Pin Me Up Hotties

After last week’s America’s Next Top Model, you sort of had to wonder if there would be any drama left for this week. We have narrowed the field down enough that we are getting to the point where you could make a case that any of the remaining girls could be the next top model. There is sort of a sense of anticipation not only because there are fewer and fewer weeks until we are finished, but you know that the stakes are high for all of these girls right now. The girls have invested a lot of time and energy into the process by this point, which makes being sent packing all that more difficult. And yes, I know the title wasn’t original, but I laughed so hard at m_ruvs newsgasm title, I thought I would pay homage.There was still a little bit of fallout from the Jayla stole Nik’s secret thing from last week. Nik can definitely hold a grudge and she has pretty much refused to associate with Jayla. For her part, Jayla realizes that Nik is angry, but it’s no reason to treat her poorly and act immature. Oh, that’s right, I forgot that being mature involves talking behind somebody’s back and making a threat to her on camera. Actually, maybe it was a promise. I remember it was my 5th grade teacher that introduced me to the phrase “that’s not a threat, it’s a promise” trying to get me to narc on my friends. While I promise you that I am completely surprised by how huge of a bitch Jayla has become. Now, I’m going to be honest, this is a modeling competition and I think that she has a good look, but why the attitude?

I was beginning to think that Jayla hadn’t made any friends, but then I noticed that Bre was holding her legs in the air positioned like she was going to get a bikini wax. It turns out that Bre was just helping Jayla crack her hips. I guess when you haven’t felt the proper love of a drunken biker ‘twixt your nether regions, you have to do something to hold you over. I thought the protocol was a warm bath and perhaps a massaging showerhead, but this could work as well. Jayla’s hip cracked, and I am sure Kim was taking notes on the proper angle for whenever she gets back to her girlfriend.

It wasn’t too long into the show when Tyra paid another visit. Each girl was going to have a personal photo shoot coached by Tyra. It was going to be very simple, black and white, and she said it was something she and her friends do all the time. Let me tell you, there’s nothing like having a few friends over, drinking a few beers, and the pulling out your F-body and going vogue. And sometimes, when we get really loaded, we whip out the macro lens! Yeah!

Once I calmed down, I watched as Tyra brought out a photographer friend and started. Tyra wasn’t only the coach to give them some encouragement, she also applied the makeup. As always, this close interaction with Tyra always means a lot to the girls. A lot of the people who are in the competition are huge fans of Tyra, and she remains a huge inspiration, even for the ones who aren’t as familiar with her career. It’s tough to judge a black and white photograph because a big part of the final outcome is a result of the format, but from the poses that she had them go through, I was kind of wondering how they were going to pull off the edgy and dramatic shots that Tyra had promised when she first came in the house. The inspiration she gave was simple, telling the women to say to themselves “I’m a baby” or “I’m a virgin”. And did anybody else notice the look on her face when she said virgin around Jayla? It was like she wanted to say “I could smell the fornication on you once you walked off the plane.”

The photo shoot didn’t last long and there was some Tyra mail. Nicole read it and announced that everybody was going to Paris tomorrow! YES! Everybody was celebrating and screeching and preparing themselves for the wonders of a 35-hour workweek and croque monsieurs as far as the eye can see. Well, it would have been something to look forward to if Nicole hadn’t been joking about the whole thing. You have to admit, that was a pretty good joke to pull considering how susceptible the audience was going to be. Instead they were asked if they were a diamond in the rough. It made Kim very happy, because some of her most enjoyable moments in life come from finding that diamond in the rough. You know, the button in the bush. What do you mean you don’t know what I’m talking about? It rhymes with Delores! It’s there, my health teacher said so.

Speaking of Kim, it has been many weeks since Sarah had been taken away from her. If there was anything that would convince you that Kim has that masculine edge, it is the way that she got a girl to love her and then having spent an intimate evening with her (how intimate is still up for discussion), decided to act like it was nothing special. Like the song goes she hit it the first night and she wasn’t even trying. Sarah wasn’t around long enough to feel the pain of Kim’s rejection, but Kim was able to find somebody to get close to while Sarah was gone. Yes, Kyle and Kim, while not an item, were definitely becoming great friends. She said that “me and Kim joke that we are the only sane ones”. I am sure she meant to say “Kim and I”, but I am not so sure that they are sane. Then again, maybe it’s a case of opposites attract. Kyle is the girliest of the remaining girls around and Kim is, well, I don’t have to explain all of this do I?

