The bitches and the hos are back with a vengence in season eight of America’s Next Top Model. I keep saying this every season, but I don’t see how they can find any dumber girls. Really, this season’s crop is astonishingly stupid and vapid, and it’s going to be the best train wreck yet.
We start with casting, and are spared any of last year’s embarassing moments, like the pole dancer who insists to Tyra that being a stripper is the same thing as being a model, rilly. On second thought, I sort of missed that. We don’t have any tragedies like being in a plane wreck, kept alive by the diminishing heat of our dead mother’s body, or night blindness, or psoriasis or even being the blackest child in the family. I didn’t miss that. We don’t have anything terribly memorable except the girl with the sewn-in wig (which I think was also repossessed, but it might have been two different girls with weaves) and the other girl who just wouldn’t shut up. Or leave. Or say anything that was worth listening to the on and on and on and on and on and on to hear.
The first thirty odd (really odd) girls are picked and off we go to Model Boot Camp, where I have high hopes that these B&Hs will learn how to walk in high heels before they get to the first judging. Of course, I have high hopes about Mr Jay not being orange and Twiggy developing an attitude, too, so who am I to say.
Right away my hopes are dashed with the “name 5 American designers” question which results in chirping crickets. Personalities begin to display when Sara (the semi-pro) knows who Richard Avedon is, and Renee starts bitching about how Sara only won because she’s a photographer and so of course “knew who that dude was” and the whole thing isn’t fair. This, we will discover, is her mantra, along with the particularly overused “I’m only doing this for my baby.”
You know, I don’t have kids, so maybe it is a normal thing for a mother to do, leave an infant at home to go off and participate on a reality show for the fame whoriness of it. We see a lovely picture of Renee in her white wedding gown, holding her infant son. Really, it was almost touching. But, just to be terribly old-fashioned, since when did a white wedding dress get accessorized by a bouquet of baby? I thought the presumed accessory was an intact hymen, but then again, I am old-fashioned.
The first cut is the deepest, and we get reduced by a number of forgettable, semi-attractive girls, and one Betty Paige by way of the tattoo parlor wannabe who was shocked to think that having a life-size and somewhat realistic tattoo of the bleeding sacred heart of Jesus on her sternum might make for a minus when you want to be a couture model. Then it’s off to our first photo shoot and we have a political statement theme, in which the girls must front for whatever random “controversial” position the PTB have come up with. There is pro-choice, and anti-abortion; gay marriage and straight; pro-fur and anti-fur; anti-gun and NRA shill; vegan and carnivore; death penalty pro and con. Con, get it? Jeez I crack myself up. Unfortunately, these were concepts that went way beyond the limited wattage of our contestants. In particular, Sara couldn’t get with the life behind bars, Renee didn’t like having to not like guns (I’m guessing she’s a military wife, what with being 20, a mother and living in Hawaii.) Katherine could not figure out why anyone wouldn’t like to wear fur, Jael and Natasha needed to swap positions on the whole choice thing, and the girl who was pro-straight marriage looked as stiff and unbelievable as the giant Ken doll they had posing with her. Nigel was the photographer, and he and Mr. Jay looked pretty miserable at the raw materials they had to work with.
Then, it was off to Goodwill to make an outfit of personal expression in three minutes, plus a charity runway show, money raised to go to Goodwill. I will spare you the details, because they are painful. Jael wins, and Renee bitches that it wasn’t a fair challenge because Jael shops in second hand stores, anyway. Jael wasn’t happy about winning, either, because she thinks that will make the other girls like her less. Here’s a clue for you, honey: none of them like you anyway, and they are all backstabbing bitches, or haven’t you watched this show before?
Speaking of Natasha, which I was a paragraph ago, she is 19, Russian and married to a 40-year old man about whom she can only say he changed her life and brought her to America. Uh-huh. I knew one of those guys. He did the Russian bride thing twice, and the first one left when she learned enough English to figure out he was sort of creepy and the second one left as soon as she could without anyone questioning the validity of her green card marriage. I’m sure that Natasha isn’t one of those, right? I’m also harboring this deep, deep desire to see Tyra give her this makeover. Ohpleaseohpleaseohplease.
Anyway, after the juding, wherein Tyra et al admit that this is the worst bunch of wannabes they’ve ever seen, and Katherine allows as how she didn’t get the whole concept of anti-fur, even though Mr. Jay and Nigel explained it to her…a lot, and how couldn’t you just get fur from already dead animals, because “animals die of natural causes sometimes, don’t they?” that is enough for even Tyra to send her away for being stupid beyond all comprehension.
Whee! I can’t wait for next week, can you?