ANTM rides again, and so does this laptop

So.

While we waited for Dell to work a minor miracle—that is, to address our needs on this approximately 2 year old lappy by replacing a hard drive and orchestrating not one but two complete reboots of the system *all while completely under warrantee*—you and I, blog of mine, have fallen seriously behind on the ol’ ANTM recap. Thankfully, Tyra gave a poor sinner like me a bit of a reprieve last week: the mid-cycle recap! Not only did she jog my memory, she gave me one less week through which I need to fly to get up to speed before I dip into tonight’s substantive ep.

I missed the makeover episode, in which they always shear some poor girl’s hair off and she cries and says she looks like a boy (the horror!). Bianca, heretofore known to me only as Queens, was the major target this time, though Ebony also got it bad. Taking off these weaves and wigs is like slash-and-burn farming: nothing grows there for years afterwards. I have some short damned hair, so I don’t get the severe negative reaction they girls have—but as a person with a very stylized look and a specific haircut, hair is a huge part of my identity. And it’s been gratifying to see Bianca toss that wig they fobbed off on her in favour of her eminently better chop job, because short hair does not equal boy. Short hair equals short hair, and Bianca’s begun to own it. I do love a good skull. At the end of the episode, they send the prickly Yalie home. Not a shocker: I still feel like her motivation was about having a conception of what a model is and does, and then enacting that conception. The panel reacted poorly this time, and I read in their reaction the idea that modeling should be from the heart, not the head. Models should be seen and not heard. Unless they’re spokesmodels, as they are in another episode I watched but could not blog. And where, exactly, did Ebony’s personality go? Man, is she a board up there. And that falling on the sword? I called that, on my little couch with my vegetarian dinner in one hand and my remote in the other.

Now, tonight’s episode.

I have wanted so badly for Sarah to do well, not least because she’s a burlesquer and I’ve rolled with my share of the neo-burlesque crowd (holla, Sissy Butch Brothers!). I was not charmed by her audition antics (really, the paper booger trick? That ain’t even vaudeville, honey) and I thought her haircut was very, ah, 1996. It was an improvement over the insipid mop she came in with, but it was not fierce. These criticisms aren’t the point, though. The point is Sarah’s weight.

There’s another thru line to this season apart from the “ANTM goes green” theme, which I cannot help but feel has been summarily dropped. Food and body issues are front and center. But it’s all adding up to me thinking that Tyra, and ANTM doth all protest too much. There’ve been so many references to food, eating, weight, health—and I’m suspicious. “Will we ever have a plus size model” muses Ms. J. You did. You had two last season—did you mean, will we ever have a plus size model that we don’t have to dismiss for reasons totally unrelated to her weight, thankyouverymuch. And, of course, you had this girl, about whom you all lamented: she’s not big enough to be plus, she’s too big for “regular” modeling, she just doesn’t fit. I am not surprised that the industry that Tyra, J, J, and Niles Barker (noted fashion photographer) work in likes a thin girl; I am not surprised that they’re trying to maybe backpedal a bit into “healthy woman” territory. What shocks me is the seeming unselfconsciousness of it all. The recap episode actually had just what I’d been searching/waiting for in my pitch black little size ten heart: a bald demonstration of the hypocrisy that is ANTM’s take on the injustice of (gasp!) sizeism in modeling.

During the Tyra Talkback, cycle winner Dani (she of the overly regional accent—that bit of identity had to go, just like those gap teeth, ladeez) favoured the Hopefuls with a very illustrative story. As a working model, which Dani totally is, Dani was told to lose some weight. Tyra interjects: I was mad! I know how thin she is! Those scumbags, telling a thin girl to get thinner, how dare they, and a model no less! Dani would never sacrifice her health or her body and neither would the Hopefuls, they all immediately supply. So Dani did the only thing she could do, when told by an industry that makes unreasonable and unjust demands on the still developing bodies of young women: she told the client to kiss her plenty slim ass. Okay no, just kidding. She ate healthy and worked out and lost the weight. If you’re confused about the moral here, you’re not the only one. It was emphatically NOT RIGHT, per Tyra and Dani and everyone, for MODELING to ask Dani, thin enough as she is, to lose weight. She sure showed them…by losing weight. It isn’t at all outrageous to find this outrageous. But really, Tyra et al, you can’t set a girl down a path, get indignant about the path, and then wish her luck as she skips down the path.

But back to Sarah. I wanted to like her, and her pics were good enough, but given her background, I expected more. I mean, there was nudie-ness in the recap ep (to my, again, shameful delight), and tonight’s challenge was all about the skimpy Video Vixen wear; where was the sass I thought Sarah must surely have somewheres in there? It was nowhere, and she’s headed home. To my state. So Sarah, give a girl a call when you land back in Massachusetts. We’ll get a damned bite to eat. And maybe after you turn 21, we can get a beer—a not light beer. A stout, maybe, built like you and me: shapely in the glass and thick in the hips. And we can talk about how modeling will never be brought down from the inside, on account of the inability of the master’s tools to disassemble the master’s house.

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.