Miz Shoes Reviews: Cycle 9 ANTM, Episode 4

MAKEOVERS! and that means tears and weeping and whining and crying and that’s just the hairdressers who have to work with these hamsters.

We open on the amazing house in the Hollywood Hills, where Victoria-the-Yalie is confessionalizing that she’s only wanted to be a top fashion model for like, you know, the last three weeks or so since she got on the show, and that her normal attire is a sweat shirt and pyjama pants. And she had no idea how hard this would be for like, you know, someone smart. Like her. Who goes to Yale, if nobody mentioned that before.

Then we see Salacious D explaining (I can’t understand my own notes - so I think it was to Binaca-the-Beeyotch) that she is Never. Never. Never. going to be in the bottom two. You hear what I’m sayin? Neh-VER. Gurl.

Finally, Chantal (and I have to thank the guys at fourfour for pointing this out to me) of the supremely asymmetrical face (girlfriend looks like a forceps baby who got gripped a little too hard) goes on about how nervous she is and has been but none of that means anything to her, because she only cares about winning. Winning! She has to win this. It has been her dream eternal.

Finally, we get to the salon, and this year’s celebrity stylist is none other than Ken Paves, who has done Valentino’s shows. And he is also responsible for Jessica Simpson’s nasty-looking Wal-Mart line of hair extensions and falls and pieces and clip-ins. For some reason, though, Tyra doesn’t mention that aspect of the Paves empire. Since this is the first time Miz Shoes has ever heard anyone say his name out loud, she is amused to learn that we don’t pronounce it the way it is spelled (like working on the highway), but Pah-VAYZ. Sure. Whatevs.

The tension builds as Tyra gives the girls the rundown of her visions for their heads: Ambreal will get her nappy little ‘fro taken down to about an inch; Binaca will lose the jello-colored bangs and get blonde extensions; Sarah will get a cool, short sort of Posh blonde cut; Victoria will get highlights; Chantal will get a peroxide blonde version of Tyra’s own bangs and straight hair; Lisa will get a short curly poodle cut; Jenah will get long, floaty blonde locks; Janet will get her existing pixie cut spiked and dyed black; Ebony will get her $500 weave removed (the hair people have been complaining that it is rubber cemented to her head) and instead she’ll get the long, parted in the middle Naomi Campbell weave (the same one she gave to Tiffany From The Hood—remember her? The Girl She Had Never Yelled At Anyone Like This Before?); Salacious D will get a Louise Brooks bob (or, maybe, considering the way it turned out, a Kelley Osbourne bob) and finally, Heather will get some chestnut color and her ends trimmed. Of course, nothing is ever as simple as it would seem. The truth of Ebony’s weave is that it is, in fact, glued down to her forehead, her scalp, her head… It is nasty beyond nasty, and we get to watch as half the skin around her hairline is pulled off. That’s FIERCE! The Little Orange Man asks her, as he holds the dead thing in his hand, if it cost a lot. She says, well, actually, it was free, but…

And I call BULLSHIT! Back on the Love Boat, Miss Thang was walking around telling everyone that she had a $500 weave, y’all. She was flaunting that thing all over the other bitches. Think we don’t remember? Oooooh, she not only stank, she a liar. Snap!

As for Binaca? Well, she won’t be getting her long, blonde locks because her hair has been dyed, fried, chemically treated, dyed again, straightened, fried some more and is breaking off in chunks. The only way to save her hair is to shave her bald. Not as bald as old Nnennah from Season 6 who got her freak on with the male model in the African shoot, but bald. And unlike old Nnennah, Binaca has a funny shaped head. She looks like my art history pictures of King Amenophis IV, the pharoh with the funny skull. Well, children, Binaca is not taking getting her head shaved well. She cries, she whines, she pouts, she weeps, she sulks, she complains, she bitches, she moans. She actually says to Miss Jay that she feels like a drag queen. Could he arch those eyebrows any higher? Talk to the hand, honey. Binaca lets us know that her momma always told her that if you cut off your hair, you’re ugly. (Nice parenting). Since they promised Binaca long blonde hair, Ken makes up a chemo wig (and O, Lordy I wish I was making that up, but I am not) for her with a latex front. They show her how to put it on, and she still is a bitch about it. Whine, moan, complain. Salacious D, on the other hand, loves her weave, even if it’s so tight her scalp is bleeding. Thanks. Miss Jay shows her how to do the weave pat. Are they going to actually tell this crop of hamsters how to care for these weaves? Nah, where’d the fun be in that.

