Top Model Is The Greatest Show on Earth!

Last week on America’s Next Top Model, the judges decided to eliminate Monique. I don’t think she was the worst model left on the show, but I don’t think there is anybody out there really advocating that she stick around. While life in the house will surely be a little bit more normal, I predicted last week that it wouldn’t take these girls long to find new villain. The girls of Cycle 7 have a new villain, and her name is Melissa Rose. You would think that Melrose would be a little bit more sensitive of the people around her after everything that happened between her and Monique, but sometimes you just can’t fight nature, and nature says that putting more than one woman in the same house is going to bring the bitch out of at least one of them. Luckily for us, a little thing called reality television is doing a good job of recording such events, making it so much easier for us to enjoy the aftermath.I was tough on Melrose early, but if there is anybody among these girls that understands what it means to be a model, it is Melrose. Every time you see her, you can tell that she is thinking about the way she looks. The only other girl who even comes close is AJ, but AJ’s style is almost an accident. I don’t think she particularly tries to be model-y in her dress, but the edgy look she usually goes for normally serves to give her some personality.

It’s been a couple of weeks, but some girls are still complaining about their makeovers. Actually, after Monique was gone and Melrose realized that her blonde hair really was a lot better, Jaeda was the only person left to complain. I think Jaeda was a confident person when she came in, but after losing her hair, almost all of her confidence is now gone. Jaeda says that she sees people looking at her, and they wonder if she is a guy or a girl. Well, call me naive, but I know very few men that pack as much in the boobage department as Jaeda. I’ll say it right now. If I saw a person that had a body as slamming as Jaeda’s, I would have to take a chance that it is a woman. My mom used to tell me that there would be bumps along the road of life. So if I have to be prepared for a little Shanghai surprise every now and then to date a model, so be it.

The other person having image issues was Anchal. You may not like her features, but you have to admit that she is striking. It may seem strange to say, but it’s almost as if her body kind of snuck up on her. It is sort of refreshing to see her throughout this competition because she doesn’t talk and walk like some of the other girls that are a little more self-aware of their beauty. Unfortunately for Anchal, being a fan favorite because she is so nice is not going to get her far in this competition. As added pressure, she is the biggest girl of the group and possesses actual hips and breasts, not that any of this has caused her to curb her eating. Every spare moment, it seems as if she is feeding herself. I personally like Anchal’s curves, and will take them every day over Amanda or Michelle, because I am not particularly attracted to girls with the bodies of a twelve year old, but to be a model or win this competition, Anchal is going to have to tone up a little bit.

If any of you white folk ever need to know the meaning of “ashy elbows”, look at this picture

Our first Tyra mail told the girl’s “Don’t get it twisted”, which besides being the rallying cry of Ebony from Cycle 5, obviously means that these girls will be twisting around as much as possible for their first challenge. I myself nearly fell off my couch twisting around after seeing the beginning of the next segment. You see, Stacey McKenzie happened to pop on screen, and I was concentrating so much on averting my eyes, that I turned my head around so quickly I almost snapped my neck. Luckily, I have plenty of practice trying to avoid Miss J, so there were no injuries sustained.

Miss McKenzie is a model, perhaps best known for walking the runways of Chernobyl, and making kids all around the world believe in the boogey man, or woman as it were. OK, I am being mean. Stacey has an interesting look, and is one of the judges of Canada’s Next Top Model. I would have preferred to have host Tricia Helfer, who is the hottie blonde Cylon from Battlestar Galactica and if I have been a good boy, one of my dreams, but I guess Stacey is OK. Stacey wanted the girls to practice extreme posing, which is often required of models when they are doing editorial shoots. To demonstrate, she had a contortionist come out and do some examples. I really do love contortionists, but I have to admit that I was slightly disappointed that he didn’t fold himself into a suitcase. What’s going to happen next? They’ll bring out a mime, and nobody will run over and kick him in the nuts?

Melrose’s confidence has been off the charts since Monique is gone, and she was sure that she would do great at this competition because she had been practicing yoga. In a surprising, uh, twist, Anchal discovered that she was more flexible than she thought. Anchal didn’t really make a big deal about the whole thing, but when Melrose clearly didn’t like that somebody was better at her than something. Melrose said that Anchal kind of surprised her. That comment was sort of innocent, but Anchal, who admitted to being picked on all the time, thought it was a backhanded compliment. Melrose saying that she was surprised meant that Melrose didn’t think that she could do it. And Anchal thought that Melrose not believing in her meant Melrose thought she was too fat.

