MAKEOVERS!!!!

This is the first show of the season where I have actually seen the new intro, and I have to admit, Trya in Disco/Cabaret drag with the whip? Scary. Those bitches better listen when Mistress TyTy talks. Yeesh.

Open on the loft and various confessionalizings, notably, Dominique-inique-inique, who is very, very clear on the concept that she is totally high-fashion glamorous, dammit. And a diva. A high-fashion diva. And very, very clearly delusional. I want what she’s smokin’ and I want the mirror that’s lying to her about being the fairest of them all.

The doorbell rings and there is infernal squealing inside the loft. Outside the loft are a slew of giant, white, quilted handbags full of Applebottom swag. The hamsters are delighted with free stuff and all but on their new jeans, making sure to fulfill the contractual obligations of ANTM by showing off the logos and explaining why the jeans are called apple bottoms by bending over and sticking their asses out at the cameras. Cha-ching! Lauren can’t figure out how to put on the spike-heeled pumps. Allison and Fatima (of course) get into it with each other over the size of their asses. Fatima tells Allison that Allison’s is bigger, and that launches Allison into a frenzy of tape measuring, self-loathing, finger-sticking and revelations of prior eating disorders. She is particularly peeved at Fatima over triggering her body image issues. Because it is a given that if you are a working model, you will have bulimia or anorexia or some other eating disorder, and Allison knows that, because she’s a working model, with extensive experience in the Far East. And Fatima should be sensitive to people’s issues. Can’t argue with that, but Fatima is only sensitive to Fatima’s issues, or haven’t you been paying attention?

The LimoCab comes and takes the hamsters to the next challenge/shoot. Somewhere in New York City or the nearby environs is a huge Wal-Mart. Miz Shoes cries for her beloved New York City. It is at this Wal-Mart that the girls (and Dominique-inique-inique) will face their next test: the Cover Girl make-up challenge. It’s the usual: elbow each other out of the way at the make up wall, create a fresh, clean look using Cover Girl products A, B and C. There is a single make-up mirror, so sharpen the elbows again for that. You have 5 minutes from GO.

Brent Poer and Molly Someoneorother from Cover Girl judge the results: Fatima has flattened her color, Lauren should use blush. Allison was great, but heavy handed (i.e.: used a trowel for applying). Claire of the bi-polar hair is the winner.

Back in the dorms, Dominique-inique-inique and Claire discuss being single mothers and how they are doing this show to make their children’s lives better. By not being with them for 14 weeks? By showing them how to gamble on their futures rather than planning and working for them? Sort of like buying lottery tickets rather than putting money into savings, or getting a college education? Dominique-inique-inique says that she’s had to be both mother and father to her kid. Miz Shoes suspects that has been perilously easy, what with the shenis and all. Then Dominique-inique-inique goes on at great length about being a role model and domestic violence and blahblahblah. Heard it for the past 9 seasons. Try a new one.



Over in the big bed, Allison is playing with Barbies. She stuffs tissue in the seat of her Black Barbies pants to approximate Fatima’s junk in the trunk. There is much racist stereotyping and trash talking and Miz Shoes refuses to legitimize it by rehashing it here. Let’s just say that Allison is still holding a grudge against Fatima’s insensitivity to her body image issues. Why are there Barbies there? Where did the Barbies come from? Did Allison bring them with her? Are they tools used in the confessional, like the dolls psychologists use to help children talk about sex abuse?  If they belong to Allison, do we think that her attachment to these unrealistic figures is the root of her body image issues? Yeah. I digress.

Tyra scrolling lights! SQUEALING!!! STFU!!!!!! Do you ever want to just curl up and dye? Yes. Now in particular, what with the squealing that never ends. Oh. This must mean makeovers. Sally Ann squeaks to a giant portrait of Tyra, begging not to have her head shaved. Nothing good will come of that, watch my words. The girls and Dominique-inique-inique are hauled away in the LimoCab to the Stephen Knoll salon. He is Cindy Crawford’s hair guy…Cindy Crawford who just had a commercial for her line of furniture at Sears. My brain hurts. In an attempt to make this season mo’ real, Tyra tells the girls that their makeovers are going to be surprises, because in the real world, there isn’t a supermodel telling you that you’ll get blonde extensions and you’ll get a mohawk. Get in the chair and wait for the magic to happen. I ain’t telling you bitches shit. I think I see the riding crop.