Now that the girls have been made bee-oo-tiful, they have a make up challenge in which they will have to do their own make up, find their clothes in a room full of clothing racks, get dressed and out on the runway, all in five minutes. They are told to do a dramatic eye and a nude, shiny lip. Their judge is no less a fabulous personage than noted make-up artist, MRS. NIGEL!!! And she’s as beautiful as he is. They must have sick pretty babies, those bastards. The winner of this challenge will have their look duplicated on the new Cover Girl web site and they will get to do a video of it as well. Another good prize. The girls are getting lamer, and the prizes are getting better.

Off they go, and the first thing we see is Binaca bitching that she looks like a boy in a pink bathrobe. Yeah, whatever. Wear the wig and quit bitching, bitch. There are elbows flying and people blocking the mirrors and the makeup. Janet can’t find her rack of clothes, so she grabs the first dress that looks similar and fits. They all make it to the runway on time, but barely. Janet is declare amazing, and would be the winner if she wasn’t wearing the wrong dress, or so they say. The winner? Surprise, surprise, it’s Sarah! Remember Sarah? She’s the one who isn’t quite big enough to be plus size, so she’s the normal size girl? She took a huge risk and did an Amy Winehouse batwing eye. The judges just gushed. Whoo-hoo for the normal size girl who never gets any air time.

Back at the house there is Tyra mail with the question, Ready to be deflowered? And this crop of geniuses decide that means it’s the nude shot. Actually, not far off the mark. Commercials and it’s Jaslene, mumbling about something or other. The solution to her lack of enunciation is to have her do the intro and outro and have people who can actually speak do the commercials. It’s something about violence against women and I seem to hear her say she was a victim of that and that’s why she is so excited to give her voice to this cause. Or she could be telling me that violet is the color for fall. Really. She could be speaking Aramaic for all I can understand a word she says. And back we go to the hamsters.

Nay-chur! The girls are dragged out to a wilderness site where they will be flowers for noted French photographer Lionel Deluy. There they are made up to look like flora, but not necessarily flowers, as Victoria-the-Yalie is a cactus, and Jenah is moss, Lisa is bamboo, Sarah is ivy and Heather is a weed of uncertain variety and painted sort of like the Wicked Witch of the West. The flowers are Binaca who is a sunflower, Janet who is hydrangea (and those tatty silk flowers were blue, but they most certainly were not hydrangea), Salacious D is a pink tulip, Ambreal is a rose with Josephine Baker’s hair and an arched foot that is giving the Little Orange Man a woody (rilly, Mr. Jay, chill on the foot, you are creeping me out), Ebony is a bird of paradise, and poor Chantal is given the perplexing and difficult challenge of being baby’s breath. This very hard. Little Orange Art Director is giving her art direction, and the photographer is giving her direction and they aren’t the same direction and she starts crying and losing it and it is just a mess. Then she interviews that had the two men Just. Shut. Up a minute and let her work, she would have been awesome, because she (join with me now) “was born to do this.” I think that there is a drinking game here, just waiting to be defined. Take a shot every time she says that she was born to do/win this? I’m in. I’ll put the tequila on ice right now.

