America's Next Top Girl
February 28, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN
Chicago Sun-Times
Meager models strut and prowl. Gaze at them -- girls pretending to be women pretending to be girls. They are Squeals in High Heels.
"If I don't make it," says one, so slim, "I'm gonna have to start selling my body on the street." (She should consider eating more meat.)
The girls are preening for "America's Next Top Model." Their egoism deserves Simon Cowell. But their judge-y mentor, supermodel Tyra Banks, will do. She remains insightfully shallow and "Tyra-fying."
"I want you to be all you can be, not bitch all you can bitch," she instructs.
The girls might be too famished to obey her, except for the two "plus-size" models, who say their hefty ascension would make a "good statement." (Yeah, that'll happen, and the war will end someday, too.)
At first, there are 33 rivals. Then just 13, including two from Illinois. Week by week, another will fall. For photo shoots, they wear military camouflage, fake furs and real fruits. (A few girls are draped in birthday suits.)
Daddy issues, daddy issues. A plus-size model recalls her father-daughter bond. He used to tell her:
"Stop eating. You're not going to fit through the door."
A Skinny One tells "Model" judges, "I can deal with you up in my face yelling at me, because that's what my dad did." She's blond.
Some girls are fashion-dumb. They don't know who Carolina Herrera is, or Richard Avedon. One girl name-checks Audrey Hepburn: "I love her in 'Dinner at Tiffany's.' I'm sorry 'Lunch at ... Brunch at Tiffany's.' " Goodness gracious, the room for rent in her weave is spacious.
A crying girl oddly believes she doesn't pass the semifinals because she's not sassy. She weeps, "Personality means more than looks, apparently." (Don't you see, you Towering Tiny Thing, you're wrong; looks do rule, and it's largely luck anyhow, since height comes inherently.)
So if "America's Next Top Model" is ridiculous and mock-able, why is it so entertaining? Partly because of Schadenfreude (viewers find joy in contestants' idiotic misery).
But don't sell cattiness short as a selling point. Cattiness is amusing. Tyra's fashionista Jay Manuel meows, "Lesbians aren't serious ALL the time."
And the pictures the girls take make pretty art of hunger. (These doe-eyed Jane Does could hardly seem any younger.)
Manuel promises them the un-promise-able: "One of you is going to be a household name."
Famous like the previous winners? Adrianne Curry, Eva Pigford, Naima Mora, Nicole Linkletter, Danielle Evans, CariDee English and Yoanna House? Yeah, that's a real bullpen of Us Weekly divas.
Tyra ought to invite a shrink to the set, to see if the girls suffer from a light, mass case of folie a deux: a shared delusion. They're constantly talking about how they're all so much more beautiful and genuine than everyone else.
What they crave is validation for genetic bone structure and the willpower to diet and pose. That is so ludicrous, it makes every one of them a low-level sympathetic villain -- the perfect reality-TV construct.
"Just being here has already made, like, so many more of my hopes and dreams come true," a semifinalist beams.
Such is her dream -- for the world to respectfully ogle her while she wears strategically placed fruit on her ninnies and mimmy.
BY DOUG ELFMAN
Chicago Sun-Times
Meager models strut and prowl. Gaze at them -- girls pretending to be women pretending to be girls. They are Squeals in High Heels.
"If I don't make it," says one, so slim, "I'm gonna have to start selling my body on the street." (She should consider eating more meat.)
The girls are preening for "America's Next Top Model." Their egoism deserves Simon Cowell. But their judge-y mentor, supermodel Tyra Banks, will do. She remains insightfully shallow and "Tyra-fying."
"I want you to be all you can be, not bitch all you can bitch," she instructs.
The girls might be too famished to obey her, except for the two "plus-size" models, who say their hefty ascension would make a "good statement." (Yeah, that'll happen, and the war will end someday, too.)
At first, there are 33 rivals. Then just 13, including two from Illinois. Week by week, another will fall. For photo shoots, they wear military camouflage, fake furs and real fruits. (A few girls are draped in birthday suits.)
Daddy issues, daddy issues. A plus-size model recalls her father-daughter bond. He used to tell her:
"Stop eating. You're not going to fit through the door."
A Skinny One tells "Model" judges, "I can deal with you up in my face yelling at me, because that's what my dad did." She's blond.
Some girls are fashion-dumb. They don't know who Carolina Herrera is, or Richard Avedon. One girl name-checks Audrey Hepburn: "I love her in 'Dinner at Tiffany's.' I'm sorry 'Lunch at ... Brunch at Tiffany's.' " Goodness gracious, the room for rent in her weave is spacious.
A crying girl oddly believes she doesn't pass the semifinals because she's not sassy. She weeps, "Personality means more than looks, apparently." (Don't you see, you Towering Tiny Thing, you're wrong; looks do rule, and it's largely luck anyhow, since height comes inherently.)
So if "America's Next Top Model" is ridiculous and mock-able, why is it so entertaining? Partly because of Schadenfreude (viewers find joy in contestants' idiotic misery).
But don't sell cattiness short as a selling point. Cattiness is amusing. Tyra's fashionista Jay Manuel meows, "Lesbians aren't serious ALL the time."
And the pictures the girls take make pretty art of hunger. (These doe-eyed Jane Does could hardly seem any younger.)
Manuel promises them the un-promise-able: "One of you is going to be a household name."
Famous like the previous winners? Adrianne Curry, Eva Pigford, Naima Mora, Nicole Linkletter, Danielle Evans, CariDee English and Yoanna House? Yeah, that's a real bullpen of Us Weekly divas.
Tyra ought to invite a shrink to the set, to see if the girls suffer from a light, mass case of folie a deux: a shared delusion. They're constantly talking about how they're all so much more beautiful and genuine than everyone else.
What they crave is validation for genetic bone structure and the willpower to diet and pose. That is so ludicrous, it makes every one of them a low-level sympathetic villain -- the perfect reality-TV construct.
"Just being here has already made, like, so many more of my hopes and dreams come true," a semifinalist beams.
Such is her dream -- for the world to respectfully ogle her while she wears strategically placed fruit on her ninnies and mimmy.
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