I Wonder Why I Did That?

**Out of respect for the WonderWomen who don’t watch “ANTM,” this week’s topic can be about wondering why one has taped/DVRed/rented what they know to be a very bad program.**

I taped the most recent episode of “America’s Next Top Model.” Actually, it wasn’t even the original Wednesday-night episode … I taped the Sunday-night encore airing.

What is wrong with me? I’m addicted!

Maybe it’s Tyra’s fierceness—or fierce forehead. Maybe it’s the leftover dreams I have of becoming a Seventeen model/writer/editor (yes, I planned to do all three simultaneously). Maybe it’s that the show isn’t edited to be manipulative at all, the interactions among the modellettes are real, and the modeling is HARD, y’all!

OK, not that last one. But I wonder, as a recently-young woman, just how much sway the makeover episode of each cycle has over me. I’m currently almost through a very arduous hair-growing project that will result in a donation to Locks of Love and I think I’m slightly obsessed with makeovers/haircuts/submitting to the will of a very trendy stylist who has no regard for my lack of personal-grooming talent. It’s a dream that most girls have, I assume … being transformed into someone that mostly resembles you, but better. It obviously therefore transforms your life.

So I wonder if, as I sit on the couch allowing myself to care for and be manipulated by these sometimes silly and often totally vapid modellettes, I’m wishing I had a Fairy Tyramodel who would sweep me away, off the couch and onto the catwalk. And then my real cat jumps onto the couch to sit in my lap and I’m glad I don’t have to hear my name not called, return to the house, pack my belongings, and leave.

But I’m still really looking forward to my haircut. Only an inch and a half to go.