Some people hate Valentine’s Day. Some hate birthdays. Others hate their annual physical because they smoked too much dope and had unprotected sex with a donkey and a nun three weeks before. Me?

I fucking hate Fashion Week.

Ever since they made Fashion Week a staple summer event, it always stuck to my craw like those tiny little toothpicks in the cocktail hotdogs they serve at pretentious launches. And it doesn’t help that rehearsals and promotions are held smack dab in the middle of the mall, you can’t help but walk in on it, just like walking in on your parents doing the horizontal tango.

Yeahyeahyeahyeah, I’m bitter. First chance I had to join, I was too fat. A year later, I was too thin. Now that I was FINALLY asked, I’m too busy. It’s done nothing but make me feel too chubby or too skinny or too boring or too enslaved. And I know I really shouldn’t blame them. Maybe I’m just not built to join the fashion pantheon, with their tight leather pants and heathen ways. Besides, it’s a basic human/divine need to be worshipped. We all want our prostrations and pedestals, prayers and pleadings, followers and zealots. We’re all little wind-up buddhas, going around waiting to be wound by the next eager believer. And really, it’s sad.

And sure I still like instilling that sense of smallness in ugly people. I still like to turn heads and break hearts; I still enjoy filling out t-shirts rather nicely. But I don’t think I’d like to be famous for it. I was sitting with Trinka and Cosico at Greenbelt the other night when I saw some Fashion Week fallouts strutting down the corridor like zombies who’ve had too much cocaine and apple martinis. And I think all i want is to do them, not be them. I remember my boss telling me that I like to play dumb. I like to take on the role of the ditz, the slack-jawed yokel, the Johnny Knoxville with his fist up his ass and nipples stapled to the back of a Ford Pickup. And I realized: if I used 5 paragraphs and spent 15 minutes of my life bitching about Fashion Week and how much I used to want to be in it, then maybe I’m taking the dumb himbo role all too seriously.

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“I may leave a great impression
As I race through a succession
Of the latest crazes, chase the newest fad
I feel better when beguiling
Find that fashion keeps me smiling
But in my heart I know it's rather sad
That a life of great potential
Is dismissed, inconsequential
And only ever seen as being cute
So I'll flutter to deceive,
yet I know I must believe
That one day I’m bound to find
a stronger suit”

--My Strongest Suit, Aida