So, about What Not To Wear, the show that changed the course of my life and the lives of so many others. My feelings are so . . . complicated, I barely know where to begin, and so I will begin before the beginning. Do you believe in Destiny, Fanny? I’m not sure I do, to be honest. She seems like a concept used to explain the acquisition of power by powerful people. “It was his destiny to become the King.” And what about Fate? How do you feel about her? Is Fate just the sad sister of Destiny? “It was his fate to die alone and penniless.” It seems to me like bad luck and poor choices determine one’s fate, whereas good luck and deliberate choices result in one’s destiny.
Am I getting too heady for you, my dear? I apologize. I am nothing more than an armchair philosopher and not a particularly dedicated one at that. At least not anymore. I spent ten years in psychotherapy—just once a week, nothing too serious—mostly talking through the contradictions and inconsistencies of organized religion. I bet you didn’t know that about me, did you? And you know, the older I get (I’m an ancient forty-seven as I write to you today), the less Destiny and Fate—and their cousin Faith, for that matter—concern me. For some, the opposite is true. Men and women on their deathbeds, old as the Appalachians, wondering what it was “all about.” So foolish. I must admit, perhaps to the detriment of your esteem for me, that my sympathy for such wonderers is minimal. Imagine being given a life and not understanding until its ugly end that the point was to live it.
So I do not believe it was Fate or Destiny, yet on some level I do believe it was “meant to be.” Allow me to tell you the story of how I was cast on the show, and you can decide for yourself whether it was a cocreative act, the Universe being my cocreator, or just a coincidence.
My friend Nancy had been visiting me in New York City. (Her name is Alaya now, but she was certainly Nancy then.) We were (and still are) friends from our undergraduate days at Boston College, despite the fact that the first time I met her I loathed her, but only by association. She looked like a young Jessica Lange, which I found intimidating, and she was dating my freshman-year roommate, whom I hated, and he hated me, if you can believe that! I’m not sure there was any solid reason for all of this hatred; just a visceral reaction among eighteen-year-olds from different corners of the country. So ridiculous! When Alaya and I discuss it now, as we sometimes do, we wonder whether we were all locked in some sort of vicious love triangle in a past life.
I don’t know whether I believe in past lives, but they are fun to imagine, aren’t they? I’ve done two past-life regressions, if you can believe it. In one, I was a Philadelphian businessman in the early 1900s! I had a wife, two daughters, and a big belly. I must have been doing well financially, because we lived in a lovely brownstone with elaborate moldings and ceiling medallions. In the other, I was a goat farmer somewhere in the mountains. Could it have been Nepal? Bhutan? Somewhere around there. The location doesn’t matter because I don’t think I, the goat farmer, could have picked out the town on a map. I was just a quiet little man with sun-darkened and -hardened skin whose goats were taken by an invading army. That’s the part at which I snapped myself out of the regression. Too sad to experience (again?).
Where was I? Oh, yes, Nancy was at my apartment for a visit from San Francisco. Or maybe she was living in Seattle at that time. I don’t remember, but I do recall she had recently completed a course to “awaken” her “light body.” While I don’t understand exactly what that entails, I gather it’s about expanding one’s spiritual consciousness. I’ve thought about awakening my own light body, but my gut tells me to leave it sound asleep. Nobody enjoys being roused from a good, solid nap. I can guarantee you my light body would be really crabby.
I confessed to Nancy that I felt as though I was meant to be doing something different with my career—I was working as a magazine editor—but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. She suggested I ask the Universe for guidance. I wasn’t quite sure how to do that until I read a couple of books by Caroline Myss, in which she explained that if you ask the Universe for help, it will provide help. But the catch, she said, is you must put your complete trust in the Universe. Otherwise, you’re just asking the Universe to give you what you want, not what the Universe knows you need.
Are you still with me, Fanny? This might be too wingding for you. Or it might offend your religious beliefs. If so, I’m sorry to have lost you, but I’m just telling a story.
So one night before bed, I performed some deep-breathing exercises, calming my thoughts so that I could focus on having a conversation with the Universe, and I said these exact words aloud: “Universe, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing with my life, but if you point me in the right direction, I promise to follow, no questions asked.” And that was it. I went to sleep.
Two weeks later, I received an e-mail from a casting agent named Barbara Barna asking me if I would like to audition for a show called What Not to Wear. The producers were recasting the male lead and looking for a replacement with some fashion experience. I returned her e-mail, attaching a recent photo and résumé, and we set up an audition for the next day.
When I agreed to the audition, I never thought I’d get the job. I showed up for that first audition, and Barbara pointed a video camera at me and asked me to state my name. Then on a nearby television she played a VHS tape of women walking down the streets of Manhattan and asked me to provide color commentary on their outfits. You can probably imagine the critiques I gave. “Suntan hose! How come nobody told me it was 1972 in Boca Raton?” “Your mom called, she wants her jeans back. And she’s not sure who your father is.” “Honey, that much titty is completely inappropriate—unless you’re stripping or having a mammogram.”
