Getting Over It, Part II

Some people never got over Vietnam, or the night their band opened for Nirvana. I'm still not over my first marriage(or ripping off Nick Hornby). In this series, I'll detail my attempts to get over a part of my life that lasted less than three years, but seemingly encompassed all of my soon to be over twenties. For some reason, moving to New York was one of these attempts. Whenever I declare myself officially "over it", maybe I'll have a huge party in Vegas - but I'll probably just have brunch.

Getting Over It, Part II: Watching America's Next Top Model

Let me get this out of the way: I know it sounds like bragging¹ when I say my ex-wife used to be a model(the runway type, not plastic-car-kit or Sears swimsuit type). Wow, you used to date an ex-model, whoop-dee shit dude. However, that doesn't change the fallout from the divorce. Especially since she made it abundantly clear that she didn't feel I was good looking enough to be with her. So any confidence I was supposed to gain from fucking a mainstream, magazine approved version of female beauty was destroyed, defiled and turned into an irrational hatred² of Tyra Banks.

Recently, though, I've turned away from the dark side to...well, another dark side: watching America's Next Top Model and The Tyra Banks Show. Anything even remotely related to modeling used to be avoided like the plague. However, the crazy ego trips of Tyra are such a spectacle, I can't turn away. It's like watching a six-year old girl get her own talk show.

I remember one episode where the topic was girls who are unsafe daters. Now, Tyra made some good points with her little stake-outs of women who gave away too much info to strangers at bars, followed men alone to their cars, and did other generally unsafe things that twenty-somethings do because they assume they are immortal(I still assume this, at least for another year).

However, Tyra left the realm of reality when, after ambushing a poor girl who had followed her fake-date down to his fake-SUV, she lit into the girl and showed her what was stored in the fake-trunk: a fake baseball bat, and fake bundle of rope. She would have been fake-beaten to death and fake-tied up. Once the charade had been revealed, what was the point of showing the girl these things? They didn't shock her, they made her laugh - staring in wonderment at crazy-eyed Tyra, marveling at the talk-show host's need to have every inch of reality defined by herself. She had constructed a perfect date-rape diorama, and goddammit, you were going to see it all.

But anyway, yeah, modeling. ANTM. Avoiding this just seemed like common sense. For one thing, there was at least one contestant every year who reminded me in some way of my ex-wife(most recently some combination of Lisa and Ebony from cycle 9). For another...it's America's Next Top Model. Why would any man watch it, if he wasn't being forced to by a girlfriend?

Oh yeah. My girlfriend watches ANTM(of course), and I've watched it with her. Well, not at first. I made it clear I didn't care for the show, though I never said why(it probably didn't need to be said).

Eventually, though, time dulled my sensitivity to all things modeling and Tyra(living in New York probably helps, with those ridiculous money-shot photos of Tyra that were everywhere a few months ago, promoting her talk show's move to the city. The ones that were titled things like "Gabologist" and "Conversationista". On my walk to work, I noticed someone had finally doctored one with the ink-drawn cock it sorely needed).

Watching now, all I think of are the ridiculous challenges, photo-shoots, and Tyra's bat-shit crazy antics(like the intro to the current season, or how when Ebony quit during last season - I'm sorry, cycle nine - the background music was as mournful as a dirge, since to Tyra, Ebony had died).

Even though this only involves television, I still feel like it's progress: disassociating things from an ex, and enjoying - or enduring - them again.

¹Though, since I've moved to New York, I assume every New York man has dated at least one "model", so it can't be counted as bragging anymore. It's par for the course.

²Yes, Tyra is the target because my ex-wife being a)black and b)model makes c)Tyra her idol. Or at least, her old idol.