I started telling the truth in the summer of 2001. Wait, it’s not like had been lying all my life up to that point. What happened was that that particular summer I decided to start telling the truth professionally. Allow me to explain: It had been a really bad year for Michael Jackson and I found myself wondering: “Does he have anyone who can tell him the truth? Anyone who can say: “dude, you have to stop the plastic surgery madness,” or, “Michael, stop hanging it out with kids. It’s totally creepy.”

Then I took the concept of being totally honest to a higher level: what if there was someone out there—someone who’s not your friend, or your family—someone who doesn’t even know you—not a therapist, not a psychiatrist, but a person without any agenda, who could answer with complete honesty the most simple yet delicate questions, like: Do I have bad breath? Do I look fat in these jeans? Can you tell that I have hair-plugs? Anyway, since I couldn’t find anyone who could do it, I decided to do it myself, and that’s where Ask Dr. Truth began as a performance art project.

I immediately started posting ads in Craigslist, and the Village Voice, and I would sit in different coffee shops in the West Village giving out fliers. Little by little people started coming and asking all kinds of things, but that’s when something completely unexpected started to happen. All the women who came to me asked the same question.

“Am I fat?”

But the truth was even more shocking: none of them were fat. These were all very skinny women, and it didn’t matter how many times I told them the truth, they had a very hard time believing it.

A few weeks later I was having dinner with a beautiful full-figured friend of mine, and she shared a mind-blowing story. She had gone to a famous tax-preparation office in New York City, and the lady who was working on her papers told her:

“You are a beautiful woman. You could make a lot of money.” My friend was speechless, but the lady continued: “Call me. I know men who would pay a lot of money to be with someone like you”.

Wow… while most women out here were mortally afraid of being overweight, fat women were getting indecent proposals from Madames.

Needless to say, my friend never called this woman… but I started fantasizing: what if she called? What if a girl who was tormented by her weight, met men who liked her exactly the way she was? What impact would that have in her life?

And that’s how the story of “B as in Beauty” came about.