Americas Next Top Model

Late 2012, I pitched an idea to Ebony.com to get more male read­ers to the site. In ask­ing men what they want­ed to read about, I was get­ting a lot of men say­ing they would be inter­est­ed in read­ing a wom­an’s view on dif­fer­ent aspects of a rela­tion­ship. What I was envi­sion­ing was some­thing sim­i­lar to Jet’s Beau­ty of the Week sans the swim­suit, where the sub­ject answers 3 or 4 ques­tions that would vary. For exam­ple: What is your biggest turn off when it comes to dat­ing? I envi­sioned classy women, noth­ing that screams King Mag­a­zine. A week­ly, or month­ly col­umn fea­tur­ing a bomb­shell beau­ty and her thoughts on love, dat­ing, and advice for men, writ­ten by yours tru­ly as an “As told to” piece.  I want­ed C list mod­els and actress­es that are beau­ti­ful enough to pay atten­tion to but not so “Hol­ly­wood” that the reg­u­lar Joe can’t relate to what she is say­ing. The edi­tor liked the idea so I played with it. Remem­ber Danielle “Dani” Evans? She was Tyra’s win­ner on America’s Next Top Mod­el Cycle 6. Since her win, she has signed with Click Mod­el Man­age­ment and has appeared in run­way shows and edi­to­r­i­al work for Cov­er Girl, Pas­try footwear, and Aka­demics. I did a can­did and FUN inter­view with her for this piece which ulti­mate­ly nev­er ran. (sad face) But I loved her take on things. At the time, she was only 27, but wise indeed. I decid­ed to final­ly get the inter­view in its entire­ty, out of my recorder and post it here… Can you tell us what you’ve been doing since we’ve seen you on America’s Next Top Mod­el? Dani:  I’m still mod­el­ing. I’m in New York City and it’s pret­ty much my every day life. Work­ing out, cast­ing, work. I’m still mod­el­ing full time but I also have projects that I’m work­ing on out­side of mod­el­ing. I deal with a non prof­it. I go to Haiti a lot and I’m work­ing with a close friend of mine who is also a mod­el. What we do is we take art, paint­ing and draw­ing, as a means of expres­sion for kids in pover­ty and use art as a way for these kids to escape and get away from the every­day life that they are used to. So we nor­mal­ly go out there for five days, 4 or 5 times a year.  So I’m real­ly involved over there in Haiti. Are you sin­gle? Im in a rela­tion­ship. What were you look­ing for in a man? You know what, I hon­est­ly didn’t know what I want­ed but I knew what I didn’t want. Just from tri­al and error and being in a rela­tion­ship that didn’t work and dat­ing men that I real­ized were not real­ly on the same page as me. For me, one of the biggest things is a man respect­ing a woman…her men­tal, her body, all of that is key. So with me I didn’t know for a fact what I want­ed but I knew what I didn’t want and that elim­i­nat­ed a lot of men. How did you know that this rela­tion­ship was some­thing you want­ed to be com­mit­ted to? The guy I’m dat­ing now, we’ve been in a rela­tion­ship for three years and we have the same spir­i­tu­al beliefs, we have a lot of the same goals and  I think that’s impor­tant when you seek a rela­tion­ship, find­ing some­one who has the same dri­ve as you. It’s real­ly impor­tant. Is there a dif­fer­ence between love and being in love? It’s so fun­ny you ask that. Love is love. A lot of peo­ple in our soci­ety today want to dif­fer­en­ti­ate but I always say love is love no mat­ter what. Who you decide to be with is dif­fer­ent. I can love some­one and not choose to be with them. You get what I’m say­ing? For some­one to say ‘I love you but I’m not in love with you’ I don’t know what that means. I used to say it because every­one else said it but I had to come to the point where I under­stood it’s not that I’m not in love with you any­more, it’s just that I choose not to be with you any­more. In love, you choose who you want to be with. What is the most roman­tic thing a man has ever done for you? I [had been] away for work. I was going back to the city. My flight was delayed. It was storm­ing and I end­ed up get­ting home way lat­er than when I was sup­posed to.  [I knew] the next day I had work for anoth­er client. I was extreme­ly stressed out. I was flown into Newark instead of LaGuardia or JFK and so I had to truck to get back into the city and I real­ly want­ed to see my boyfriend. I hadn’t seen him in a long time since he works in the indus­try as well. He’s a fash­ion styl­ist so some­times our sched­ules are so busy that we don’t get to see each oth­er as often as we like. So I was in a cab, it was night­time. I was upset, jet­lagged. So he’s tex­ting me say­ing he’s sor­ry this has hap­pened and we would see each oth­er the next day. So I get home ‚and inside my apart­ment  there are can­dles lit every­where. He was hid­ing in my bed­room. So he came out and he had cooked for me. That was pret­ty major for me. That sounds amaz­ing. Remind me where you are from? I’m from Lit­tle Rock, Arkansas. OK. When you moved to New York, did you see a dif­fer­ence in the kind of men that you were meet­ing? Oh my good­ness. Night and day. Yeah. It’s so fun­ny because me and my girl­friends still talk about that. Grow­ing up down south, your typ­i­cal guy is a south­ern gen­tle­men. He opens doors. He has man­ners. Some peo­ple might con­sid­er them pushovers. They’re def­i­nite­ly not pushovers, but they’re respect­ful. Not to say all men down south have it all together