Back at the Casa des Bitches and Hos, we see Victoria lose it. This is the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever done, she states. And all the other girls just stare at her, because they have no idea what ludicrous means. Imagine that you are a cactus? PUH-LEEEZE, she says. I want to wash off this ridiculous make up, put on my jeans and just go back to the library. The other girls just stare at her, because they have no idea what a library is. Salacious D announces once again that she is going to be America’s Next Top Model. So there. Phhhhhhhhht. And Chantal? Well, she wants this more than any of the other girls. She was born to win this. She has wanted to be a model since she was in kindergarten. Really? And at 20 she still has the same dream? Because when Miz Shoes was in kindergarten she wanted to be a cowgirl, but by the time I was eleven, I wanted to be a marine zoologist and do dolphin research. I only ended up in art school because my marine biology teacher (asshole) told me that women couldn’t do research and I’d have to be a teacher. I should have lowered my ambitions and been a dolphin trainer at SeaWorld, but you know, hindsight and all that.

Finally and at last we return to the judging room where the chia pet on Miss Jay’s head has grown another inch. And oh sweet baby jeezus, that is this year’s ruffle. He is adding an inch to the Afro each week when a girl goes home. Oh lord. My head just imploded. I don’t know if I can continue. But wait! There’s a cat fight coming, so I’ll press on, regardless.

The first girl to be reviewed is Victoria-the-Yalie. She has posed in such a way as to make her neck wrinkled, which Miss Jay notes by saying the rings on the tree tell a lot about the tree. Huh? And Twiggy starts to say something about a cactus being prickly and isn’t it amusing that… when Victoria snaps that she is so NOT prickly, TWIGGS. And I’d like to say, way to make the point, Yalie.

Lisa is seen as very modelesque in the two good shots she managed to squeeze out. Salacious D was called a dead flower and she lost her neck and her eyes and she has the very worst thing in the Model Universe: Dead Eyes. Jenah took a lot of risks as moss. Yeah. I know. What can I say that is more absurd than that? But she made a fan out of Lionel Deluy, who tells her that when she gets signed, and oh, she will, he is going to book her first. Janet shows the biggest improvement, even if she is too posey. Hah! Get it? She’s a posey who’s too pose-y?

Ambreal is a rose with a thorn… and dead eyes. Heather was declared one of the best shots of the day, as she blended in with all the other weeds, yet never got lost. She looked haunting. Do you think it was the Wicked Witch make up? Binaca came in with her chemo wig on and was told to take it off, because she looks so much better without it. Now is that commentary on the wig? Or of just how skank she looked with jell-o colored hair? Or of the fact that she looked like a dead sunflower. Miss Jay made some crack about her petals falling off. She looked amateur. Then there is Chantallobotomy. Twiggy didn’t like her face.  She tries the “but I had conflicting directions” tack with the judges, and they all just snort at her and tell her, welcome to the real world, honey. Too damn bad. Take it. Work with it. Sell it. Fool.

Finally there is Ebony. You have utterly no charm, says Nigel, quite charmingly. Tyra jumps at the chance to do one of her vicious impersonations. Literally. She vaults the judging table and stands, pigeon-toed on the runway. Then she rolls her eyes and chews her lips, while sitting at the table, we see Ebony doing the exact same thing.  You have to learn to take criticism without writhing, the judges tell her. Take it with the smallest hint of a smile, and with nods of your head to show you are listening. Or just fucking cry, but don’t make those awful faces. Ewww. The snot mustache was more appealing.

Judging: Victoria is stank. And a Yalie. Sarah is losing weight, and that’s not good. Embrace the curves, all fatty fat fat size six of them. Short lecture about how bad it is to be too skinny. Do you think that the Powers That Be noticed that the world found Jaslene to be both alarming slender and a drag queen? And completely incomprehensible, but I’ll stop beating that dead horse until next week’s MLAACG. Janet belongs in men’s mags, Jenah is stunning, Binaca got the bestest makeover evah, Heather is fab, Ambreal is wilting. Lisa is safe, and Ebony needs to clean up her stank attitude. Chantal has something missing (a brain?) and Salacious D doesn’t translate from real to photos. So, as the pictures are handed out, Jenah is first, going down the line to Binaca (embrace the new you), Chantallobotomy (the judges have doubts) and the final two: Salacious D (I won’t EVAH be in the final two… right?) and Victoria-the-Prickly-Yalie. Going home? Victoria, who really couldn’t care less. Whew. Next week? the return of Benny Ninja!

See you on the couch, the martinis will be cold.