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Lanz nightgowns? They have a name? My nightgowns that look like burlap sacks with plaid décor have a name?

Stacy and her co-host would then explain what their subject should be wearing based on age, profession, and body type, and send them off with $5,000 to purchase a new wardrobe—one they will buy with Stacy and her co-host watching over them via remote camera. Inevitably, the shopper makes a ghastly mistake—giving in to such temptation as, say, a zebra-striped blazer—prompting Stacy and sidekick to race out of the studio and to the store to help her finish the shopping expedition successfully.

Then she’s whisked off to a salon for cut, color, and makeup application before modeling all for Stacy, who has now transformed into a doting and approving mother, clucking over her hatchling’s newly formed taste.

I wanted Stacy’s approval. As the nausea of my pregnancy slowly passed, I made efforts to take care of myself. I tracked down a line of inexpensive but cool-looking pregnancy clothing called Japanese Weekend that I recalled from my first pregnancy—the one in Los Angeles—and began ordering them online. I discovered a colorist who used vegetable dyes, and did something about my gray roots. I found a wonderful woman who worked near my mother’s apartment to tame my forever bushy eyebrows so I could drop my son off and let her work on me at leisure, and not just do a rush job while he napped in the stroller.

The feminist within me should have been horrified. Instead, I loved every minute of it.

At first, I rationalized all of this by telling myself I could be worse. I could have watched Extreme Makeover, which took the human redo to a whole new level. Not content to arrange for new wardrobes and hairstyles, the subjects on Extreme Makeover were whisked off to Los Angeles, where they received substantive plastic surgery, tough-love exercise programs, and serious mouth work in addition to the standard clothing and beauty styling. You’re a failure, it seemed to say, because you inherited your father’s chin. There is little you can do for yourself. The professionals need to do it all for you.

Extreme Makeover gave me the creeps. Stacy, on the other hand, inspired me. See, Stacy thinks you are fine just the way you are—that all you need is a little more attitude and some can-do spirit. She’s the Simon Cowell of fashion, quick to make a quip at your expense, but really, really doing it for your own good.

What I hadn’t realized—until my head was permanently attached to a toilet—is that I had grown arrogant about my appearance. I coasted on the fact that I was young and pretty and thin, and assumed it would last forever. It doesn’t, of course. Women handle the discovery that youthful looks come with an expiration date in all sorts of different ways. Many completely surrender, giving up on all forms of vanity. You see them throughout my suburban town, with their sensible Peter Pan haircuts and colorless and shapeless unisex clothes. Others go in the opposite direction, running up tabs at the dermatologist’s office for regular injections of Botox and Restylane, until they begin to look like stone-faced caricatures of their once-upon-a-time selves.

Stacy serves up tough love, but she never concludes that you’re hopeless without medical intervention. She’s the television equivalent of comfort food—if you like your comfort food with lots of garlic (and I do). When Stacy recommends a better-fitting bra “to show off the girls,” she doesn’t point out that uplift surgery would have a more profound, effective, and dramatic effect. She might insult your clothes, tell you your makeup is fit for a seventeen-year-old about to go out on prom night, but she’ll never suggest you lose weight—even when such an idea is blindingly obvious to the audience at home.

Under Stacy’s tutelage, I’ve slowly learned to embrace the me that I am today. I don’t need to give up completely and dress like a junior version of my two boys—but neither do I need to turn myself over to Extreme Makeover,