What Not to Wear: Day 1

I made it to New York! A relatively easy flight, complete with a crying baby to remind me of my own little sweet one still sleeping at home. The "What Not to Wear" shoot officially begins tomorrow, but they flew me in a day early to spend some time strolling around, hopefully not embarrassing myself too much in my What-Not-to-Wear best.

But back on the plane, between naps, I caught a little of former Queer Eye for the Straight Guy Carson Kressley’s How to Look Good Naked, another one of the fashion makeover reality shows out on cable right now. Same idea as "What Not to Wear," but a little more focused on the goal of accepting your body image. I’m a little bit of a sap sometimes, and I found myself tearing up a little when this week’s contestant looks at herself in the mirror and can hardly speak the critical words to describe her body and then again, at the end, when Carson projects a three-story image of her tastefully shot nude photos, and she asks people on the street what they think. Of course, they can’t say enough about how incredible she looks, (because she does!). Stop hating your body, is his theme. On "What Not to Wear," Stacy and Clinton only seem to touch here and there on body image. The rest of it is focused on just the new digs, thus the "Shut up!, I love that skirt!!" a hundred times an episode.

I couldn’t help but think about my own week of intense body image and fashion scrutiny that awaits me. Will it be as emotional for me as it was for Carson’s girl? Will I face the 360 mirror and break down into tears? I don’t think of my body nearly as critically as I have in the past few years. I wish I could say that I had some magical moment of self acceptance, but a lot of it has to do with weight loss. They don’t make you strip to a bra and underwear on "What Not to Wear" (or at least I don’t think they will!), but I’m sure any woman standing in front of a mirror, nearly naked, no matter her size, would have areas she’s rather hide than bare to millions of viewers.

Talk about guts. This "How to Look Good Naked" show takes "What Not to Wear" up a notch, I think, but with greater gains. I have no clue how life-changing this week will be. My expectation is that it will be fun and memorable, but I’m wondering if good old Stacy and Clinton will do as good as job as Carson Kressley appears to in this show at getting to what’s really going on inside a fashionably impaired woman. He spends much more time with the makeoveree than I’m expecting Stacy and Clinton to. I only saw them for a couple of hours over the two days with them in Austin. I know I'll meet with them tomorrow morning in the studio, but is all this effort really just to make a disposable, easily digestible television show? Or do they really, really care how I look when I get back to Austin and they continue on with their celebrity in the Big Apple? Oh, how cynical I sound, I know. I'm just going into this like any good journalist should. I'm hopeful, but I have my reservations.

So today, I didn't worry about my looks. I just enjoyed one of my favorite cities in the world, including a great new museum on Bowery, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, where I enjoyed a glass of wine in the posh seventh floor observation terrace, glancing toward downtown in my very fine, very comfortable, very plaid Target brand sneakers.