Choosing to become at Time Out for Women, Time Out for Girls in Salt Lake City

SALT LAKE CITY — “American Idol” finalist Carmen Rasmusen saw what real beauty was — and wasn’t — when she went to Hollywood for Fox’s singing reality show and shared that with about 600 young women at the first Time Out for Girls in Salt Lake City on Saturday.

While the girls heard from Rasmusen, Deseret Book CEO Sheri Dew, seminary principal Anthony Sweat, Brigham Young University associate professor Brad Wilcox and the musical group Jericho Road, about 4,400 women were in a nearby hall at the concurrent Time Out for Women event on the last stop of this year’s “Choose to Become” tour.

The women on Saturday heard from author and Deseret Book editor Emily Watts, psychologist Wendy Ulrich, retired institute teacher S. Michael Wilcox and Deseret Book vice president Laurel Christensen. Blogger and plane crash survivor Stephanie Nielson also spoke due to a last-minute change in presenters.

Deseret Book’s Time Out for Women events are inspirational events targeted at women. This year, events were in nearly two dozen cities, including inaugural events in Australia and New Zealand and concurrent Time Out for Girls events in seven cities in the U.S. and Canada.

Time Out for Girls

There were two things Rasmusen wanted to change about herself physically when she was in middle school. The “American Idol” finalist wanted to have clear, clean skin and she wanted braces to fix her buck teeth — then she thought she could be happy. She had cut her hair short and with her tiny body, it made her look like a boy.

In high school, her skin had cleared up and she had had braces, but as a self-described late bloomer and someone who didn’t reach 100 pounds until her senior year of high school, she wanted to look like a girl.

Then, for “American Idol” in 2003, she was transported to Hollywood and learned a thing or two about beauty.

“Anyone can look like a movie star,” she told several hundred girls at the Time Out for Girls event, while their moms were at the concurrent Time Out for Women event.

For every show, they would spend at least an hour to an hour and half in the stylist chair.

“You can enter the room looking one way and come out looking completely different,” she said.

But it takes more than makeup, cute shoes and jewelry to have more than physical beauty.