I thought it was funny how early on Kim would say that straight girls always go for her, like it was something that she couldn’t help, but if you look at her first with Sarah and then with Kyle, maybe she seeks out the naive on purpose. I of course can’t say that Kim is like that for sure, but I she is attracted to Kyle and Kyle is dumb, at least if we listen to Jayla. Jayla said that Kyle wasn’t intelligent and she can only feed off of what other people say. Just last week I was mentioning that Kyle always plays it safe, and maybe it wasn’t lack of talent but rather lack of brains that was keeping her from succeeding.

Bright and early the next day, the girls head on over to Griffith Park. Before we relocated, the TVgasm offices had a nice view of Los Angeles from the roof of our building. What a great view of downtown that was. Unfortunately, there was the little problem of one person who enjoyed peeing in the elevator and the little hole in the roof of my bedroom that would pour buckets of water right by my window if it was as much as overcast. But whatever. Once at Griffith Park, they learned that they were going to be going through Camp Technique. A model has to be very fit, and could there be a better way to see how fit these girls were than to watch them go through an obstacle course?

Well, you know how the old saying goes. If there’s grass on the field play ball! Well, there was no grass on the field for these girls and there was no grass on the obstacle course either. But that’s OK, because the other half of that saying says if there’s no grass, just roll around and play in the mud! There was plenty of mud for the girls to get dirty, and they were definitely going to be rolling around in it.

Whenever these athletic challenges arise, it’s always fun to see which girls are up for it and which ladies are not about to get in the muck. Lisa was up first and it was going to be really hard to match her level of enthusiasm. After getting some eyeblack wiped on her face, she attacked the course like it was a handle of Belvedere. The course wasn’t super hard. Climb over a couple of walls, jump over a couple of hurdles, and then under a rope net. It was this last one that had most of the mud, and if the girls wanted to get through it very quickly, they were going to have to dig in and pull. After the mud, a small sprint to the finish and then you were done.

While not everybody got into it with quite as much gusto as Lisa, I think the girls realized that this was another part of the game. Tyra asks you to jump, and you say “How high”. Refuse to do something they ask of you, and you can get sent home, just ask Cassandra. Kyle was really tentative going through, but nothing compared to Nicole. You know, she’s from North Dakota and the state drink is milk. Therefore, you might assume that cows were pretty important in the state and that Nicole would be used to the smell of manure? Marge Gunderson wouldn’t have been scared of that mud. Youuuu betcha!

The great thing about mud is that there is also a high probability of some sort of slapstick happening, and that was answered when Nik made her go through the obstacle course. See, Nik’s pants didn’t quite fit, and so her pants would basically fall down after only a few steps, display her G at a moment’s notice. At first she tried to keep them up, but since a lot of the course requires more than one hand, a lot of the time she just had to let them go and complete the parts bare-assed. I know it’s not the most flattering look, but what happened to elastic and/or a drawstring? Did Nik accidentally get Diane’s pants? Whatever it was, it had everybody laughing until Nik ran triumphantly to the finish line.

Now that they had a chance to play in the mud, it was time for them to fake the funk, which was no problem at all because they had plenty of funk after all that mud and wouldn’t need to fake anything. The ANTMobile was lined in plastic to keep the dirt out, and while everybody didn’t enjoy the prospect of having to stay dirty any longer than they had to, Nicole was practically in tears. She kept on talking about how she felt like she was going to throw up and it was the grossest thing she ever saw in her life. Maybe Nicole’s mom likes her sister more than Nicole because her sister doesn’t cry all of the time.

The purpose of getting everybody dirty was to have them do a gosee with Elle Girl. One of the focuses of the competition is stressing the ability to look and act like a model at all times, and if you portrayed a model image while covered in mud, think of how well you would look once you get cleaned up. All of the girls lined up in front of the three member panel and gave it their best, when they were asked what they would bring that was new, different or better to elle girl. Jayla spoke about how the music she listened too was so much different, and then name a few bands. She was so proud of how unique she was until one of the women on the panel said “Oh, those are all very Elle girl” and shattered Jayla’s little I’m a rebel, alternachick, Jehova’s witness who smokes and fornicates, and let her know exactly how ordinary she was. Most of the girls picked up that the idea was to seem natural despite the odds, although Nicole was still complaining about having to get dirt.

The panel had mostly good things to say about everybody, although they did have some constructive criticism telling Kim that she needs to be able to change up the one thing she was good at (her edge), Kyle that she needs to display more range, and Bre that she needs to display her confidence in her photos as well. They also said that Jayla was shy, but I didn’t really pick up on that. Lisa ended up being the winner because of her energy and she won a one on one fashion course for her and her alone.

