I'm a wannabe model

Did I ever tell you about the time I tried out for a Dove ad? You know the one with "real women"? Well I'm as real as anyone so I gave it a go.

Scott and I were watching the evening news when the call went out. He suggested I try it. Being the former drama geek that I am, I couldn't resist. After all, it speaks to the dream I still have deep, deep down of being discovered by Hollywood, becoming a famous diva and owning a Malibu beach-house. It could happen.

Anyway off I go to the studio but my bubble is burst when I see the lineup around the building. Ack. I sidle up to the last woman and ask how long she's been waiting. I'm buoyed by her answer of 10 minutes. Of course I'm again knocked back when I ask a woman who's just leaving the building what time she arrived and she answered "noon". It was 4pm. And I was still really far away from that door.

I thank God very often for my outgoing personality. I think I made friends with everyone within earshot of my booming voice. We were soon talking and laughing like old friends. That's what standing out in the cold for hours waiting to do something absolutely ridiculous will do to people. There were the two university students who were studying to be doctors, a woman who just completed her last round of chemo for breast cancer and the madwoman who showed up in just a bathingsuit and overcoat. In November. In Canada.

We finally got in at about 6pm and things moved really quickly. We got asked to strip down to the bikinis they told us to wear and were paraded under bright lights in front of a guy holding a camcorder while a teenaged girl fired questions at us. I thought I was pretty poised considering. She asked me about my favourite body part (my thighs) and my least favourite (my jiggly stomach). I turned to the left, right and back with my arms raised up over my head like she asked. It was weird. Remember that scene in Fame where Coco got her big break and the "director" told her to take her top off? Weird like that.

Then the problem. She asked me to tell a joke. Now those of you who know me IRL know I'm funny. Hilarious, even. But jokes? Not to save my life. And this one may just be my ticket to Malibu. Think, frozen brain. THINK. Then it came. The oh, so topical joke from the mid-1990's: Why does Michael Jackson love shopping at Zellers? Because little boys' pants are half off. Hee. Comedy gold. An oldy but a goody and no crickets. Then they turned on the high powered hoses and sprayed icy water on us until... wait, that was the dream I had last night. They actually just asked us politely to get dressed and get out.

Well, I never got a callback but I realized that the whole point was how much fun I had with all those women I met. We'll probably never see each other again but for a few hours we were friends. We were all different ages, sizes, shapes, tax brackets and sanities but we all came together and had something in common besides our muffin tops and a bizarre need to disrobe in front of strangers. We wanted to be on tv, dammit. What's more noble than that? What? Learning to love our bodies just the way they are? Not trying to live up to the media/fashion industry ideal of beauty? Oh yeah, that too.

kxx