I was even taught how to do a mock T.V. commercial for Maybelline, looking flirtatiously into the camera and coyly unveiling my amazing beauty secret to the world – a brand new volumizing mascara.

    I’m not really sure why my parents agreed to this ridiculousness, and even paid for the classes, no less.  I think it had something to do with the fact that they felt sorry for me.  For years, I had been mercilessly teased about my appearance everyday at school.  I was desperately insecure. It always seemed like other girls could achieve effortless beauty, while I struggled and strived but never got there.  Most of my friends had beautiful olive skin with year-round tans, salon-perfect ...

   hen I was fourteen, I joined a modeling school. It was one of those places that promised to turn you into a goddess in just six weeks.  The fact that I had braces, glasses, frizzy hair, shockingly pale skin, and super-bushy eyebrows supposedly did not matter; nor did the fact that I was gangly, awkward and utterly style-challenged.  I was assured that the amazing instructors and make-up artists at this world-class institution could transform even the ugliest duckling into the most glamorous swan.  So week after week I showed up, learning how to apply bronzer to the top of my cheekbones, how to tame my wild hair into a silky-smooth texture, and how to walk with my neck high and my hips forward (just in case I was ever recruited to strut down the runways of Paris.)