Lisa is the one person in the group that could have done without the any more model training, and her win brought a little bit of jealousy from the others. Kim said that she was probably the least pretty of the girls there, which I guess sort of misses the entire point. Lisa’s big drawback is that she is old, and ANTM is usually concerned with bringing a new and fresh face to modeling. This is only my third cycle, but I know that after fresh, they want unique, and while Lisa is not always a stunner in person, she REALLY brings it for the photos, don’t you think? Anyway, the fashion consultant was named Todd Hallman. He had Lisa do a few walks, gave her some pointers, and in the end reminded her that she needs stronger conviction in her walk. Still, he said that overall she was amazing and had a way of pulling you in with her eyes.

Back at the house, the girls were getting cleaned up from the mud. There were only a few showers, and although it would have been great if they had decided to save water, shower together, and take pictures to show everybody how fun conservation could be, they simply complained about people taking too long in the shower. Some people were more concerned about the dirt than others. Kim saw that Jayla had decided to get into bed without showering and was absolutely disgusted. She used some of that Jayla bitchiness on the girl herself. I have poured it on Jayla lately, so I will say that she did put down a towel before she got into the bed, and wasn’t complaining when other people were taking awhile to get finished. Not that I needed to say anything to Jayla to make her feel better, because she picked up on how Kim is sarcastic, largely because she isn’t doing very well and may go home.

Indeed, Kim was worried about how she was doing. She said she was hanging by a string every week and wanted to rock at least one competition. Kim was explaining all of this stuff to Kyle and it was apparently distracting enough that Kyle poked herself while she was applying some eyeliner with a pencil. It was sort of funny, but I mention it because I was out at a bar a couple of weeks ago, and I saw this guy with an eye patch, and we aren’t talking a Darryl Hannah in Kill Bill, maybe it was an eyeliner accident eye patch. This was a full on, either he’s a pirate or a biker and it’s not a temporary thing type of eye patch. I was thinking that if he was going to pick up chicks, he has to be very careful where he stands or he could miss a lot. And what if somebody asks you what happened to your eye and you have a really stupid story like “I was playing Scattegories drunk with some friends, and my buddy though a pencil, and that’s all she wrote”. Wouldn’t you HAVE to try and come up with something better?

The photo shoot this week was going to be a promotion for the new Ford Fusion. Jay said that they wanted to see how well the girls did balancing the line between sexy and sleazy, something he says Tyra is the master of and well, you know I agree. Looking to earn their promotional paycheck, Jay said that the Ford Fusion generates heat, and what they wanted to do was a modern version of the 40s pinup girl, which I think is a great shoot. I studied pinups for a while, and they have such a history in Americana. Jay was also impressed when Lisa mentioned Vargas, as in Alberto Vargas, who along with Gil Elvgren is probably one of the most famous pinup artists from the 40s and 50s and 60s. (And for something a little more offbeat, try Art Frahm.)

They couldn’t just put a bunch of girls in stockings and garters and call it a day. Jay wanted to go a little sexier in his interpretation, so he employed various corsets and such to get the look he wanted. Corsets are fine, and their entire application makes you think sexy, but they are also very painful. Still, the tighter the better. As the wardrobe person said, I’ll tighten until you can’t breathe, then tighten it a little more. The hair and makeup was also dramatic and they used wigs on a number of the girls to make things better.

Lisa was first and I thought really rocked it, but I think most of the girls did really well. I would like to pretend to add some suspense to what they look like, but why waste a few paragraphs when you know I am just going to pick my same favorites anyway?

Yes, that’s right, I skipped Bre this week. She really looked uncomfortable in her picture and with good reason as she said she couldn’t breathe. Although the photographer gave her points for trying, you can see she was really affected. I replaced her with Nicole, who I thought looked great this week. Something about those fishnets that made you want to think nasty thoughts like Nigel. I would have been thinking more nasty thoughts, but it appeared that some of the corsets the girls had on gave them a little too much lift, and so they had some of the girls put on tank tops. Just airbrush the nipples you fools! Not all the girls can pull it off, but we know Nik and Kyle can. Why do you hurt us so?

It looks like Lisa may have run out of alcohol because she suggested that the girls should go out and have some fun. Maybe she was just sick of being cooped up with all of these young kids and wanted to get out. They headed to Venice Cantina, and proceeded to get down. Nicole was really drunk and looked like she was making everybody uncomfortable by talking about how somebody was going home the next day. You know that everybody knows it, but it’s not something to say out loud. You don’t go into an oncology waiting room, pick up the latest issue of the New Yorker (or field and stream if you got there late) and say “Shit, you know, like half of us aren’t going to be around her in six months. THAT sucks.” Likewise if you go to an AA meeting and the only thing you can say is “Well, it’s going to be horrible when most of you in here relapse, but at least it won’t be me!” It looked like Kyle was really depressed. Uh oh. They focused a lot of attention on her and kept on mentioning she has no depth, and the judges HATE models without versatility or personality. Is she going to go home? The hottest one left?