I left the audition thinking there was no way in hell anyone could have found value in that claptrap, but by the time I got back to my desk, I had received a voice mail asking if I was available for a callback two days later. Evidently, I was just the sort of moderately snarky homosexual they were looking for.
When I arrived at that first callback, there were several men in the reception area outside the studio awaiting their turn to enter. The TV was playing episodes of What Not to Wear, which I had still not seen. (There was no video on demand back in those days, Fanny. We were savages.) So I sat and watched the show.
And I hated it.
Good Lord, was it awful! I thought, If this is the kind of program they want to make, I am the absolute wrong person for it. The way Stacy and Wayne, the guy they were replacing, spoke to the women on the show felt so mean-spirited and judgmental. Sure, at the time I got a kick out of criticizing people’s clothes, but I didn’t actually care what they were wearing and I certainly didn’t want anyone to feel like shit about herself for it. That might not make sense, but I truly thought I could crack a few jokes, help women shop for cute stuff, and send them on their way. Buh-bye! What Not to Wear and I didn’t seem like a perfect match.
As I sat on the edge of my folding chair, my inner dialogue went something like this:
“Let’s go, dipshit.”
“No. We’re staying.”
“Shut up and get your ass out of this chair now.”
“Nope. We promised the Universe we would stay.”
“We lied.”
“It wasn’t a lie. We said we’d follow the Universe’s guidance, no questions asked!”
“Fuck that. I’m outta here.”
And so I got up from my chair, fully intending to leave and that’s when the casting agent opened the door and called my name.
“Clinton Kelly?” she said.
And I replied, “That’s me.”
And she said, “Come on in.”
And so I did. Interestingly, my mood changed the second I entered the casting room, from uncertainty to complete certainty that this was the most surreal experience I had had in forever. This was all happening so fast. Could this be the change I was looking for? Did anyone really think I was right for this job? Did I think I was right for this job?
“Oh, hi,” I said, when I realized it was her. “It’s you.” I waved and she waved back and smiled a big smile.
Someone asked me to take a seat, in a chair facing them all like a firing squad. They asked me a bunch of questions, most of which I can’t remember now. I do recall being asked which celebrity’s style I admired, and I responded with the truth, that I really didn’t care about celebrity style, because celebrities had stylists. It doesn’t count when someone else is picking out your clothes.
I also remember that my mouth was really dry. Could it have been nerves? I don’t recall being nervous.
“Can I have some water?” I asked, and started laughing.
“You want water?” a British woman named Abigail responded, as if nobody had ever asked her for water before.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m all dry.” My tongue seemed two sizes too big for my own mouth, which struck me as hysterical.
Everyone in the room laughed awkwardly and looked at me as though I were some sort of dry-mouthed lizard. Then someone had the idea of seating Stacy next to me and pointing a camera at the two of us as we flipped through entertainment magazines, ragging on some people and complimenting others. I really liked her. I had never met her before this day, and yet we chatted like two old friends for about half an hour, while everyone else in the room watched and laughed.
At one point I realized my hand was resting on Stacy’s thigh. You might not know me as well as you think you do, Fanny. At the time, touching a relative stranger was very uncharacteristic of me.
I said, “I’m so sorry.” And Stacy looked at me, puzzled.
“For what?” she asked.
“My hand is on your leg.”
“Oh, God,” she said. “I don’t care.” Then I felt kind of silly for bringing it up. But in some ways, I’m glad I did. I had forgotten about “me” for a moment and become “us.”
I left that audition and by the next morning received a call to come back two days later, which was a Sunday, Father’s Day, actually. I had been planning to go out to Long Island to visit my dad, so I called him and asked if it would be okay if he took a rain check. When I told him my reason for cancelling, he said, “Do what you gotta do, son. And knock ’em dead.”
That audition would prove to be my final one. It was a miniversion of the show. They had whittled the field of what I was told were thousands of men down to two: me and someone else I never had the chance to meet. When I didn’t hear from anyone for two weeks, I assumed they had chosen the other guy. And I was a little disappointed, but not devastated. Maybe because I never really wanted the job. The disappointment was more about having to figure out what the hell to do with my life. But TLC called me and offered me a five-year contract—their option to renew every year, not mine. I accepted, and that was that.
So, Fanny, does it sound like Fate muscled her way into a reality show casting? Or was it Destiny? Or perhaps it was Faith herself! My own Faith in the Universe, or some other higher power. I asked for a change, and it landed smack-dab in the middle of my flat-front-trousered lap. Fate, Faith, Destiny, Coincidence—who cares. The past is past, as they say. And I’m just plugging along in the present, the only way I know how, in a sense of amused wonderment at it all. Ever since I made a concerted effort to give up trying to determine why things happen, I’ve been a bit freer to experience things when they happen. Oh, here I go with that armchair philosophy again. Pay no attention to the musings of an old man like me.
