The Gap

Saw a commercial for some skincare brand and couldn’t focus on the product because I was too busy looking at the model. Her name was Dari, and she had this gap between her front teeth that I found genuinely appealing. The brand was running some campaign where they’d put young women into shared apartments across different cities and have them make content—music, fashion, lifestyle stuff, all tied back to the product. I didn’t care about any of that. I was just looking at her.

What I noticed was how honest it all was. They knew the formula: show an attractive person on screen and people will pay attention. No mystery to it. No need to hide behind some clever concept. I paid attention, and I wasn’t embarrassed about it. Not to the skincare or the campaign or the premise, just to her. There’s something almost refreshing about that kind of straightforwardness.

I never would have signed up for whatever they were doing, never would have auditioned or moved into one of those apartments. But I kept thinking about her for a bit after. That’s all it really is sometimes—you see someone and something sticks. Not a grand thing, not a lesson, just: I found her attractive and my brain held onto the image. And then eventually you move on.