In which I blog a pop culture item

America's Next Top Model.

Yes, you heard Nora right, cousins. America's. Next. Top. Model. I've been hooked for years. I think it started when there was a Real Live Lesbian on the show (not a great model, I'll say). After that I just kind of...stuck around. Through the relentless self-focus of Tyra Banks, the totally empty platitudes of guest judge Twiggy, the concerted mugging of Janice Dickinson (lest we forget! The First! Supermodel!), the over-the-top Ms. and Mr. J (up there to different ends, certainly, but still both highly stylized), and the unselfaware, unselfconscious, unworldly, marginally entertaining antics of the Hopefuls--I've been there, cackling away on my couch, drinking beer, yelling, analysing, and trying not to let on to my coworkers that I follow a television show such as this and yes, I would love to talk about my opinions of the ways in which each girl enacts her idea of OBJECT, MODEL, WOMAN and even ADULT.

If you want a first episode recap with names at this point, may I direct you to Television Without Pity? I don't keep track of names until I can tell them apart, and the good lo' knows I cannot yet tell one horse from another (without a program...). To me, most of them have blank faces on which other faces can be writ, wax tablets for the stylus, blank canvas for the paint, empty hangers for the clothes. And isn't that what a lot of modeling is? Being the background frame on which the thing of interest is actually displayed? Apart from the very notable exceptions in high fashion, the bulk of the workaday models are nameless and unheralded. It's a job, I guess.

Now, on to this week's cycle premiere ep.

As with previous cycles, in the first episode we get a stream of "candid" interactions and situations in which the many initial girls size each other up for friendship or competition in completely forced situations like, say, on a cruise ship. And, as with previous cycles, it takes almost no time for the girls to be shown eating and talking about eating. The viewers are shown enough footage of food entering mouths to assure us that most of these girls are okay about food, but the girls' conversations, veering invariably as they do toward the subject of eating disorders, indicate something different to me: these girls are very much not okay about food. Even though they might couch it as competitive trash talk or in an "I'm just playin'" tone, or even "I'm so okay about food that I can crack wise about eating disorders," I see a group of young women who know that what goes in the mouth reflects--badly--on what walks down the runway. A sharp audio edit from tonight's ep gives us a voice, "Does anyone want any more bacon?" up against a few sideways glances from several Hopefuls, as if they're thinking Who does that pig think I am? Her? Of course I want no more bacon, this toast and coffee are plenty for me.

Thirty three Hopefuls begin. First, a quick test of their walk with Ms. J, performing her only function on the show: one, maybe two sessions as a runway coach. This time around, our divine Ms. J (my grandmother's nickname for me when I was a wee pliant thing, by the way) settled for instruction through making fun of the less polished walkers. Not that shame isn't a powerful teaching tool; I just wish Lady J would earn her bread with a more constructive role on the show. One walk, one interview. The interviews are always the real gem: the Hopefuls get to shine or make total fools of themselves. Most of them squeal, and many of them cry. A surprising number, in fact, which is interesting to me. And they open up to Tyra, the Js, and Nigel Barker (often called a "noted fashion photographer") in that way that reality television participants have of speeding through stages of intimacy to arrive immediately at "revelatory confessional" level. This is why people on reality television participants seem more screwed up than our friends and ourselves: they merely tell us much more quickly the things that we would tell each other eventually.

One Hopeful's literal sob story (not to make light) consisted of a confessional coaxed from her with nearly no effort from Tyra: my mother was, like, a crackhead, I was raised by my grandmother, she just passed away. A second unsolicited breakdown was from my favourite Hopeful, the M-name from Alaska. She had a certain Grace Jones masculine-feminine quality about her to which I responded, and a strong face. But oh! I was so let down last cycle by Jael, another less plain Hopeful whose promise petered out, for me, even a little before 50 Cent shoved her into the pool at the party. Anyway, M-Hopeful had lived a very legitimately hard life, to which she confessed in what seemed, again (after editing for television, I'm sure), about the 40th second of being in the presence of Tyra Banks. I did wonder what might lead a 23-year-old, very attractive African American woman to a life in Anchorage, Alaska, but I'd of course included little details like "summer job on a fishing vessel" or "romanticized the Iditarod as a girl and ran away from home to train sled dogs." The truth is less like a Gary Paulsen novel: rape, molestation, hard times. Hard times revealed for two of our black female Hopefuls. And I hope the edit that followed M-Hopeful was a conscious one, and I cannot decide if it was brilliant or crushingly stupid: cut from a life of knocks to a girl--a white girl--who actually says that her life's been so good, she never cries or feels bad. She tries to keep it upbeat. She thinks crying is a waste of time. A few contestants later, a white girl (from Florida? I think this was the one who announced she was from the horse capital of America--and I thought, "oh, Kentucky," but it was Florida) says she feels like she's had, like, a normal life, her parents aren't even divorced. Ah, television: teaching us that black girls have hardscrabble lives and modeling is a ticket out; while white girls are blessed and, in the case of one particularly odious Hopeful, self-proclaimedly "built inside and out" for modeling. It's definitely interesting to me how privilege plays forward like this.

One Hopeful is from Boston, my current locale. In an interesting turn of events, she is a burlesque dancer in her real life. She's accurately sized, and this creates trouble for the judges: she's too big for a fashion model, but just on the small size for a plus size model. Mr. J opines, "wouldn't it be nice if we had a category for real size women? Like, 'Real Size Models.'" This nets him a hi-five from Tyra who definitely says "I'm Real Size!" How nice, this handout from modeling for women like myself: if we get a label, we must be acceptable! This little interaction follows nicely from last cycle's inclusion of two (two!) plus size models, of whom Whitney was the clear best candidate (sorry, Diana! You started strong but failed to evolve!). Tyra is known for her advocacy for more healthily sized fashion models, adding her voice to the chorus in the industry speaking out against rail-thin models worldwide. Note, however, that last cycle's winner, Jaslene, has a body like a one-by-six, and if you don't know what that is, feel free to leave me a comment and I'll be happy to explain some basics of carpentry to you. Ah, America's Next Top Model: if I can't have lip service, I don't want any service at all.
In a moment of "ahem, this is on television?" one of the Hopefuls gives Tyra a little demo of what she does for a living. The Hopeful performs bikini waxes, and is understandably pumped for the opportunity to simulate one on (a fully dressed but still a little too...ah...expository?) Tyra. The words "cheeks" and "spread" are employed, as are the phrases "kitty cat" and "get in there." This disturbs me. The girl is, however, no doubt well groomed. (I'm sure I'll get the opportunity to discuss my feelings on hair before the end of the cycle, so I'll hold off here. I do hope the make-over ep doesn't take long to arrive, however.)

By the end of the show, we have whittled away twenty girls to yield a field of 13 competitors. The girl with the wicked Boston accent is gone, as is the burlesquer. M-Hopeful did not make the second, critical cut; she put on a brave face. The nerd is in, the bitch from Chicago who looks Eritrean to me, the exotic dancer ("I'm not nude! I wear a bikini!"), the waxer, and a handful of other 18 to 23 year old aspirants to the title of America's Next Top Model, placed in proximity with each other to create tension and good television; worshiping at the altar of Tyra Banks (do we burn our bras here, rather than incense?).

We'll talk next week, friends and neighbours. I do hope you'll come along for the ride.