Confession: I have a secret obsession with makeover shows. I love them.

Not shows like “Extreme Makeover” that say you have to go under the knife in order to be accepted, or “Biggest Loser” which will only work when you have a drill instructor like trainer ridding your ass to stay fit.

No, I mean things like “What Not to Wear” and “How to Look Good Naked” which try to show people how to be themselves, as they are, but with some window dressing, like better fitting clothes, a little bit of makeup, and not over-plucking their eyebrows.

So, naturally, my jaw hit the floor when I saw the promo for VH1’s TRANSForm Me.

The idea is that 3 transwomen, who went through so much to make their own outsides match how they felt inside, now are working together to bring out the inner fabulosity in stuck-in-a-rut ciswomen.

This is significant. I don’t know of any other show hosted by any out transperson. Moreover, it marks the crest of a media wave that started a few years back when America’s Next Top Model featured a transwoman contestant. That ave being that transwomen can be represented in a mainstream media outlet as more than sexworkers and drag queens. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a sexworker or a drag queen, but its nice to know that there are other options. Reality often follows the messages of media as they are accepted. It will be even better when we have shows about transwomen lawyers and doctors, but Rome wasn’t built in a day, and this IS significant progress.

Back to the show itself. The transwomen here are powerful forces of nature. The leader of the pack, Lavern Cox, formerly of “I Wanna Work for Diddy,” is as big a personality as she is tall. Where as she frustrated me on that other show, it is clear she is in her element here and I, for one, am happy as can be to see it. Everything about her screams glamor. Kenneth Cole Model and Illustrator, Nina Poon brings the claws to teach the cisgirls some attitude along with some fashion sense. Rounding out the team is Model and Makeup Artist extraordinaire, Jamie Clayton, who, I must admit, I have a total crush on. I just want to stay in a MAC store after hours with her and play.

See, I have a makeup fetish. Makeup products are art supplies for the canvas that is the body. I love that makeup can make a face more feminine, more masculine, or just more. I do this for friends and people at sexuality events in my TRANSformation Salon workshops. For all my over priced college education, if I could work for MAC, or actually make money doing MUA work, I would. But I digress.

What I love about this show is not that it does much different than any other makeover show, but that the driving force is gender queer. It’s mission is first and foremost about using glamor to bring inner beauty out, not to force false beauty on the person.

I love this because we ARE visual creatures. This isn’t about being superficial, this is about feeling good. This is about being self aware and communicating to the world the message you want to communicate. Whether it’s communicating that you feel like a man, or a woman, or that you are the right person for the job, or want a date, we all do this with how we present ourselves.

Not everyone knows how to do this, and that’s ok. There’s help.

For some, this help comes Mondays at 10:30pm on VH1. For others, well, you have my email, right?