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Imagine if the world was actually in black and white. Not, like, metaphorically, where there were only two options to everything. I mean in literal colour. Or lack there of. People would look better. I don’t want to be a traitor to technicolour, or anything, but the fact is, people look much more attractive when every colour of the rainbow is absent.

Except if you are a model.

Every time I have ever been around a model (Aside: Like how I eluded to that being a common occurrence?), I have likened it to standing in an art gallery. Because, lets be honest, if Mona Lisa spoke it wouldn’t exactly enhance the experience, as the beauty is in looking at her. Hello, models. They are people (?) who defy the laws of sight and sound and manage to look brilliant at the end of every rainbow, day and hangover. They don’t need to ruin the illusion by speaking.
Unfortunately for me, I had to develop a personality to engage humans during my own hangovers and in the little trip from A to B known as life. I am never envious of models, just kike I am not jealous of a beautiful pair of shoes. But I definitely like to look at them. And, yeah, wear them.

Before I ever jumped ship to Los Angeles, I was apprehensive about the extreme superficiality I had heard about. Being from a place that puts the super into superficial, I didn’t know if I could cope with it getting any worse. In my hometown of the GC, where I am faced with fakeness in mind and/or body frequently, I stop listening immediately.
“You’re the receptionist to my mechanic,” I want to say. “You don’t really need to play pretend with me.”
But in L.A, a place built on a foundation of transience, I can justify the obsession with the unreal. I look at it as a constant opportunity to embrace evolution of art and ideas, rather than the bullshit it actually is.
It just so happens that the city of Los Angeles also has more models per capita than any other place on the planet. Going to buy coffee dressed in tracksuit pants is never really an option.

I am proud of two achievements in my life: my shoe collection and my magic list filled with beautiful people. I have, I admit, fallen onto the genitalia of some not-so-pretty (read: fucking ugly) boys in my time. Sometimes because they won me over with a personality but other times because I am looking at a Picasso through scotch-goggles and the mangled features appear to be attractive to me at the time. Come hangover, however, and I am usually theorizing the physics of reversing the clock and not drinking an entire bottle of Johnny Walker outside a special school. Or similar.

Certain times in my existence have been filled with models (Aside: Like how I eluded to that being a common occurrence?). Every one of my ex-boyfriends has flirted with professional physical perfection at some point or another and I have often wondered if I have a feature that attracts them to me.
“Eagerness is not a characteristic,” I have been told.
After three days in the world’s biggest runway, otherwise known as L.A, I found myself in an apartment surrounded by five male models.
“Was I, like, a dung beetle in a past life?” I wondered to myself. “Because I must have had a horrible time to deserve this in this life.”
We sat around the pool recovering from the night before, abs (theirs) glistening in the sun, teeth (theirs) shinning against the blue sky and locks (theirs) flowing in the breeze. Meanwhile, a alcoholically destroyed waste of space (me) sat in the corner cursing the day I decided to not travel everywhere with my own hair, make-up and lighting crew.
“They were beautifuk,” I told my L.A girl friend. “Yet I looked like I had arrived there by grabbing onto the bumper of a Star Tours bus and dragging myself to North Hollywood.”
I was no oil-painting. I think they kept me around because of personality. Fortunately, they hardly spoke.

Twelve hours later, I was forced to dress my hungover ass to go to an open-bar party on Hollywood boulevard. The last time I RSVP’d to an invitation with “open bar” in bold type, I…have no idea. I can’t remember. But I am sure I did something completely fucking stupid.
Looking tired, dishevelled and exhausted from listening to my liver scream “Fuck You!” for nine hours, I embraced the free alcohol and accepted that I looked like poop.
I faked eagerness.
“Lets get a photo in the photo booth,” L.A girl friend suggested. The pictures where being projected onto a billboard-sized screen for the entire party to enjoy.
“No way,” I protested. “I don’t need more models seeing what I would look like if I was dead.”
“But the pictures come out in black and white,” she encouraged.
And, just like that, I looked better. (Aside: Like how I eluded to that being a common occurrence?)