They say all it girls go to heaven. No matter what they’ve done, or which fat girl they’ve laughed at with their gaggle of thin friends (and yes, even in the present, we know “body positivity” is a lie). Jane was probably going to go to heaven. She never mocked anyone for their plumper body (at least, not out loud). Even though she herself was mocked for having such a thin one. Yes, just once in her life, her waifishness was not deemed “attractive.” Instead she was called the “half boy, half girl” (couldn’t they have just simplified that with “hermaphrodite” or something?). Especially when the other girls in her grade started to develop tits. But they would see. She would show them. That is, just how valuable a flat chest could be. After all, that was the fashionable appearance of the time. The “Swinging Sixties.”

And yet, for as “made for London” as Jane was, she ended up in France. Because that’s the thing about France, and Paris in particular—it reels you in when you’re never expecting it. Jane could have probably gone on living forever in London. Had she not been given a taste of Paris…and Serge. Brutish, hideous Serge. Who came across all the more that way whenever he was positioned next to Jane—which was often. Particularly during their filming of Slogan together. She had only auditioned on a lark, really. Since she didn’t speak a lick of French, she assumed they’d laugh her out of the audition. Turns out, “being hot” really can get you everywhere (heaven included). It’s the next best thing to having a lot of money, opening-doors-that-shouldn’t-really-be-open-to-you-wise. And then, once your hotness opens the doors, the money will come later.

What Jane hadn’t counted on though was Serge. How every it girl apparently needs a Svengali type to shepherd them into the “mainstream underground.” She had seen it happen to Edie, too. From “across the pond.” Only later would she wonder, “When will us it girls learn that we don’t need any man to validate our ‘it-ness’?” To this day, it girls still fall prey to the trap. Even Paris Hilton thought she had to sleep with some gross older dude and make a sex tape with him in order to be “validated” as “the hottest.” Jane supposed that’s really what being an it girl was all about: being assured you were the hottest of them all. The phrase made her shudder as she thought about the lengths that the Evil Queen in Snow White would go to in order to maintain that title (“fairest,” “hottest,” they were all synonyms for the same thing: being the most desired).

What lengths would she go to? Jane asked herself. And, as 1969 rolled around, she found out. She was going to record the “Erotica” of her day in a little ditty called “Je t’aime… moi non plus.” Filled with moans and other assorted sex sounds, Jane became a true it girl that year for being branded a slut…just because she could sing sensually. And yet, the only reason she even wanted to record the damn thing was because Serge was going to offer it to Brigitte instead. She couldn’t have that. Couldn’t risk being outdone, or seen as the less hot one. Not that Brigitte wouldn’t get the last laugh anyway. She would outlive Jane, and then say something as passive aggressive as, “Quand on est aussi jolie, aussi fraiche, aussi spontanée, avec une voix d’enfant, on n’a pas le droit de mourir.” It felt like shade, for sure. Because Brigitte knew goddamn well that Jane was no longer “fraiche” or “jolie” at all. Of course, there were those who liked to tell women such as Jane that they would be forever young—onscreen. That’s where their youth lived immortally. A blessing and a curse. Because it meant you would be damned to see yourself at your best being constantly pitted against your ever-worsening “aesthetic condition.”

Talking of age and ageists, Jane had worked with Jean-Luc in the past. That is well past his prime. Yet Jean-Luc had the nerve to say—while funneling the dialogue through “a character”—“I think women should never be older than twenty-five.” Jane violated that “rule” in 1972, as she turned twenty-six. Did that mean she could no longer really be an it girl? That it was time to “pass the baton.” But to who? There was no one who could hold a candle to Jane, not on either side of the Atlantic. So she kept going. Kept “collaborating.” Who was a muse to deny her role in the artist’s journey? Never mind that she herself would never be called an artist. Not until her death, anyway. The aftermath of which she would accurately predict by remarking, “I know that, when I die, on the news that’s the record they’ll play as I go out feet first.” “Je t’aime… moi non plus.”

It’s not easy, being forever associated as some older man’s “muse.” Jane’s beauty, like the beauty of all it girls, was a cross to bear. She would never be seen for anything beyond it, even when her looks faded and she started to focus on more noble causes. But to society, what could be nobler than being young and beautiful? And even when an it girl distinguished herself from non-it girls, they were still treated namelessly, replaceably. That’s why Jane was given film credits like “A Blonde,” “Girl on Motorbike” and “Exquisite Thing.” And oh, what an exquisite “thing” she was. The ideal. The catch-all to fulfill the male (and female) fantasy. Her body type wasn’t “cartoonish” or “garish,” like Marilyn Monroe’s. Her personality was “mutable”—ranging from the demure to the sex kitten.

To that end, the it girl is everything to everyone—both unique and somehow attainable. Jane supposed that was how the Birkin bag came to be. And though she didn’t know it at the time when the chairman and artistic director of Hermès decided her hand-woven “basket bag” would make a wonderful prototype for a luxury purse named after her, this was part of how she could be “accessible” to those who were not as attractive. It was that bag and the aforementioned erotic song that would serve as her most enduring legacies. She wasn’t sure what it was about those two rather minor things that made her so “it.”

In the years that followed her “heyday” (that cruel word that indicates you’re somehow no longer relevant), Jane would modestly state of her success, “How much talent did I really have? Perhaps not that much.” But is it not a talent to be an it girl? Not just anyone can do it. And that’s part of why all it girls must surely go to heaven. Plus, they’d look so hot in those skimpy white robes accessorized with angel wings.

Let’s also not discount that even when you arrive somewhere as “egalitarian” as heaven, being hot is what helps get you through the door (or pearly gates, in this case)…though you shouldn’t necessarily get that kind of “pass” solely for having a surfboard body and doe eyes (these qualities being automatically restored upon “receipt” of one’s afterlife). But the gravest of so-called sins could be overlooked when they were blurred by the glamoring nature of it girl beauty. Which is probably why Jane could have afforded to a be a bit more diabolique.