The Horror

Written on paper Friday night, because I just could not contain myself:

Stacy. Oh No. Oh Stacy. I am so sorry.

I watched my first and perhaps only episode of Fashionably Late tonight, and I am so disappointed. I don't want to wax all feminist on anybody, but Miss London has done herself and all women a disservice by dumbing herself down and trying to put on a chummy air for this show.

There are many women who are loved by their girl friends naturally. I have friends like this. When they got married, people would fight over who would get to be their bridesmaids. They love being women and are so comfortable in their feminine skin. God bless them.

And then there are women like me who don't naturally interact the way women generally interact. The vocal intonations are different. There's a little less openness and sociability. There's maybe even a little coldness. We can be the nicest people in the world, and we feel things deeply, but we're never going to wear all of that in the open.

After watching that show, I think Stacy is one of these people. Despite her humor on What Not To Wear, she always seemed respectably cold and discriminating. It's what made her seem like an authority on fashion. It's something good female teachers often have - just an air of authority. I love that quality, and it's one of the reasons I was interested in Fashionably Late. Stacy is great because she has an ivy league education, and she still knows so much about style.

The concept of Fashionably Late is that Stacy is hosting a party with her mostly female audience. Instead of giving her a show where she can just interact with the topic, and maybe do an occasional interview, they have her trying to chum it up with everyday women. And oh my God it is so awkward.

She's so nervous throughout the show that her neck muscles are tense and sticking out. As she tries to banter with the audience, you can see on her face that she's so uncomfortable. They have her serving drinks and trying to get laughs, and it made me nervous just watching her.

At one point during the show, there was a bizarre sequence where she was pretending to be on the back of a moving motorcycle. Later, she told Angie Harmon that when they first met, she wished they could be roommates. She tried on a series of hats and made goofy faces, all the while making forced, awkward conversation. Where was that confidence I loved?

Why not do a show about the really intelligent side of fashion? Why did she agree to do something with this format where she's putting on the hey-girlfriend-let's-gossip BS personna that pop culture demands? Any idiot could see that a show like that is not where she is going to shine.

By the end of the show, I was feeling inexplicably anxious, like I had done something horribly wrong. I think I was just empathizing with Stacy a little too much.

I'm not going to put her down for trying to be successful and squeeze every penny she can out of what is most likely a very brief period of fame for her. But I do wish she had held out for something better.

I'll keep an eye on the show, just in case she improves with time like a lot of talk radio people do eventually, but I don't have high hopes.