There’s a part of EVERY woman that wants to be a model. There’s no need to even explain why. When I was in high school I wanted to look like the supermodel Paulina Porizkova. I used to collect all magazines that had her picture in it, and then cut out the full-page pictures where she was wearing a sexy outfit, and put them up on my bedroom wall. Paulina was my idea of what a “perfect” woman looked like. To make sure that my parents didn’t think I was some raging lesbian, I put up pictures of other super models, and boy toy celebs like Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, and Tom Cruise. I lived in a Catholic, Asian “You’re the first born” household. Life was hard enough, and had I been gay, well that would have just made things a bit more interesting.
I remember seeing a Phil Donahue show (loooong time ago) where there was a panel of supermodel guests including Cindy Crawford. Phil asked Cindy if she had ever been intimidated by anyone, and she said that only one person (up to that point) had ever blown her away, and that was Paulina Porizcova. Cindy described meeting Paulina as an experience where she could not stop looking at this woman because she couldn’t believe how striking her beauty was. Now for Cindy Crawford to say that is something huge.
I loved to look at Paulina because I wanted to look like her. I wanted to have her life. She got to travel to all these glamorous places, hang out with celebrities, make movies, wear cool clothes, and generally live fabulously. If I could look like her, or even just have half her looks, my life would be so much better. Paulina was one of the things that helped motivate me to lose weight during my first venture back into the skinny jeans (see post November 20,2005 "Three times a skinny lady, Part Deux") I lost 18 pounds the summer before my Junior year, and Paulina helped me do that.
Logically, I knew that I could never actually look like the real Paulina because well she’s white, and I’m Asian. Secondly, she’s 5’10” and I was 5’5” at the time. Lucky for me, I grew 2 more inches in college, but still not tall enough to be a model. The agencies demanded a minimum height of 5’9”. And thirdly, Paulina has blue eyes, and I tried colored contacts, and I just looked like some alien Loch Ness monster. Scary! I got skinny, and didn’t look like Paulina or a supermodel, but I did get pretty, pretty enough in fact to be nominated for homecoming princess. That was a dream come true!