Anya of the weird speech impediment gets white blonde, straight hair. Big Whitney gets a big weave. She can make it in country music if this doesn’t pan out for her. Aimee gets a dark red shaggy cut with bangs. Marvita gets something that Tyra calls a Horse Mane Weave, and it is Tyra’s own creation. What it is is a long weave where Marvita’s hair was already in a fro-hawk, and short on the sides where she already had short hair. Meh. It actually kind of works, though it pains me to say that. Lauren is femmed up with a long blonde weave with some reddish highlights and curl. Miss Jay gets all the extras sewn in at random. Katarzyna gets her hair darkened. Claire goes white blonde and mostly shaved. She’s stoked. Fatima looses the icky mercurochrome shit she’s been sporting in favor of a butt-touching chestnut brown weave. The pain and agony and torture of the process leaves her weeping and crying and carrying on for the rest of the day. Allison gets a lighter weave. What is with all the freaking weaves? Dominique-inique-inique gets her hair bobbed, and she declares herself fierce and high-fashion. Good lord that woman has a huge honker. Stacy-Ann wants Naomi Campbell (sorry, Minnie Mouse, that’s going to Fatima) but gets a short-short-short spike. Amiss gets long streaks, and proceeds to speak about herself in the third person: Amiss could become a sex monster. Weelll, half right is better than nothing.

In their after shots, wrapped in the white bandages that signify plastic surgery, we see that there is some seriously bad skin on these faces. Good lord. Maybe Noxema should consider a sponsorship for next cycle.

We are taken back to the loft, and subjected to more squealing as the Scrolling Tyra Lights announce that having worked the make up and worked the hair, they will now have to work “the body”. “The Body” is in quotes, which anyone who has ever paid any attention to models knows is Elle McPherson’s nickname. Sure enough, they are taken to a boat in the river where they will shoot lingerie with the Brooklyn Bridge as their backdrop. Special photographer is George Holz, who shot Cycle Two’s underwater high concept shot.

Big Whitney is dressed from chap to nave in corseting and a long skirt, and can barely move to pose. Katarzyna is doing cheesecake poses. Lauren is conflicted and has a hard time with the high heels. Allison is practicing in the mirror right up until she’s called to set and promptly earns the wrath of Mr. Jay for being too pose-y. He hates on her and she claims that he doesn’t know shit, because she totally nailed the shoot. Amiss can’t take, or can’t understand direction and flounders around on the set, whereas Aimee gets praise. Dominique-inique-inique just keeps yapping and yapping and yapping about how she is fierce and high fashion and the shit and Mr. Jay don’t know from shit, calling her catalog and commercial. Cut to Mr. Jay saying that he feels bad for her, because she came out and tried her hardest and had NOTHING.

Allison confessionalizes that she nailed the shot, that she totally kicked ass and that she is NOT. GOING. HOME. Want to lay money on that, sweetie? After 9 seasons, I can confidently say that you will. Oh, hubris! Oh, irony! Oh, why don’t we have script writers, again?

Panel, where we see the (smarter) girls rocking the Applebottom swag. The guest judge is George Holz. Miss Jay is wearing sequins on his eyebrows. I do not know why. The girls are called out thusly:

Amiss, you’re a mess. Your body needs work. Lauren, you need to stand up straight. Put out your hip. Point out your toes. Stand up straight. Marvita, you looked amazing. (And amazingly, she did. Her position in front of the bridge? The cropping? Amazing.) Claire had a weird shot. Fatima looks like Iman, for real, not just a Tyra hallucination. Unfortunately, she only looks like Iman from the waist up. From the waist down, she’s stiff and can’t move her body. Oh, lord, that isn’t going to be bringing up the female circumcision shit again is it? Is she going to use that as an excuse for lower body immobility? Eeeww. Katarzyna looks like a mail-order bride. That was so last cycle people. That was Natasha. Even George acknowledges that he was shooting from the groin and not the brain. Stacy Ann has Paulina’s jawline and no neck. Extend, extend. Dominique-inique-inique looks like the Sunday paper insert for the local big-box clothing store sale. They cruelly focus on her cottage cheese thigh action and both Tyra and Paulina explain how you gotta shove that shit under and back so it doesn’t show up on film. Aimee is too stiff. Allison is told that her make over looks great and she says that she knows it does. The judges don’t like that. Especially Nigel, and they try a second time to get her to say “thank you”. The second time’s a failure, too. George says that during the shoot the lights were on, but nobody was home. And finally, Big Whitney gets a pass because the stylist sucked.

Dominique-inique-inique gets some savage critiquing by the panel. Holz says that he thought she was someone’s mother on the set, until she came out in her lingerie. Paulina calls her finished. They all loathe Allison and comment on her being conceited. Anya’s new hair is much loved, but it only makes what they call her accent and I call her speech impediment more apparent. Katarzyna is slammed again for the mail order bride, cheesecake pose. Finally, the girls are called back in.

First photo goes to Lauren, who’s so wrong it’s right. Awkward and gangly. Marvita, for some bogus and random reason, gets the second photo and the rest go down in order. Aimee, Claire, Stacy Ann, Fatima, Anya, Big Whitney, Katrazyna, Amiss. If you were keeping track, that leaves Dominique-inique-inique and Allison in the bottom two. Who goes home? The busted, antique, DragWreck that is Dominique-inique-inique or the snotty, know it all, ungrateful, “I’m not going home tonight” Allison? If you said Allison, you’ve been watching this show as long as I have.

Next week? Bitch fights!