It’s always nice seeing a girl with a nice set of confidences

To be perfectly honest, I don’t think Melrose meant it that way, but once she was called out, she had to defend herself. I thought that perhaps she would apologize and such, but Melrose took this as an opportunity to take Anchal down a notch by talking about her weight and how she doesn’t work out. Melrose tried to play it off like she was just helping Anchal, who, for the record, did say “I guess I need to burn something”, meaning calories, but it’s clear that there was nothing friendly in the way Melrose talked about the subject.

Many of the girls didn’t like Melrose, and the only reason I think she has avoided the label as the biggest bitch in the house is because Monique had done all of that shit to her, but now that Monique was out of the house, a lot of the girls were objecting to the way that she has been handling herself. When Monique complained about Melrose being pouty and everything after she lost a challenge, I thought that she was just fixating on her rival, but it was clear that Monique was right. Melrose has always acted like the mother, and with so many girls in their teens, and a few of them still waiting to graduate from high school, she’s really finding it difficult living in the house.

Even Brooke, who I considered the nicest girl in the house, or at least the least likely to talk shit about a person just because she was there, even thought that Melrose was rubbing the wrong way. I know that Melrose has rubbed me the wrong way, especially when she was complaining about all of the girls deciding that it would be fun if they all just got into the shower together. You see, any person who is rubbed the wrong way when girls are rubbing each other in the shower really rubs me as well. Who cares if Melrose needs to sleep? That footage could end up on the Internet someday! It’s not like she is going to have any fewer bags under her eyes if she gets another hour of sleep, so why can’t the rest of us enjoy?

After the contortionist some of the girls were in the hot tub, talking about Anchal. Some people were actually suggesting that Anchal’s whole thing about her lack of confidence was fake, and that she does it for attention. This in itself is not all that spectacular, because girls talk behind each other’s backs all the time. What was great about this was that Anchal heard all of it. Actually, it would have been great if Anchal had heard what they said and then gone down and bitched all of these girls out. Instead, she ran off and cried, which sort of ruined what could have been one of the all-time great payback moments in reality history, but can you blame her? She’s been rolling with the punches and hasn’t let what other say get to her, but when she heard “She’s not getting more beautiful” coming out of Melrose’s mouth, she just couldn’t hold back any more and started crying.

AJ was there to comfort Anchal, and normally I would say she needs to have a thicker skin, but the real problem is Melrose. If you want a good laugh, replay some of Melrose’s comments from the last couple of episodes, especially when she is talking about Monique. She goes on and on about having respect for one another and learning how to live together, but it seems the only time she wants people to respect each other is when other’s actions are affecting her. She has absolutely no problem doing or saying whatever she wants, as long as it doesn’t affect her in the long run.

It’s become obvious that Melrose will do whatever it takes to win this competition, and that includes kissing up to the judges whenever she can. The girls went to Oasis restaurant, where they got to meet Twiggy. As much as I made fun of Stacey McKenzie earlier, it at least looks like she has a viewpoint. I think Twiggy has been a little better this season, but on the whole she is painfully boring.

Twiggy gave a little speech about being yourself and finding your own uniqueness, but the only thing most of the girls took away from this dinner was how excited Melrose was being in the same room as Twiggy. Melrose did say that Twiggy is one of her favorites, and if I were to meet, say, Tyra Banks, I am sure that I would gush about how great she was and all the great things I thought she has done for her industry, but Melrose took it to another level. Sure she admired Twiggy, but after a little while, I sort of thought that she was giving Twiggy compliments because she knew Twiggy was a judge and if she was completely shameless about her compliments it might give her an edge at panel.

Knock knock….

Hilarious!

A guy walks into a bar…

HAHAHAHA!

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Stop it! You’re killing me!

Melrose, you kind of suck!

LMAO! I know!

The next day, the girls tool a trip downtown to the fashion district and met up with Bao Tranchi. The first words out of her mouth were after “my name is Bao Tranchi” were “I am very well-known for my decadent collections”. I am sure she was told to say that for the writers, but it did feel a bit gauche to praise herself in front of these girls. I mean, I don’t sit at restaurant and announce to the waitress “My name is J-Unit, and I am well know for my lavish tips”. Who the hell does that?

