Winiferd in the Burbs: Playtex

This was originally published in 2011 but was removed recently while I interviewed for my new job (for obvious reasons). This post makes me cringe, but it does sorta sum up the first year of Winiferd in the Burbs.

Ian has this peculiar habit of declaring I should have been a model. He sounds sincere when he insists I should be walking the runways instead of doing office grunt work and coaxing the dog to go doo doo.

When we sift through magazines at the grocery store, he'll point to either severely anorexic or severely Photoshopped girls on the cover of Bimbo Weekly or Hollywood Tonight and claim, "This looks like you."

He's not trying to be funny, either. He genuinely thinks I look, well, modelesque. He's adorable in his insistence because he's wearing Laura goggles, and it all springs from a place of love.

Like, remember the 80s, when everyone fell in love with Cabbage Patch dolls? And people paid hundreds of dollars for them? And they looked like Shrek dolls with yarn hair, and they had ridiculous names? ("My Cabbage Patch dolls are Darius Earl and Gertie Darlene! What awesome names!").

But the whole world fell in love with them and thought they were the cutest things ever? EVER? The same dynamic is at work here.

Which is to say, I would be the Cabbage Patch Shrek doll of the modeling world.

Ian: "You missed your calling in life. You should have been a model."

Laura: "I hardly think round faces and oddly proportioned bodies measure up to model standards."

Ian: "No, really. You look like a model."

Laura: "I suppose I could have been a model for the Playtex company. They use plain girls for their ads, because they're trying to appeal to girls who find tampons shocking and sexuality frightening. I could so be the face for them."

Ian: "You have an exotic look because of the red hair. You would stick out among the other models."

Laura: "Plus, if I modeled for Playtex, I bet I'd get free tampons for life. Do you know how much money I'd save? That stuff gets expensive."

Ian: <Slightly defensive> "Well, I think you'd make a great model."

I've decided to stop arguing with Ian and playing the role of, "Woe is me. For I am an ugly, misshapen wench of wretched visage. Thy soul weeps for I suffer from a vengeful society who doth drink the Haterade. Anon!"

I now embrace Ian's emphatic assertion that I am a beautiful, sexy woman, who the world wants, nay, who the world needs to see.

I have put together my modeling portfolio, which I will send to major modeling executives.

These are definitely my best pictures, and as I gaze over them, I know, deep-down, that Ian was right all along. I truly missed my calling in life by choosing graduate school over modeling. I now strive to correct this mistake.

The New Face of Playtex