Saturday, January 06, 2007
A View From the Top
I think I would be remiss if I didn't take a moment to talk about a momentous television milestone that was reached this week, namely the airing of every episode of every cycle of America's Next Top Model on VH1. For almost a week America was held entranced by the exploits of the underfed and overstyled, as Tyra Banks and her merry band of modeling "experts," who themselves often look as though they've been sleeping in the studio and grooming themselves at the craft services table between takes, held forth on the nation's second favorite music network with only a tenuous, Nickelback-related connection to music. Whether you were more a fan of cycle one, which has production values that rival my tenth grade German project, or cycle four, where racial politics reached their fullest expression in a stirring debate over who Nelson Mandela was, there was plenty to love.
My favorite part of America's Next Top Model (or ANTM, as those of us in the know call it), is always the largely futile acting challenges they always give the models. You haven't lived until you've witnessed a six-foot model with impetigo attempt a cockney accent or a Covergirl commercial in Catalan. I also love the way they seek out girls with complicated backstories -- Hurricane Katrina victim, biracial bulimic, recovering alcoholic single mother -- only to boot them off the show in week two for having split ends. Of course, Tyra and the crew are on a never ending quest to make modeling about everything but actually being pretty, consistently stressing the importance of "personality" and "intelligence." You remember how Kate Moss totally tore it up on Charlie Rose with her insights on Chaucer that one time, right?
Anyway, there's one thing that's definitely clear -- the winners of ANTM always, always become enormous successes in the field. I simply won't buy a product unless Yoanna House's face has been associated with it. It's just good business sense.
I think I would be remiss if I didn't take a moment to talk about a momentous television milestone that was reached this week, namely the airing of every episode of every cycle of America's Next Top Model on VH1. For almost a week America was held entranced by the exploits of the underfed and overstyled, as Tyra Banks and her merry band of modeling "experts," who themselves often look as though they've been sleeping in the studio and grooming themselves at the craft services table between takes, held forth on the nation's second favorite music network with only a tenuous, Nickelback-related connection to music. Whether you were more a fan of cycle one, which has production values that rival my tenth grade German project, or cycle four, where racial politics reached their fullest expression in a stirring debate over who Nelson Mandela was, there was plenty to love.
My favorite part of America's Next Top Model (or ANTM, as those of us in the know call it), is always the largely futile acting challenges they always give the models. You haven't lived until you've witnessed a six-foot model with impetigo attempt a cockney accent or a Covergirl commercial in Catalan. I also love the way they seek out girls with complicated backstories -- Hurricane Katrina victim, biracial bulimic, recovering alcoholic single mother -- only to boot them off the show in week two for having split ends. Of course, Tyra and the crew are on a never ending quest to make modeling about everything but actually being pretty, consistently stressing the importance of "personality" and "intelligence." You remember how Kate Moss totally tore it up on Charlie Rose with her insights on Chaucer that one time, right?
Anyway, there's one thing that's definitely clear -- the winners of ANTM always, always become enormous successes in the field. I simply won't buy a product unless Yoanna House's face has been associated with it. It's just good business sense.
