"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman".
S de Beauvoir.

"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity."
S Weil.

Andrew Niccol, that great defender of the real, the human, the soul in all its perfection and its flaws, saw in the turn-of-the-millennium with a soapy satire.

A tale both fairy and cautionary, S1m0ne stars Al Pacino and Niccol's own wife. Pacino, at the outset of his off-the-boil era, plays Victor, a director fed up with coddling the starlet egos of Hollywood. He crosses paths with a half-blind fan, who gifts him a piece of software - Simulation One, styled as S1m0ne - that allows Victor to create his perfect leading lady.

Everyone is enchanted with this new icon of cinema. No one suspects a thing.

The name Simone derives from Hebrew, meaning God has heard.

"I'm trying not to make my body a project."
My good friend.

Apparently, Simone de Beauvoir and Simone Weil met once. It didn't go well.

Weil declared that the only thing that mattered was, "the revolution that would feed all people on earth." Beauvoir claimed that the point of life was not happiness but to find meaning. Weil cut her off.

"It's easy to see you've never gone hungry".

"Simone has the voice of a young Jane Fonda, the body of Sophia Loren, the grace of, well, Grace Kelly, and the face of Audrey Hepburn combined with an angel."
Elaine Christian, S1m0ne.

You didn't have to strain to hear the boys at school, carving us up and putting us together to their vision of an optimised girl - her hair, her face, her legs... My parts do not feature.

One evening on MSN Messenger, I hit the jackpot. The boy I like, a couple of years above me, is not only online but also talking to me. After a giddy hour of chat, he sends me an image. I open it.

I'm looking at my face Photoshopped quite well onto a busty soft porn blonde. He follows it with a chaser.

you look better as a brunette

My stomach flips and drops all at once.

Victor gets himself and Simone into farcical scrapes as they dodge potential discovery, simultaneously managing to speedrun her through the various trappings of celebrity. She sings, selling out stadium gigs, appearing as a hologram. She wins Best Actress in a tie.

With herself.

Beauvoir feels like a teacher and Weil feels like a friend.

How is it that, in an age of hyper-individualism, everyone is scrambling to look the same?

I don't know what to do with the knowledge of Beauvoir's abuse of several very young women in her care, only how it makes me feel.

Victor is bothered that Simone gets all the attention, that he will get no credit for his creation. His ex-wife thinks the direction of flow runs the other way, gently reproaching him with, "Victor, she made you."

Victor becomes intent on destroying Simone. He has her court far right-wing views on immigration and guns, turns her rabidly pro-smoking, makes her directorial debut a disgusting affair... But the public loves her even more. TIME crowns her Person of the Year. She's a true artist who doesn't care what people think. In a fit of rage, Victor realises that he can effectively delete her by infecting her with a virus.

And he does, dumping the hard drive and disks into the sea for good measure.

The exact cause of Weil's death is uncertain. The inquest verdict declared, somewhat judgementally, that she, "did kill and slay herself by refusing to eat whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed." Her starvation could have been an act of solidarity with the suffering of French war victims. Perhaps she was so affected by reading Schopenhauer, she adopted extreme asceticism. Maybe it was the other way around, that her heart condition meant she couldn't eat.

I used to control my body to try and change what it looked like because I fervently believed that being thin was the magic spell to move through the world with ease. Now I find myself managing it, relieved for the days I'm given when my body works smoothly, its galaxies of processes whirring almost in tandem.

Eating disorders are wily things. They slither through your life, collecting reasons and excuses, powered by a yearning so strong that it could be mistaken for love.

What I swore was passionate was just desperate.

Simone is resurrected by Victor's young daughter, saving the day because she knows how to press Ctrl+Z. She reassures her father that fake is fine, "Just don't lie about it."

Victor spins a new narrative for him and Simone. They're married, they have a baby boy, named Chip. They might go into politics.

This film, with no teeth or sharp edges, ends with a wink direct to camera.

I claim to want to be whole but I keep butchering myself into pieces. Maybe I should just embrace the fragmentation.

Let myself become many women.