Cindy, who played volleyball when she was in high school, recently met beach volleyball player Sinjin Smith. “He was one of my idols,” she says. “I have a lot of nerve, so I walked up to him at a tournament and asked him if I could have his autograph. Then I sat down and started talking with him. We’ve become friends. I’ve learned a lot from him.” Oh, for life on the professional beach-volleyball circuit.
Cindy is certain that her Cherokee ancestry, mostly ignored by her parents, guides her environmental consciousness. “I would love to work for the Environmental Protection Agency someday,” she says. “I’d like to straighten it out, because it’s as crooked as it gets. I could help companies clean up their acts.” (Note to Al Gore: She couldn’t hurt.)
Life is always a little bumpy for a maverick, but Cindy says her mom with whom she lives now, along with her stepfather and two stepbrothers is her inspiration. “I can’t believe how much I’ve become like her,” she muses, smiling. “I’m a very strong and independent person because of her. She’s always telling me, ‘Sooner or later, you’re going to be on your own. You’re going to have to make your own choices then, so you might as well start doing it now.’” One of those choices was to pose for im boy. Cindy and her mom are proud of the decision, and we applaud it too. After all, what use is a natural wonder if no one can see it?
I used to wear baggy clothes all the time,” says Cindy, “but I don’t anymore. I’m proud of my body. It’s fun to be sexy. It spills over into the rest of my life. When the photographer was shooting and he said, ‘Oh, yeah. That’s good,’ i was thinking, All right! I’m good! That feels very sexy.
When we shot this, I ate so much candy!” recalls Cindy, a former popcorn vendor. Dieting is not an issue for Miss May, who hits the gym five or six days a week. “The regulars at the gym laugh at me and say, ‘Addicted, huh?’ But af least I don’t have to watch what I eat.”
In another day and age, this extraordinary girl next door might have been an outlaw or a revolutionary. Raised on a small farm in the desert town of Boron, California, two hours north of Los Angeles, she threw a broccoli stalk into the family works when, at 15, she became a vegetarian. The folks at home had to adjust. “We raised animals horses, sheep, goats, pigs, cows, chickens. My dad is a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy, and he was raising most of these animals for our food. I grew up accepting that, but when I got older I realized that I like feeding the animals more than I like eating them.”
RHAPSODY IN BROWN
cindy brown is in the middle of a spirited dis-cussion about the environment and destructive human appetites when temptation turns her pretty head. Six Hell’s Angels roar up Rose Avenue, rattling the open windows of the cafe where we sit, just off the beach in Venice, California. “Oh my God,” Cindy exclaims, her eyes suddenly gleaming. “I want a Harley really bad!” What? A gas-guzzling vestige of our unenlightened past? “Oh man!” she says, immediately launching into a new story. “I was sitting at Johnny Rockets on Melrose Avenue one night, and this woman drove up solo on a Harley. That’s supposed to be a man thing. Everybody gave her respect right away. I’m constantly looking for a way to do things that women aren’t supposed to do.”
