In Which I am A Shoe-In

I have always wanted to be made over. I believe it stems from two places: too many teen magazines growing up and a cautious approach to self-styling. I buy a lot of jeans and vee neck tee shirts and admire people greatly who can put together something more interesting.

I am a sucker for makeover type shows (or the “makeover” episode of America’s Next Top Model) I simply cannot stop watching if the Reveal is about to happen. Usually I don’t *start* watching because the Makeover has become, over the years since I started reading Seventeen, less about revealing the person behind the dated, cat-applique sweatshirt and maybe getting her split ends taken off and more about making someone Deemed Ugly into someone Deemed Pretty. Often involving surgery and painful tooth procedures and way too much exercise and dieting. That always makes me sad. And that’s also why the only show I can half-stomach all the way through is What Not To Wear because even though they are mean on that show, they don’t often make people go to boot camp for their thigh issues.

I am not about the makeover changing my life and making me a different type of person. I am about the makeover giving me access to people who are experts at hairdos and boot/skirt pairings.

I am gagging as I type all of this but so help me it is true. True confessions.

Why do I gag? Because it is so much manipulation. Eat this food, buy this deodorant, wear this shoe or you’re a victim. Who the hell needs to care what you wear or what not to wear or what everyone else is wearing? Are you an asshole or not? I would rather be driving down the highway behind a badly dressed person who knows how to use a turn signal than a well-dressed person who tailgates. I would rather work with a smart, fair person in a cat-applique sweatshirt than a condescending, lazy jackass in an Armani suit. I would rather breed with someone who wears the same shoes every day than someone who irons his clothes, not least because I hate ironing.

I think it is just curiosity, this kind of “immaculately put together people are so astounding, I wonder what it would take to get me there” wonderment that most of the time just sits at the back of my head and I am happy with who I am and how I look and then some of the time I get bored and feel like my outside could better express what was going on inside and so I generally grab a box of hair dye and regret it or cut the sleeves off a t-shirt and wince because it doesn’t ever work out the way it does in the movies. I end up expressing “bad hair dye job” or “no skill with sewing, none whatsoever” instead of what is going on inside and then I forget about it all until the next time.

Having just done this sleeve cutting hair-dying thing, I was simultaneously horrified and thrilled to find an ad in our TV Week Magazine for a
makeover contest. “Time to update your look?” it asks, snidely, next to an image of a woman with her mouth frozen in a grimace, hair tied back under bandana, rubber gloves, floral apron, in other words, ME.

Prizes (valued at up to $14,000, I am guessing for the cosmetic dentistry):

• Diet and nutrition counseling
• Spa treatments including hair, nails, makeup and body wrap
• Cosmetic dentistry
• Lingerie shopping spree
• Plus your own personal blog about your six week makeover

Free underpants! And a BLOG! I have always wanted one of those! OMFG!JFK!

I don’t know. I certainly could make a case, in 100 words or fewer, for my needing a makeover. Only some of it would be strictly true. (I really need a new bra. My teeth are kind of yellow. I come with my own pre-installed blog readers.) I am tempted to enter as an experiment, because how fucking weird would it be to get a TV Week Makeover! But then I want to run away and ignore that it even exists because the principle is so abhorrent. But then I think, yeah but how bizarre! How random! And spa treatments! And a nutritionist would go through my closets and take all the chips!

And: fail.

We’ll see.