Oprah Winfrey loves the turkey burgers at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago restaurant in Palm Beach and thinks everyone should “experience” them. So last week Lo, a blogger whose pseudonym is an acronym that stands for Living Oprah, spent an evening sauteing Granny Smith apples, fresh parsley, and celery and blending the mixture with $28 worth of organic turkey meat. “Usually our dinners take about 30 minutes to make,” she says. This one took three hours.
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A longtime member of Chicago’s independent performance community, Lo’s known for taking on grueling roles—in one performance she played twin sisters who live alone in a cave. This new role has its own demands. Every day, Lo tapes Oprah, even if it’s a rerun. She watches each episode at least twice, taking notes and looking for key words—you “gotta” try this product, you “must” read this book, you “should” go out right now and eat this—and then does as she’s commanded. She’s got about 40 cassettes so far; until she packed them for the move they were strewn around the living room. “It was definitely a little mad,” she says. “I’m planning on better organization for our new place.”
Living Oprah got its start one day three years ago when Jim came home from work to find Lo, who’s suffered from scoliosis since her early 20s, lying on the floor in pain. Doctors wanted to fuse her spine together. “That’s Western medicine,” Lo says. She began searching for alternatives online and noticed that many holistic methods used the pitch line “As seen on Oprah!” Lo was also noticing how her mother, friends, and yoga students all talked about Oprah as if she were a friend. “Well, Oprah says that we should . . . ” they’d say. Even Lo’s grandmother was in on it, urging Lo to contact Oprah for help with her career. “My grandmother kept telling me for years to get in touch with Oprah. She didn’t understand why I didn’t ask her for help. She seemed to think that was all it took.”
Also that month, at Oprah’s direction, Lo switched from overhead lighting to lamps, added something “from the sea” to each room, framed important notes, saw Juno, took an online clutter test, purchased a Post-it highlighter, and cooked mustard-grilled chicken and roast potatoes with lemons.
She tried on trenches and turtlenecks for weeks but couldn’t find any that fit that she could also afford. Readers of her blog advised her to shop online, which she did; $234 later, Lo had new items from Macy’s, Victoria’s Secret, Target, and Marshalls. “I never choose to dress in this manner, but this year is tossing me into many awkward behaviors,” Lo wrote March 10. “One side effect of the leopard print flats is that my cat is ceaselessly attacking my feet.”
Oprah’s producers didn’t respond to a request for a reaction to this story, and Lo said she hasn’t been contacted by them. But she’s received e-mails defending Oprah from what they perceive as Lo’s malicious intent. “You have nothing better to do?” wrote Bobbie Jo from Boise. “Why would you try to take someone that is only trying to do good things on this planet and make a mockery of her? . . . I watch Oprah. And take what is important to me and what touches my life. Whether it be medical advice, inspirational stories, her own personal actions or experiences, it’s up to you to take from it what you need at that particular time.”
