.

A two-time winner of the National Magazine Award, Fried has written for Vanity Fair, Glamour, Washington Post Magazine, GQ, Smithsonian, Rolling Stone, and Philadelphia magazine. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, author Diane Ayres. www.stephenfried.com

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
726 global ratings
great book! This company is very honest
5 Stars
great book! This company is very honest
came very fast, great book! This company is very honest. I love it!
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Top reviews from the United States

Sheena
5.0 out of 5 stars Overall - great book!
Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2021
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This was a great biography. I'm a bigger reader of fiction than non-fiction, but this long book about a woman's short life read really beautifully and made for a very interesting, albeit devastatingly sad, story. A couple criticisms are that Stephen Fried's biases do come out in the writing of this book: (1) obvious civic pride for Philadelphia (which I found enjoyable and entertaining), (2) a somewhat racist view toward some of the scenarios in the book, (3) a "traditionalist" male gaze toward the female dominated industry of which he is writing: modeling. These biases become more obvious the further into the book you get. Especially when he speaks of former model, Ann Simonton, whose activism was clearly based in self loathing, yet the author praises her activism. He frequently blames the modeling industry for the insecurities and drug problems of the people within this industry, but it's obvious that the issues that Gia and other folks in the industry have are due to personal issues. As in Gia's case, she had abandonment issues due to her mother's general absence (which the book does highlight) and perhaps her family's rejection of her sexuality. It would have been good to have more perspective into the fashion/beauty/media world for the main chunk of the book that focuses on the modeling industry, modeling agencies, the lives of photographers, etc... As for Gia's addiction and psychological issues that drove her to addiction, the book gets a little deeper into what's going on in Gia's head in the last few chapters as she is also developing AIDS. The ending brought me to tears, but I was happy to see that so many of the folks that Gia worked with are alive and successful, although the ending does tell the tail of AIDS ravaging such a large portion of the fashion/beauty/media scene in NYC. It is overall a very well researched and a well written piece of writing. Really good book!
17 people found this helpful
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Angie Philpot
5.0 out of 5 stars Paper Back Book
Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2024
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Enjoyed reading. Good price
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Ema Nnep
4.0 out of 5 stars Illusion vs. reality never holds up
Reviewed in the United States on November 22, 2001
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I can remember when I was in elementary school and I saw Gia on the cover of Cosmopolitan and I thought to myself, " I wish I could grow up to look like her." I was completely stunned when I found out years later that Gia, the model I had wanted so desperately to look like, had died in horrifically.
I bought the book because of that memory, to see if I couldn't learn something about the woman beyond the image on the glossy cover of the magazine and I found myself mourning for a girl who was lost and had no chance of finding her way out the darkness she was mired in.
The book introduces you to Gia's mother, father, her siblings,and the people she loved most in her life. It was amazing to me that someone so gifted at birth with beauty saw nothing beautiful in herself and spent her life trying to escape the world she created around herself. I got a sense that her mother never realized the damage she did to her daughter by abandoning her children to her ex-husband and she would never accept the responsibility for the pain she inflicted on her daughter. She manipulated her daughter whenever she could. She wanted to live through Gia and in doing so she sucked the joy from her daughter's life.
Having lived the life of an manipulated, stifled child, I could clearly see where the darkness began to seal around Gia. I think that she would have been able to traverse the pitfalls alot better if she had had a friend or two who had wanted only her best interests to be served and not grab a piece of Gia for themselves.
She was a fractured young woman in need of stability and it was only offered to her in segments and at a very high cost. The people around her only brokered the bits and pieces they knew about her. Unfortunately, the one left with the tab was Gia, who died young, in anonymity and without any of her dazzling beauty left. What she found in the end was the fragments of a dream that she truly wanted to pursue, but her chance to grasp the shooting star was lost.
You can never judge a book by its cover and never a person by their physical beauty or lack of it. What makes a person unique is their spirit and the trials and triumphs that they have endured in their lives. Gia didn't have a chance from the start. It didn't matter how beautiful she was, there was no fairy tale ending for her, despite the brilliance of her arrival and short stay in the glittering world of the wealthy and trendy.
This book is great for those who forget that money and beauty can't buy happiness. Gia's couldn't. This book should be a warning and a legacy. A disturbing read but clearly worthwhile.
56 people found this helpful
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Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Good
Reviewed in the United States on April 1, 2024
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I haven't gotten to read it yet
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Dayna A. Safranek
3.0 out of 5 stars Sad Story
Reviewed in the United States on May 18, 2012
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This is truly a sad story. Reading about the rise and fall of such a beautiful woman that was so for apart inside was truly saddening. I did find though that most of the content of the book was about what the modeling and clubbing scene was like in the 80's and not a not of content about what Gia was doing personally. It was a good book and I enjoyed reading it, but I wish there was more information about her personally. Scavullo's recounts were wonderful, but I found her mother to to have commented more in a "poor me" sense. Gia was a shooting star and had such a brief time in the spotlight, but what she left behind is a story about how sometimes the world is not always as beautiful and glamourous as it appears. She will not soon be forgotten and I wish she could have lived longer to have done more with the project she wanted to create of women with AIDS. I guess it all boils down to.... what is told about Gia is not any new news that can't be found anywhere on the internet and that the book spent too much time focusing about what everyone else was doing (probably Gia as well). There was no real insight into her brief and tragic life.
5 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Alma Delia Ramírez
5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente Historia
Reviewed in Mexico on May 20, 2022
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Fue un regalo para una amiga muy querida, le ha gustado mucho
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SONIA
5.0 out of 5 stars L'envers du décor
Reviewed in France on October 20, 2023
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Excellent livre
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Aguida Labiapari
5.0 out of 5 stars Book
Reviewed in Brazil on January 25, 2021
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Gostei e compraria de novo
One person found this helpful
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roberta lanzoni
2.0 out of 5 stars Troppo peso
Reviewed in Italy on April 2, 2020
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Molto pesante ma non perche è in inglese...troppi dettagli tecnici sulla moda dell epoca e davvero poco sulla vita dell attrice.
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C Jamison
5.0 out of 5 stars Tragic Loss
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 14, 2019
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The book is Gia's life story that interweaves with the story of the 'modeling scene' she was involved with. It was all pretty mad with drugs affecting pretty much everyone involved: models, photographers, make up artists, hair stylists etc.
Lots of characters from the industry give their thoughts on the Gia and the whole scene and it makes for a very good read.
In the end I felt sorry for Gia, she was just a kid when her mother (who, let's face it, only seemed interested in herself!) walked out on her and her brothers, and Gia was still a teenager when she entered the world of modeling. Her shocking natural beauty catipulated her to the top very very quickly, but with heroin entering the scene, she sunk just as quick.

A really good book.
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