CHICAGO - Robyn Okrant's rangy body, clad in the black tunic and dark-wash jeans that Oprah Winfrey mandated in the "Shlumpadinka Makeovers" episode of her talk show, was bent over the vision board she was creating on the floor of her apartment.
A vision board is a collage, much like the magazine pastiches hanging in many teenagers' bedrooms, but the images and words here are meant to signify a 35-yearold woman's goals. Vision boards were promoted on the Feb. 6 episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, and if Winfrey is to be believed, it will help Okrant realize her dreams by keeping them in the forefront of her mind.
Later that day, Okrant wrote in her Web log about the vision board on livingoprah.com, where she documents the experiment she began Jan. 1: to live life according to the wellspring of advice that Winfrey offers on her show, her Web site and in O: The Oprah Magazine. In a mission statement, Okrant writes, "I wonder, will I find bliss if I commit wholeheartedly to her lifestyle suggestions?"
Her commitment is certainly unfaltering and, by some standards, unhinged. Even her mother, Marla Okrant, says, "I didn't think it was possible for her to do it, or anyone to do it, for an entire year."
Okrant, a yoga teacher who recently completed a master of fine arts degree in performance at the Art Institute of Chicago, watches Oprah every day and reads the monthly magazine cover to cover.She follows the commandments of Winfrey with an exacting attention. If Oprah were to tell viewers that they must see 27 Dresses, "I go do it," Okrant says. "If she merely says, 'Mary J. Blige's CDs are in stores today,' I don't buy it."
Okrant is tall ("I'm the same height as Tyra Banks," she says with a giggle) and has the deliberate movements of someone who uses her body for a living. There's a playful intensity to her dark brow when she speaks, which is freely and often. It's hard to believe that she is spending this year submitting to someone else's whims, even if that someone is the most influential woman in America.
"With some of the things, like the clothes, in the beginning I was like, 'How dare she tell me what to wear! I'm an individual!'" Okrant says. "But recently, when I went shopping with my mom, I was really excited to fulfill some of the rules. I felt kind of proud of myself. It takes a huge amount of pressure off to be handed a spiritual path. I'm kind of embarrassed to admit, but I can understand why people want it to be that way."
Winfrey's power, whether in the marketplace of books, fashion, beauty treatments or, this year, politics, is measurably enormous. Craig Garthwaite and Timothy Moore, economists at the University of Maryland, College Park, estimated that Winfrey's endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential primary season could have brought him more than a million votes.
Okrant estimates that she has spent more than $2,000 in her Living Oprah project. She devotes about 40 hours a week to following Winfrey's commands, she says, but that doesn't include the advice she has absorbed about her most basic functions. "Oprah says you must savor every meal, so now I eat more slowly," Okrant says. "Before, I just vacuumed up my food."
Yes, like many a blogger before her, she hopes there is a book deal in all this; she has a literary agent. But Okrant says she won't cash a check from any deal that materializes before the end of theyear, so as not to skew her year as Everywoman with an infusion of money.
"It's about what it really feels like to take Oprah's word as gospel, and about what Robyn learns from this," her friend Grace Bulger says.
For the most part, Okrant is deadpan about her experiences following Winfrey's advice to the letter. She does not mock her mentor's vast audience, but occasionally reflects on her blog about what they might really be seeking - beyond a tip about summer reading.
"I think they want her personal help, because they think she has the secret," she says about Winfrey. "She has a private plane and she came from nothing. If she has lifted herself up from the horrible background she came from, she's got the key. When she gives advice it's sort of like doling out some of that."
But there is also a negative side to this power. "Oprah's like the popular girl in high schoolwho knows how to emotionally blackmail us," Okrant says. "The way she'll deliver advice is, 'This will make you happy, unless you don't have enough self-esteem to do it.'"
She adds: "It's the illusion of free choice, but it's actually an absence of choice. When I'm told that it's my fault that something's not working, it's a little bit of a blow."
There's almost nothing Okrant doesn't consult Oprah about. If she has a fight with her husband, she looks up "conflict management"on the Oprah Web site. When she needs to cover the gray in her now-glossy curls, she uses the hair dye that was recommended in the August 2008 issue of Winfrey's magazine.
A representative for Winfrey's company, Harpo Inc., says Okrant "certainly takes brand dedication to new heights."
Okrant says she embarked on the project because she saw many women believing that every word of Winfrey's was gospel. She hoped to learn why her words carried such weight, even when they were contradictory at times. In the show's celebrated "Favorite Things" episodes, the audience is showered with stainless-steel refrigerators and flat-screen television sets. Yet, against these displays of materialism, Winfrey also freely dispenses spiritual advice.
Such mixed messages have been "a frustration we all feel with Oprah over the years," says Sarah Hepola, a lifestyle editor at Salon.com. "She is a representative for the average woman," Hepola says before pointing out, "At the same time that she is one of the richest people in the world."
Okrant refers to the ancillary advice-givers Winfrey regularly brings on the show as "Oprah's lieutenants." She is surrounded by evidence of their counsel. Martha Beck, a life coach, had endorsed the vision board Okrant was painstakingly working on.
Style, Pages 39 on 09/04/2008