Bao continued, saying that she was having a fantastic event. Again, how does she know it will be fantastic? Isn’t she kind of jumping the gun a little bit? What if somebody dies at her party, that wouldn’t be fantastic, would it? CALM DOWN BAO. Actually, I guess I shouldn’t be so cynical. How do I know that her party won’t be fantastic? I can tell you that the challenge was quite fantastic. Each of the girls would become an art installation displaying one of Bao’s pieces. They would have to do three different poses, and Bao would judge them on how well they were able to pull of their extreme poses with eloquence. Adding eloquence makes any task more difficult. Think about all the everyday things in your life that would be so much more difficult if they required eloquence. For example, has their been any person, in the history of the world, that clips their toenails with eloquence? It might actually be impossible. Then again, to be quite honest, I’m not going to volunteer and ask people to prove me wrong.

Right away, I knew that the twins would probably lose this competition. They clearly don’t have enough muscle mass to stand up straight for any period of time, let alone try and pull off an extreme pose, and just forget about trying it with eloquence! Anchal was excited because she did so well in the extreme posing and Melrose was excited because she loves it when people are forced to look at her, but neither of them won either. The person that took home the prize was Eugena, which was surprising because she has been so quiet this episode. She’s probably scared that Monique might come back and she will have to be her best friend again. For her win, Eugena got to take home all of the jewelry that the girls had modeled that day with their Bao Tranchi dresses, $32,000 in all. Oh, Bao! You were right! Your party was fantastic.

After leaving Bao’s fabulous party, they returned home to find that Tyra was waiting for them there. These talks with Tyra are always the best, especially now that she has her own talk show. Today’s talk was about fear, which made me think that Tyra was going to talk about her fear of dolphins, but instead she was talking about fears relating to modeling. Melrose spoke up and talked about being seen as old, and Jaeda talked about her insecurities regarding her new hair, but we all knew that this was really just a warm up for Anchal to talk about what she overheard.

Tyra talked about interpersonal relationships, Melrose talked about some of the things she was working through, such as patience and not thinking before she talked. Tyra sensed that something was wrong, and asked if somebody had been hurt by something Melrose said. Anchal started to say something, then was about to hold it in, but after a little more encouragement, she broke down and started crying again. It looked like Melrose might have actually felt bad about what she said, but Jaeda was NOT convinced. However, the funniest part was hearing Tyra talk about when she was in a situation with another model that was “awful” for her. She couldn’t stand up for herself, she was intimidated, she was terrified, and we all know she is talking about Naomi Campbell even though she never said it.

Tyra ended her visit by telling Anchal basically not to let the others get to you, and it was finally time for the photo shoot. Eugena complained because it was like a two-hour drive from Los Angeles, and they were in the middle of nowhere, but then again, this was coming from a girl who lived in Palmdale, which isn’t exactly the pinnacle of modern civilization.

When I heard that the theme of the photo shoot was going to be circus freaks, I was excite, because they usually give them really passive aggressive assignments, like when the girls had to do a shoot with Lubriderm in South Africa and Keenya had to play an elephant. This photo shoot had some good ones, like Megg as the bearded lady, but some of these circus freaks were kind of lame. They had AJ be a cannibal, but what sort of circus has a cannibal? But hey, at least they were creative. Amanda and Michelle were Siamese twins. And even though I like how they made fun of Melrose for being old, her circus freak was “the woman with the old face and the young body”, but that makes no sense. Jessica Biel is NOT a freak; she just looks like Faye Dunaway before plastic surgery. Also, who went to the circus to see the rubber girl (Brooke)?

Besides, the real freak show was Atoosa Rubenstein. Of course, nobody is going to say that to her face because she is the editor-in-chief of seventeen magazine, and now that they pay a lot of money and are going to be forced to put one of these models on the cover, she is sure as hell going to make sure her mug is all over the place. I wish I hadn’t decided on my Halloween costume already, I could have ordered my Atoosa Rubenstein mask and really scared all the kids in the neighborhood.

AJ went first, and I think it was my favorite picture. The great thing about AJ is that she has no trouble showing a lot of emotion in her pictures, but still manages to look like a model. Even in this shoot, with much of her face obstructed by the bars of the cage, you can almost sense the blood lust she has. Clearly she is thinking about tearing Melrose limb from limb.