Something tells me you want to know a little about my relationship with Stacy. What can I tell you about Ms. London, my cohost of ten years? She and I got along like . . . what’s the expression? . . . a house on fire, from my first day on the job. And as the years wore on, I often wished that house would have burned down to the ground.
We had an interesting relationship. Interesting to me, anyway, in the extremes I felt. For the first five years we worked together, I either adored her or despised her, and never anything in between, probably because we spent nearly sixty hours a week in captivity, rarely more than an arm’s length away from each other. Trust me when I tell you that is just too much time to spend with any other human being you didn’t choose of your own free will. And even then, it might be too much. We would occasionally joke that we were like a brother and sister trapped in the backseat during an excruciatingly long car trip. One minute wanting to play a game, the next wanting to kill the other for breathing. The last five years of the show, we settled into being “friends at work,” which was considerably more peaceful.
Why did I love and loathe Stacy? I loved her, I think, because she’s charming as hell. I’ve met few people so good as she at making others feel decidedly special. Also, she’s got an amazing sense of humor. She cracked me up daily, even when I could barely stand the sight of her. Plus, she knows all the words to A Chorus Line. I mean, how could I not adore someone who wants to sing “Dance Ten, Looks Three” with me upward of thirty times a day? We were two well-intentioned warriors, traveling the country attempting to convince women, one at a time, that perhaps, despite everything they had been told by abusive ex-boyfriends, bullying classmates, even well-intentioned mothers, they did deserve to feel pretty. Some believed us. Some were damaged enough to know that a good bra and platform pumps would not come close to repairing their souls.
I loathed Stacy because . . . well . . . maybe there was some jealousy on my part. She really seemed to enjoy, nay, need the attention of others, and I felt that she was almost constantly jockeying for it. For that reason, and perhaps others, she received more attention than I did. Even though I rarely wanted attention—that’s the truth if you care to believe it—I found myself continually annoyed that she did. I was perfectly content with our own little system of two. Us against them! But she needed more, and then I grew to want more too.
Oh, there’s more to our relationship than that, Fanny, but I’m getting a headache just unpacking it. I’ll say this, though, before I move on: there’s a part of me that will love Stacy London forever, and a part of me that would be just fine if I never saw her again for the rest of my life. We had great chemistry, for sure. But just like when you combine baking soda and vinegar, after the fun part fizzles out, you’re left with a puddle of nothing in particular.
The show made me rich, so that’s nice. Not filthy rich, but I’m doing okay. I doubt I would have made as much money had I continued chugging along in my magazine editing career. I’m thankful for that, and for having a job that makes some people smile or think or both. And for the people who came into my life because of the show. Out of the three-hundred-plus “contributors” as we called them, the people who agreed to televised makeovers, I still keep in touch with about a hundred of them, some more than others, of course, and probably another fifty people who worked on the series—various producers, crew members, wardrobe assistants, makeup artists. Sometimes I can’t believe I’m the same painfully shy guy who had a total of seven friends, give or take a few based on the collective mood, in high school. Life sure is fucking weird, Fanny.
When What Not to Wear ended a few years ago, many reporters asked me about my favorite and least favorite makeovers and the worst fashion faux pas I had ever witnessed. But not a single one asked me what I had learned about women over ten years of listening to their concerns about their bodies and their clothes. I’ll tell you what has stuck with me the most, Fanny, because I think you of all people might actually be curious.
Women want to feel beautiful. I’ve never met one who said she didn’t, and believe me, I’ve asked around. (I sometimes wonder if, similarly, all men yearn to be handsome, but I’ll admit to being far less intrigued by what’s
going on between the ears of the males of our species.) To my point, American society has clearly learned how to capitalize on the desire of women to be desired, with billions of dollars spent each year on diet books, cosmetics, hair products, apparel, plastic surgery, the whole shebang. I certainly don’t think any of those categories is inherently evil—not evil at all, actually. In fact, I’m a big fan.
The problem, as far as I can tell, is that women spend infinitely more time than men paying attention to, competing with, worrying about, everyone other than themselves.
Sometimes I just want to shake you by the shoulders, Fanny, and tell you to stop surrendering your power, because that’s what you’re doing. Every single time you set up a comparison between yourself and someone else, YOU LOSE, NO ONE WINS. Chrissy Teigen has beautiful hair . . . that has nothing whatsoever to do with you. Jennifer Lawrence has perfect skin . . . that does not involve you. Kim Kardashian’s ass . . . should arouse absolutely no feelings in you concerning your own ass!
And the more you keep comparing, the less your own beauty becomes self-evident. Just because you’re not a supermodel, movie star, or Instagram celebrity does not mean that your beauty is any less important than anyone else’s. Sure, it’s OK to look, even admire, just be careful when comparing apples to oranges. (Apple: You getting yourself ready for work in the morning. Orange: Woman who has paid a stylist, personal chef, trainer, lighting director, and photo editor to help her post “selfies.”)
I Hate Everyone, Except You Page 4