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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
"America's Next Top Model," in which a panel of bizarre sadists shred the souls of genetically superior females, is the most entertaining, unpredictable reality show on TV.
Dec 16, 2004 | When I was 9 years old, I cut myself while trying to slice a Barbie doll's legs in half. I still have a scar. When I tell this story, men's eyes go wide, but women just nod knowingly. After all, who didn't administer a crewcut to an unsuspecting Superstar Barbie, after her bob haircut started to get boring? Barbies became irritatingly dull very fast, in fact. Once they've tried on every outfit they owned 50 or 60 times, once they've dated all the Kens and G.I. Joes and now Blaines, once they've trashed the Dreamhouse and wrecked the hot-pink Corvette, what's left? Why suffer another minute with those eyes so unblinkingly, twinklingly blue, those legs so stiff, those loins so unnervingly featureless? Why not see if those rubbery feet won't slice right off with some extra-sharp kitchen shears?
Last night, while I was watching the finale of UPN's "America's Next Top Model," I was reminded of just how thrilling it was to lay waste to a shoe box of innocent Barbies. It seems like it was just yesterday that Tyra Banks introduced us to this year's collection of aspiring models: Tall, beautiful girls with creamy, perfect skin, big doe eyes, legs a mile long, and great, big, beautiful dreams. (Tee hee hee!) Even then, though, we knew better. Even then, as the girls giggled and bickered and gasped over who would win it all, we knew what we'd end up with: a box of naked dolls with about a quarter-inch of yellow hair sprouting from the tops of their heads like mohawks, a faraway look in their sad, saucer eyes.
By the last few weeks of the season, without fail, the aspiring models go from being innocent and pretty and sweet to losing their self-esteem entirely. Why must you crush them, Tyra? Why must you rip these poor girls to little shreds? They come to you all beautiful and naive, and you cut and color their hair without asking their opinions, then you dress them up like mimes and drape them in pig intestines, or you give them big purple afros and make them jump around on trampolines in stiletto heels. Is it fair, Tyra? Is it really a good idea to force them all to get naked and roll around in bed with a live turkey while a 10-piece mariachi band plays in the background? It might be forgivable, if Jay Manuel didn't sprinkle birdseed in their belly buttons and then bitch about how "blank" and "lifeless" their expressions were. If they didn't crawl out of bed, weeping over the scratches and cuts from the turkey's claws, only to have Janice Dickinson announce that they look like "zombies" and their pictures are "absolutely repugnant," maybe then it would all be bearable.
Oh, but it would be far, far less entertaining! Just as there was something cathartic about the Barbie carnage of yore -- it seemed to cleanse the spirit of all those toxins created by wasting too many hours sliding little plastic mitten hands through narrow, silky sleeves -- so, too, is there something deliciously freeing about witnessing the slow but certain unraveling of these genetically superior humans.
