Feb 20, 2017 3 min read

Have you heard the one about the model who dangled off a skyscraper for a photo shoot? I saw the video for the first time last night, shared by a friend on Facebook. It depicts a young woman walking out on what appears to be an iron beam at the top of a skyscraper or construction site.

She is led by a man wearing a camera around his neck, and she holds on as she walks on the beam. But suddenly, and in my opinion completely inexplicably, she grabs the man’s hand and begins to climb down the outside of the beam. She then steps off of the beam – again, what is she thinking? – and releases her grasp on it with her other hand. She is then filmed dangling from that incredible height, supported only by her male friend’s grip.

I have two competing thoughts here.

My first thought is that, if I was her Mama, I might have trouble remembering she is a grown woman and not my baby girl doing something that could hurt herself. I might lose my mind that she couldn’t see the danger in her actions. I just might turn her over my knee and say something like, “This won’t hurt as much as a fall to the crushing concrete below would,” as I spanked her hiney.

But I’ll admit, a second thought crept into my mind. Namely, how does she have the courage to climb up there, much less out there, when I can’t even climb a stepstool to clean a ceiling fan? (I am serious here. If you ever want a laugh, come watch me attempt to climb four steps up a ladder to clean my first-floor bay window. It’s ridiculous.)

But in case you’re thinking, “It was a Facebook video; it probably wasn’t real,” I’ll tell you that Reuters reported Dubai police summoned her for questioning about the incident. They asked her to “sign an undertaking not to repeat any dangerous moves that could endanger her life in Dubai.”

They also reported the height she ascended was 73 stories. Seventy-three stories into the air with no harness, no safety protocol, no one knowing what she was doing except the person or persons with her.

Did she even entertain the idea that her friend may have lost his grip? That his palms might have gotten sweaty? That, while he may have been able to hold her, he may not have been strong enough to pull her back up? It would be far too late to consider once the problem occurred.

Why were they even shooting the images? She wears sneakers, shorts and a T-shirt, so probably not for a fashion magazine. Her face is barely captured in the images, so likely not a makeup line. Was it an attempt to get a rush or an answer to a dare? Was it simply for name recognition?

I don’t know the answer. There is probably no answer that would satisfy me anyway. Unless, possibly, it was for a perfume commercial, and the name of the perfume was Simply Madness.

Laura Zoeller can be reached at zoeller5@verizon.net.