Oscar and I

Picture this, a gleaming office of a prestigious magazine (EXACTLY the way it looks in the movies). Now imagine you are in this office. It's your very first day and you're in your bare-all black thong, changing in your boss's office....into an Oscar de la Renta ball gown. You try to suck in your gut as the stylist (a guy) helps you into the dress. You make a few jokes. “I bet the girls you usually work with are way smaller than this!” No laughs. But who cares, you’re wriggling into a dream gown you could NEVER afford. 

 Sound far-fetched?

 It happened to me.

It went a little something like this: Said magazine had a problem. They needed a model ("Don't worry, we'll crop out your face.") to wear a gorgeous gown of exquisite proportions: think a spider web looking dress, taffeta, big skirt, small waist, the evil queen from Sleeping Beauty. But when I walked in that morning and they had asked me if I’d try on a few dresses for them, they did not say for a cover shoot, nor did they say in a breathtaking dress (there were actually two, the other one was coral and made me feel like a flower blossom). What they asked was, “Are you a size 6?” I nodded. “Great. Can you wear some dresses for us later?” Of course, I answer! So when the svelte stylist and photographer walked in carrying the gowns and I was told to strip, right there, It came as a shock.

The corset sucked me in as I walked across the office floor, and though I couldn’t breathe and was REALLY worried about tripping on the dress and ripping something, I felt really freaking cool. As the stylist pulled out a few Tiffany bags to glam me up even more, I quietly took the hair rubberband (full of fuzz) off my wrist, slipped my gum into the trash and took off the miniscule diamond studs I had been wearing. My new co-workers, 6-foot-tall models (some of them seriously are) walked by curiously, wondering who I was. 

The finishing shot? A really gorgeous shot of my ass. You see the beautiful stitching, the curves of the gown (and silently) me. “She was just wrong,” my boss told me as she showed me the real model’s shots from the photo shoot that went bad. “Look at her. She’s way too thin.” They wanted a normal girl. A thin, yet curvy girl, like the ones you see every day. Watching my gorgeous coworkers walk by, the true model-worthy ones, it made me feel good to be chosen. To be noticed. Even if you can’t see my face.