95 Piccadilly
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Over the weekend, I watched “Reality Check,” a documentary series revisiting the now-maligned “America’s Next Top Model.” What struck me wasn’t just the criticism of a show we once loved, but how confidently we act like society was once misguided. I have to roll my eyes at that. We like to think ourselves as evolved, but I’m not entirely convinced. Maybe that’s why I watched it – to revisit to a calmer past. Maybe even an era of more acceptable beauty and relaxation. We didn’t need to be on guard all the time. Certainly, I’ve been thinking a lot about the past and who I was in it. I’m afraid that documentary crew wouldn’t have liked me very much.
My late sister used to say I had changed. I never really believed her, but since she died, I’ve started to think she was right. A friend – who has known me for 25 years – recently told me I’m more mellow – and a few not so nice things about the person they’d met all those years ago. On the contrary, I actually believe the opposite. I’ve grown more rigid (even if I hate to use that word). The younger version of me was more spontaneous, more optimistic, more open and flirtatious with the world. I’ve asked myself often: where is he?
On the occasion, he rears his head. In 2016, my sister and I had just finished Woody Allen’s “Cafe Society,” and I was preparing what I thought would be a thoughtful critique. She saw it coming before I spoke.
“I don’t understand,” I began, “why anyone would choose Kristen Stewart over Blake Lively.”
She sighed, then laughed. “I knew where that was going before you even opened your mouth,” she said.
It was sincere, if not especially insightful. “Reality Check” would have hated it. Justin Baldoni might too. We like to think our opinions are evolved, but a surprising number of them are built on something far more superficial. I think that’s natural, even if we’re not allowed to admit it in 2026. My sister understood that and apparently, at some point, so did I. We grew up in a household, after all, where books were read and opinions debated, but there was always room for the aesthetic. She just recognized the balance better than I did.
The signs were there early. As a teenager, I remember a car ride with my mother, where the radio announcer asked American men, “would you rather have a Lamborghini or a date with Claudia Schiffer?”
“Claudia Schiffer,” I said, immediately (and the majority of listeners eventually said the same). My mother was baffled. I defended it as common sense. “That car will depreciate, but you can always say you went on a date with Claudia Schiffer.” Good dinner party conversation, I suppose. It probably revealed more than I realized. Years later, that same instinct surfaced online. A girl – Laura, we’ll call her – once commented on my blog, after I’d repeatedly rebuffed her: “I now know that Shane prefers blondes who look emaciated.” Ouch. There was a bluntness to it, but I think there was truth in it. The way she reduced something I hadn’t examined into a single sentence. Maybe I was vain? Don’t answer that.
Of course, none of these women – from Claudia to ANTM contestants – exist solely in a vacuum. They’re products of an industry and a society that elevates certain aesthetics, which is why the current criticism of ANTM feels, if nothing else, vapid. To me, the underlying idea that this way of thinking belongs to the past just doesn’t hold up. It denies a part of who we are, even now. The world has always been visual, hasn’t it? If anything, with the onslaught of social media, it’s more so now. Those standards of beauty – Claudia, ANTM, or Blake Lively (Sorry, Justin Baldoni) – don’t simply appear out of nowhere. They’re noticed for a reason.
They’re repeated. They’re reinforced. Yes, they change, sometimes, but they don’t miraculously disappear just because we want them to. What makes us uncomfortable isn’t their mere existence, but maybe that we recognize our own adherence to them. We are what we condemn in others – and we don’t like ourselves for noticing. Scandalous.
My sister – quite the beauty in her day – seemed to understand that long before social media turned it into a daily exercise. She never treated it as something that needed resolution. It simply was. It was something to recognize, maybe even mock if you’re on SNL, but never deny. A batted eyelash and a Southern accent got her pulled from a crowd and taken backstage at a Cleveland Metallica concert – a story she liked to tell. Use what works for you, I suppose. I’m just not sure denying a truth, a part of human instinct, is the same thing as progress, even if we want it to be. Maybe that’s the ultimate Reality Check.