From 2003 to 2006, I wanted to be Mischa Barton. I wanted hair that didn’t frizz upon meeting water. I wanted to wear Polo shirts and A-line skirts without looking like a warped pear. I wanted to pull off a small shoulder bag with ease. I wanted her height, her O.C. house, and I wanted Marissa Cooper’s access to name-brand (read: American Eagle) clothing. I wanted to woo the likes of Ben McKenzie and/or Ryan Atwood, and, like Marissa, I wanted a few life montages set to Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah.” (Minus the very last one, duh.)Which, considering that Mischa Barton is only one year younger than I am, made sense. At the time (between the ages of 18 and 21), it was easy to project my ideas about her character and red carpet persona onto a real, live, human person. So her fall from the A-list seemed like a sad and disappointing surprise, instead of an understandable effect of the unrealistic expectations (see: “Be Marissa!”) we were all throwing at her.When Marissa Cooper was killed in The O.C.’s season-3 finale , it shook us (me) all to our (my) very cores — especially since what followed for Barton was a very public downward spiral. At the time (and at ages when I don’t think many of us were willing to really understand addiction, mental health, and the effects of growing up in Hollywood), Barton’s name was a constant in tabloids. Perez Hilton cruelly nicknamed her, she was subjected to digs about her fluctuating weight, she made an unfortunate (and bizarre) appearance on a 2010 episode of Fearne Cotton’s series, and eventually revealed in a 2013 interview with People that all of this led to a breakdown.In short, she turned out to be a human, and not a TV character. Which makes her return to television even more exciting.Last week, it was rumoured that after a few years on the sidelines, Mischa Barton would be joining the next season of Dancing With the Stars alongside the likes of Jodie Sweetin and The Facts of Life’s Kim Fields , and today on Good Morning America, it was confirmed. And to that I say, yes: Dance, Mischa, dance. Dance like you’ve never danced before.I mean, we can pretend that we’re beyond watching our former obsessions appear on reality television. We can tell ourselves that gigs like that are just an attempt to stay in the spotlight, or that we wouldn’t take the opportunity if it were offered to us (we would for sure). We can act superior and judge in 140 characters or less (while still watching religiously). But let’s not forget that Dancing With the Stars isn’t Celebrity Big Brother or even Celebrity Apprentice (not that there’s anything wrong with those), and has instead delivered us the likes of Brandy, Maya, and Nicole Scherzinger — a.k.a. artists we actually care about — in choreographed-and-competing form. And then let’s remember that we don’t actually know any of these people, and if we’ve got a problem with celebrities we recognise learning to dance well, we don’t have to watch them.