Good Morning America's Top 20 Pick

**See the GMA Advice Guru tab for updates**

Second Cut Coming Tuesday on Good Morning America


I'll admit it, I've been thinking about this all day. And I know why I didn't make the cut, why my submission had no right to be there. Mine was lacking personality. It was lacking my personality. With the 300 word restriction in mind, I focused more on what I had to offer. I put great pains into making sure I used proper sentence structure, punctuation, and spelling. But I left my personality along side the road in my process.  It was like a slice of white bread without so much as a smear of butter. So I figured I wouldn't be in the cut. But the group we have is somewhat surprising to me.

“Teachers, nurses, hairdressers, bartenders, and stay-at-home moms applied.”

That's what they said after the closing date for accepting submissions. Quite a variety of people, but why not? GMA invited a variety of every day folks to enter submissions. Teachers, writers, housewives, and stay-at-home moms. You got the impression that they wanted the kind of advice you'd get from people that have been through it, not the trained psychologist responses. Having studied some psychology myself, I know there are merits and downfalls to the clinical approaches to things, but over all they are well trained and only want to help people.

I expected to see more bartenders with sage advice, more hairdressers with tales of how others deal with things, more teachers that deal with dozens of children at a time. I didn't not expect to see one lone teacher in a cluster of psychologists, psychiatrists, best selling how-to authors, and advice columnists, all with lengthy resumes, taking the lead. Let's look at our top 20 contenders, then I'll meet you at the bottom of the page..

**UPDATE:  Since the original posting of the blog, I've had opportunity to get to know some of the finalists.  I have started interviews with those interested.  Links to those interviews are included in the description of the finalists below.**

Have A Beautiful Day ~ India Arie

I Wonder What That Means?

I was reading one of my favorite blogs last night when the author said she didn't know where the expression “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” came from. So I decided I would write an article about these obscure little pieces of verbal bricabrack.

I know the bootstrap saying because my parents were very demonstrative. I saw my dad pulling his bootstraps daily. Boots were made, and many still are, with a small strap at the top of them to make it easier to pull them up. There would be days that cowboys were so tired they would grab the straps on their boots to lift their legs off of the edge of their bunks to start another day. There are dozens of origin stories to this expression, but this is the one that I grew up with, and frankly it seems more plausible than the ones that say it means to literally lift oneself all of the way off the ground by nothing but their bootstraps. Here are a few others that I know.

Updated Information ~ Rape

Since posting my article on date rape I have received so many emails with questions and comments that I decided to write a follow up.

In the U.S. a woman is raped every sixty (60) seconds.  Yet, it's still the most under reported, under investigated crime we know. The reasons are as different as the women to which it happens Women don't report it out of shame, embarrassment, and fear. Authorities don't pursue it because unless it's a particularly violent attack they consider it a “he said/she said” incident. It's further complicated by those that do file false complaints.

Latest Update on the Good Morning America Advice Guru Hunt



Juju, George, Robin, & Sam



Good Morning America gave an update this morning on their show. They've moved on to the second stage of their decision making, calling finalists. Not the Final Ten yet, but the last 40 or 50 people. Some candidates have already been called, but according to Bianna Golodryga several more will be called over the next few weeks.

Women Are Beautiful

One of closest friends called me tonight for dating advice. Among the many topics we covered had to do with body image. My friend is a gorgeous woman by any measure of the word, but she doesn't see it.

My gorgeous, brilliant, well educated friend takes jobs that are beneath her and lets herself be reduced to booty calls because she looks in the mirror and doesn't see the same gorgeous woman the rest of us see. One study tells us that 55% of women suffer from some degree of poor body image.  What she, and many other women, don't realize is that 45% of men suffer the same problem. Perhaps if they realized that nearly as many men as women suffer from the same insecurities then they might realize it's universal.

Sadly, despite efforts by such companies as Dove, the perception of the “perfect body” are still in the mainstream. Models are primarily all a size 0, anything over a size 12 is considered “plus size”, and the heavy women that are on TV are in proportion. Real women don't fit in those categories, but they out there by the millions.

Women are beautiful creatures, no matter what their proportions. Even as a heterosexual woman I can see the beautiful design of the female body, Women shouldn't let the media isolate them, single them out as unsuitable. Especially Caucasian women.

Many black women are seen as beautiful no matter what their shape is, white woman should be as well.  Before anybody thinks I'm criticizing black women, stop.  I think it's wonderful that they get the credit due them for their beauty, this happens to be one area where black women got the privilege before white women did.  As happy as I am for their recognition, I wish it could be more universal.  Women are magnificent, if we cold be portrayed that way then maybe more of us could view ourselves that way.