Turn 6 of 44

Sit at the vanity and let Vivian begin the makeover. She starts with asking you to take your clothes off which you do. Soon she pulls out the normal undergarments of the 1950s and puts them on to your body. While this happens, you body changes to the prefect 1950s housewife body with thin arms, hands, feet, legs and waist with big hips. Your boobs and butt get bigger. You see a prefect body

The vanity in your bedroom is new — you're nearly sure it's new — a curved walnut table with a tri-fold mirror and little velvet wells of powder puffs and compacts, all of it there as though it has always been there. You sit on the padded stool and the mirror shows you a woman in a linen shirt and jeans, hair pulled back, looking tired around the eyes in a way you hadn't noticed before tonight.

"Let's start from the ground up, honey," Vivian says behind you, brisk and kind, a surgeon consulting her instruments. "Clothes off, please. Can't build on old foundations."

And you do it. Without a flinch, without a joke to cover it, you stand and unbutton the shirt you've worn for twenty years of interviews and committee meetings and let it slide to the floor, and the jeans after, and there you are in your ordinary cotton underwear under three mirrors and Vivian's approving gaze. It feels — right, is the terrible thing. It feels like undressing for gym class, routine, supervised, fine.

"Now then." From a garment bag you never saw her carry in, she lifts white foundations with a flourish, like a magician with doves.

"A girl is only as put-together as what's underneath. Arms up."

You lift your arms. The girdle goes on first, and the moment it cinches, everything else happens — you feel it like a tide moving through you. Your waist draws in and in, ribs rearranging their opinion of themselves. Your hips swell out to meet the garment's promise, your bottom rounding full, your bust rising generous against the satin of the bra as it hooks itself home. Your arms slim to soft white wrists and small neat hands; your legs lengthen smooth and shapely; even your feet seem to shrink toward dainty, arches lifting as if preparing for heels. Your skin pales to powder-and-pearl. The mirrors show it from three angles at once, and all three agree.

"Oh, *there* she is," Vivian breathes, orange nails resting on your newly small shoulder. "Just look at yourself, honey. Isn't that just the cat's pajamas?"

It is. The woman in the mirror is perfect — thin-waisted, full-figured, flawless, a 1950s dream in white foundations, and you are already wondering what she'll look like in orange.