Makeovers Make My Day

Don’t you just love makeovers?   I mean all kinds—scraggily men and women suddenly looking like Fortune 500 CEOs to dull rundown houses that are quickly converted to cozy, colorful, cheerful places to live.

When Oprah had her makeover day for men a couple years ago, it was an instant hit.   Straight men don’t have a clue, I thought.   Most don’t think they need to do a thing.  I remembered to tune in.

Miles hadn't seen his lips in 30 yrs.

                                                                                   

Peter, 42, need I say more?

Brandi, before

And when other talk shows drag women off the street to enhance their image, I excitedly wait for the results.   But you got to wonder.   

Don’t these people ever look in a mirror and get the hint that maybe it's time to push through the door of a beauty salon or fashionable store?  Are millions that blind?  They are, and I can prove it.  Have you ever sat in a mall or airport watching people hurry by and hold back from yelling, "How can you let yourselves out of the house?"

Brandi, after

         

I’m not talking Madonna or Lady Gaga, who package themselves like flavors of the month, strutting out like a whore on Tuesday and a slab of meat by Saturday night.  But does it take a class reunion to realize you’ve been wearing the same flip since you saw those people last?  Does it take your daughter’s wedding to shed those twenty-five pounds?

And the before pictures all look the same. 

Linda, before

The women stand with shaggy manes, granny glasses, wearing oversized black shapeless outfits, flipflops, and a I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing expression. 

 But that just adds to the drama. 

By the end of the hour, the confident woman marches out from the curtains with a glossy layered coif, shining makeup, and a fitted outfit that displays her newly discovered body.  

Linda, after

And the audience goes wild! 

So do millions watching from home, who might wonder for a moment what bouncy hair and a breezy dress would feel like, before flipping the channel to pawn shops and the New Jersey Shore.

Americans spend billions on clothes, but I’ve never seen people look worse.   

Ahmses, in and out of scrubs

 It’s not about unemployment.  It’s lack of imagination.  It’s laziness.  One man on the Oprah show, Ahmses, a doctor who lived in his scrubs—at the hospital, home, even on a trip to Egypt—told his wife that he’d never change unless Oprah waved her wand.  

She did, and he was thrilled.

I guess many of us are also waiting to be plucked from the curb and instantly reinvented, bursting from our shells into this out-of-this-world human being, reeking of style, status, and the sheer strength of success.
So we wait and we wish.  Maybe forever.