I Look Just Terrible (Now Give Me Some Money)

The other day I was wandering around absentmindedly as usual when I noticed my clothes were beginning to just naturally sort of shred away in tatters.

I had put off buying clothes for a long time now. But I was beginning to recognize that in the unlikely event I were to have a job interview, or god forbid a job, I wouldn't have anything to wear the second day.

I steeled myself and drove to the mall, stalled at the entrance, awash in eerie light. And suddenly before me stood the answer to my prayers.

Yes, there I was, asking myself the perennial question, "How the hell can I get some money and some new clothes without actually getting a new job?" And then a woman walked up to me and told me I looked terrible.

Not in those words, of course.

Actually, at first she seemed quite nice. She said, "Wow! Those are such interesting glasses!"

I smiled at her. Finally, validation! "Unfortunately, I got them in New York. At the best glasses store in life, if you're ever out there."

She was petite, in her late-thirties. She cut a tidy yet nonthreatening figure.

Oh no, she said. She didn't want to know where I bought them.

She was a scout for a reality show called How Do I Look?

I had seen it. The implicit answer was always awful.

They take people outside the norm --rock-n-roll people, genderqueer people, or people who dress inappropriately for their age or size -- and invite a bevy of the person's friends to join their house "experts" in deriding them on national television. In the episode I'd seen, a roller derby girl was made over. It was quite something.

I realized at some point that if I simply lived my life quietly around Los Angeles long enough, I would be invited to a degrading 22 minutes of fame. And I had to admit I looked just awful.

As a child in the '80s, I repeatedly expressed surprise at the tabloids' condemnation of Cher's Oscar costumes as designed by Bob Mackie. I always thought she looked fabulous.

I believe Ugly Betty always looks fabulous as well, eponymy aside.

Many other women might have been discouraged by all this. But not me.

Okay, I said.

Because I am comfortable with the fact that to my copious list of complaints about myself, I may now add "simply incapable of picking out my clothes."

To be continued.