Brooke was next, and was one of many girls that had a much better wide angle shot than close up. I wondered how she was going to pull off rubber girl, but whatever she did, it made me think like she didn’t have a bone in her body. Unfortunately, her face in this shot is just awful. It makes her nose look big, and you don’t really see any of the structure to her face.

Michelle and Amanda, the Siamese twins, followed Brooke. I mix them up every week, so I am not going to pretend that I can tell either of them apart. Of the two, the one on the left, which I think is Michelle, looked much better. Amanda’s chin and face looked funny, but her eyes drew me in a little more. I thought their wide shot was also better. I am not going to rag on them too much, but I thought the Siamese twin gimmick was dumb, especially since we were supposed to judge them as individuals, not as a group.

When it came time for Megg, she mentioned that she had never seen herself with a beard before, which should be a relief to all of us. As for her actual picture, it might go down as one of the worst two or three EVER in the history of top model. I would say that it is even worse than the Lluvy fish picture from Cycle 4 (EdHill still thinks she should have gone farther). Megg is all about her rock and roll personality, but when it comes to straight looks, she is not all that exceptional. I still think the twins are the ugliest, but at least they are unique. The beard was bad enough, but I don’t hold that against her. Her eyes have no life, and the wide shot was not any better.

Once again, Caridee was fearless in all of her poses. This close up does not do justice to the photo. She straddled the hood of this old truck, and although she literally had a trunk attached to her face, it was the sexiest pose of the group. I also think she has a good job of improving herself every week. We’ll have to take another look at her walk, but I think she has a chance to make it very far.

I didn’t think that much of Eugena’s picture, but Jay really liked the effort that she was showing. I just couldn’t get past the nose, but everything else on her looks good. I don’t know if her challenge win gave her more confidence or if she was just more relaxed since Jay wasn’t bitching about her all the time, but this was easily her best picture.

I though Anchal was going to break under the pressure, but she turned out a decent picture. I like her much better with her hair down, and I think that her mouth looks a little too small, but there was lot to admire in the neck and collarbone region. Oh, and she has big boobs. Yay boobies!

Jaeda looked like she was completely lost. Jay wanted her to show more emotion, but I don’t think angry was what he was looking for. I still love the way Jaeda looks, and I know Tyra isn’t going to let her go for at least another couple of weeks, but she has not shown much improvement.

Melrose’s close up looks horrible, but her wide shot was actually great. And even if you look at her face and think “That’s one old, ugly, bitch”, you have to admit that this old, ugly bitch can model.

At panel, we learned that Atoosa was going to be the guest judge. I of course didn’t want to see her face again, but it was good to know that I wouldn’t stay awake nights wondering if she was any less scary indoors, but whatever. Like I said, this photo shoot didn’t do much for me, but the judges had lots of feedback for the contestants.

I knew I had seen Altoosa somewhere before!

They nearly fell over themselves talking AJ and Caridee. One thing that I didn’t notice about AJ, but Tyra picked up on, was her hand. The judges want the girls to be models, and always say that modeling doesn’t stop at just the face, and they loved how AJ was modeling all the way to the very tip of her fingernail. As for Caridee, they continued to talk about how she was so uninhibited.

I literally don’t know the difference between what Eugena did last week and what she did this week, but the judges really loved her. The judges have always said that she has a blank look without any emotion, and I can honestly say that I thought her picture was more of the same. But I guess they saw something in her eye contact that I couldn’t see. As always, the twins got lots of praise. They also loved Melrose’s picture, but did admit that there was something really disturbing about the look. Anchal’s picture was OK from a beauty standpoint, but they believed that she could have done more to look like a giant. Obviously, they haven’t seen her eat. I love Brooke, but I guess it is more in that “Oh look how adorable she is!” type of way, and not “Wow, she should be in Vogue!” type of way. She was safe this week, but just barely. I would put her in the same class as Jaeda; great looking girl, only so-so modeling talent.

That means the final two were Megg and Jaeda. Neither of these girls have really done much in their photos, so once again, it was going to come down to who the judges thought had the most potential to improve, and the judges decided that person was Jaeda. Obviously I am going to agree, but stepping back from my obvious infatuation with Jaeda’s jubblies, I think that Megg was the right choice to go home. The judges were more in love with her personality than anything else. I just don’t see her on the runway, in an editorial, or in a commercial. But hey, she talks about ROCK AND ROLL!!!! so much, maybe she should just try out for Rockstar next year.

What did you think of this episode? Did Megg deserve to go home? What did you think of the photo shoot?