Living la vida Oprah

CHICAGO – It’s probably too much to call it Stockholm syndrome.

But more than nine months into her yearlong attempt to follow every bit of advice Oprah Winfrey doles out, whether in the magazine, on the Web site or on her TV show, Robyn Okrant finds herself starting to identify.

“I’m kind of a tomboy, and lately I imagine myself in a lot of pretty things,” says the Chicago yoga instructor and performance artist.

She went into the project burning to tell Oprah how much all her advice costs the average woman, convinced there was a fundamental unfairness in a billionaire’s pushing costly consumer goods on her less-fortunate devotees. But she has come to find a lot to respect in Winfrey as well.

“I still feel the same way about all these lists of things you’re supposed to buy,” says Okrant, a calm, rangy woman with an easy laugh and friendly demeanor. “However, she really preaches – and I do think it is preaching – clarity and just really knowing yourself.

“A lot of these exercises that I have had to do have given me clarity about something as tangible as my finances to what my husband and I think about certain issues we haven’t discussed before. So that’s great.”

Winfrey’s people won’t comment directly on the site, but praise Okrant’s “brand dedication.”

The artist, however, says her point was never about demonstrating devotion. Even now – with the mainstream media attention, with the high-powered book agent just waiting for her to finish the year and start writing – Okrant says she hasn’t lost sight of her original purpose: to live a feminist critique of the Oprah Winfrey empire and its relentless insistence that women need to remake themselves, often through new purchases.

It’s been far more demanding than she or husband Jim Stevens ever imagined. “It seems to be pulling Robyn in multiple directions all at the same time,” said Stevens, an artisan with a tile manufacturer. Just to keep up with the demands, “she’s constantly moving, not really having the time to reflect as much or just be herself.

“There’s a certain distance from who she had been.”

At the same time, ironically, some of the Oprah directives are about trying to slow down, and Stevens has found value in some of those: “One was just before she comes in the door of the house, to just reflect and be happy,” he said.

“I think that has created a lot more positiveness between the two of us, you know, just to be eager for one another.”

While she will, she said, try to do a book, Okrant and her husband mostly are looking forward to a very special New Year’s Eve, the beginning of 2009 and the end of a project that started as a fun but pointed idea and turned into a lifestyle.

“It’s funny, because normally I go to sleep before the ball will drop,” she said. “But I am celebrating. I’m going on like a magazine diet, a self-help diet.”