A Prayer for Something Good to Happen

   The Day in the life of a 50s Reality Model  

Do you remember the TV show "Queen for a Day"? As a little girl, in the late 1950s and early '60s, it was one of my favorites. The plot revolved around one ordinary woman whose sob story topped three other female contestants' tales of misery. When the day's queen was robed in velvet and crowned with a tiara, she would burst into tears or cover her mouth in shock after winning the prize of her choice.

I knew exactly how those women felt when I once received a call from Spiegel Brands on a cold and bleak January day. A representative informed me I was the 50s category winner in Spiegel's Reality Dressing Contest.

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She congratulated me by telling me the company was sending me to New York. For a second, I wondered which practical joker friend of mine had put this scheme together. Then my confused mind recalled entering the catalog contest a couple of months earlier by writing a short essay about my mother's influence on my fashion style, including a requested photo. My late mom, then 77-year-old Glenna Giesken Sprang, was the real fashion diva in our family.

Suddenly, I realized winning a trip to New York, and spending a day as a reality model, might be God's answer to my prayers. The past winter had been very difficult , so over and over, I had simply asked God for "something good to happen."

Of course, I didn't realize "something good" could be a trip to the Big Apple. Long ago, I had dreamed of visiting New York. When the opportunity never presented itself, I gave up on seeing the city that doesn't sleep.

I didn't think the trip was going to happen until Spiegel sent the promised driver with his silver Continental to my former Hardin County home on a snow-covered February morning. Another driver in a black Continental was waiting at New York's JFK International Airport to transport my husband and me to the upscale QT Hotel just off Times Square.

For two days, Larry and I explored New York with the allowance provided by Spiegel. We saw "The Phantom of the Opera." We visited every tourist site we could squeeze into our whirlwind weekend including: the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, NBC Studios, the Statue of Liberty and Ground Zero.

Monday morning, I turned into a reality model. For hours, Ricky the hairstylist set and styled my fine hair to make it look thick and full. Make-up artist Antonio worked magic on my then mid-50s face, turning the clock back dramatically for one day. A wonderful freelance stylist named Loidian dressed me in four beautiful outfits. She methodically pinned, taped and accessorized each look.

There were studio umbrella lights, blaring music and people everywhere. By the time it was over eight hours later, I had posed for hundreds of photos. Sometimes, my feet were numb from shoes too high to walk in. I was also afraid to eat from the buffet of French food provided, fearing the pins holding my outfits together might come loose.

That fall, when the Spiegel catalog was released, there were three small photos commemorating my day as a reality model. In New York, I was told real models wear a size 2 and are often close to 6 feet tall, which definitely doesn't describe me. Besides, models don't start their careers in their mid-50s. Therefore, like Cinderella, I accepted that my hours of glamour would be short-lived.

The catalog company's public relations assistant, Emily Rose, teasingly said I was an official fashionista. I'm not too sure about that, but I do know that gettting older in a youth-oriented society can make aging women like myself feel invisible. Spiegel's contest proved we can still be queen for a day.