At panel, the girls were given three minutes to visually express what they thought was sexy. They ran into another room, started changing, and came back through one by one. Some of the girls went casual, like Lisa and Bre. Lisa was in jeans and a beater, and Bre wore boxers and a t-shirt (didn’t she say she liked briefs better last week?), trying to go for that, more natural, not dressed up look. Nik and Jayla went with the straight out sexy. Nik picked a little black dress which, let’s be honest, is never a bad idea. Still, the judges wanted her to display more confidence in person. Good pictures, but not a model face to face. As Nigel said, it’s not the outfit that makes her sexy, it is her, and she is selling the outfit.

Jayla also went with strong sex appeal, with a Lolita look of low-rise jeans (I still thank God every day for that trend) and a halter. She’s a bitch, but she’s hot. If she tones down the hate a bit, she has some great sass that will work to her advantage. Kim went right to what she knows. She came in doing the preppy boygirl look, and she pulled the same thing off in a tennis skirt and sweater. It’s just something about her face that is bugging me. It’s like a girl who was once hot was in a car accident and they had to spend 12 hours putting her face back together and they ended up missing a few pieces and we are left with a lot of bloating because of the swelling. I know a lot of you still like her, but she is seriously starting to creep me out. I don’t know why, but as I was watching this, I thought it would be great idea to see her fight Jared Leto. I don’t know why it was so humorous, but I would put my money on Kim, unless it was to see who could put their eyeliner on with more skill, and then I would go for Jared. But here’s the picture since the judges liked it:

The only real disaster was Kyle. She came out dressed like her boyfriend from Wisconsin had picked out what she was going to wear. Yeah, at first glance it was appealing with the small shirt and the short skirt, but honestly, nobody with any sort of fashion sense would have put those two items together, and the judges let her know it.

Remember how I said I wasn’t sure how those simple poses were going to turn into dramatic poses? Well, quite obviously, I am an idiot because those black and white shots were very dramatic. The closeups were up close and personal and whatever that stuff she applied to their faces were, it gave the pictures a very rugged and powerful look to them. I didn’t think that Lisa’s was all that great, but the judges loved the look of it, and the expression on her face. Clearly they were looking for something other than I was. I thought all of the pictures were well done, but none of them were something I would put on my wall. Maybe I am just not sophisticated enough. Of the black and white pictures, I think I liked Bre’s the most. One of the judges mentioned it was the first photo to do her justice, and I would have to agree. And wow, Nicole with those eyes! Here are some of the black and whites:

With two pictures to compare, the judges had a lot to work with. They were all really impressed by Kim’s pinup. The hair and makeup did do a lot for her, but I think the only reason it was exceptional is that it seemed to bring out something other than a mediocre performance on her part. As Miss J. said “You’ve bought a ticket on the gender bender bus, and now it is time to get off.” The judges seemed to like that she was learning a little bit more each week. Nik’s was probably my favorite pose – show a little bit of butt, over the shoulder. Very sexy. Nicole caught a little bit of criticism because of her attitude. The panel didn’t like the way she responded to the questions, as she will nod her head say “OK” repeatedly, but make you think she is bored with what you have to say and is planning on forgetting it later. Nigel also mentioned that Lisa looks old, and they were searching for some way to get Nik to turn up her personality a little more. They are also really starting to like Jayla because she seems to be taking the most risks and they are working out for her.

The bottom two were Lisa and Bre[that should be Kyle and Bre, thanks mabella]. Every week is now going to be some variation on the patented Tyra “each of you girls has what the other one needs”. For those who those needs might not be so obvious, Bre had all of the desire, but Kyle had all of the natural looks. In the end, it came down to the girl that the judges thought they would be able to work with more, and they decided that girl was Bre.

Seeing Kyle go was a surprise, but not like seeing Ashley go the first week. Kyle has been safe, the judges hate safe. Her beauty was exceptional, but she hadn’t seemed to learn anything from being around the model business all this time, and her choice of outfits proved it. She just wasn’t the palette that the judges were looking for. Kim had started crying when Kyle was in the bottom two and really lost it when Kyle’s name wasn’t called. Just goes to show you Kim, don’t get close to anybody. That way you won’t get hurt. You’ll be a shell of yourself personality wise and the judges will kick you out and save me from having to make bad innuendoes about lesbian sex and your pudgy face. And that would be best for all of us.

Was it time for Kyle to go home? What did you think of the black and white pictures? Who will be eliminated next?