Television
Take to your heels
by Diana Wichtel
Dancing about in swimwear will take you only so far.
Don’t think of it as just another local version of an annoying reality franchise. Think of New Zealand’s Next Top Model as an opportunity to take a weekly excursion to Planet Fashion, a place where they do things differently. Or as judge Colin Mathura-Jeffree noted, scanning the results of a contestant’s first photo shoot, “The aliens have landed.”
Thanks to being rigorously agnostic when it comes to Tyra Banks worship, I haven’t been a big fan of the American show. Though, for the student of staggeringly ill-advised television, it has provided moments to rival even the antics of Paul Henry. I’m thinking of the infamous anti-smoking photo shoot, where the models were made up to resemble people afflicted with various smoking-related diseases. There were Hammer Horror versions of: a woman undergoing chemotherapy; clutching a stillborn baby; sporting a hideous facial tumour … Tyra loved it. “Let’s see a close-up of your coughing-up-blood shot! I love it!”
Fashion, instructed Tyra, is about making people uncomfortable sometimes. It’s very fashion-forward, or something. In another shoot, the models, surrounded by animal carcasses, posed wearing … meat. There was clearly some message in this, though it’s a bit rich being lectured by people who think drop-crotch harem pants are a contribution to civilisation.
However will the local show compete? So far, in the quest for the girl with that “special somethink”, the most alarming thing is the exposure to the Kiwi accent in its most unreconstructed form. The girls have also been trained to greet host Sara Tetro with Pavlovian ululations. “She’s our Tyra!” explained one, as Tetro arrived, having been ferried across Lake Wakatipu in a sort of marine version of the Popemobile. It doesn’t hurt that, as someone pointed out, she runs the agency 62 Models.
By the end of the first hour, only 13 of the original 33 girls were left. The culling process involved a lot of walking and bikini-wearing. This is clearly harder than it looks. One girl had never worn high heels and, as a result, walked like Groucho Marx. Another lost a shoe. Colin had some advice. “You do not hobble like a cripple,” he advised. I think it was Colin who remarked, of one of the girls, “Is that a forehead or a fivehead?”
Of course, there has to be the series bitch, even apart from Colin. That role seems to have fallen to 19-year-old Hosanna from Gisborne. She endeared herself to fellow contestants by banging on about how competitive she is. “I practise my walk when I go to the bathroom … I practise my walk when I’m lying on my bed.” Mercifully, we did not get to see this. There were, inevitably, tears before bedtime. “Instead of catwalking everywhere, you should have gone out of your way to make friends,” one of the other girls informed Hosanna. Miaow.
It’s easy to sneer, but if having the ability to walk to the top of a mountain can make you a national hero, why shouldn’t these girls capitalise on being equipped with freakishly long legs and a curiously blank demeanour? The problem is that having them all jiggle about, dancing in swimwear, will take you only so far. Drama is required. Ajoh, a refugee from the war in Sudan, was reduced to tears as she told of fleeing the war and of the deaths of her father and grandmother. Further hardship ensued as she was made to answer such questions as “How different is this from the Sudan?”
There was the young woman with epilepsy who impressed the judges by admitting that she used to shoot up morphine. There was the one who demonstrated her ability to eat a whole chilli. This set her apart from your average model, who just wears the expression of someone who is consuming something revolting.
As for the values being presented, there aren’t any. The girl with epilepsy fell ill. “One less girl here is one less girl I have to beat,” mused a fellow contestant sympathetically. Sweet-faced Ruby told the judges she wanted to help people. “This is not Miss Universe,” barked Tyra. Er, I mean Sara.
Oh dear. The 17-year-old in our house is hooked. Women like to scrutinise each other, apparently. Still, there are lessons to be learnt. No hobbling like a cripple. And tan lines are, like, such a disaster.
Sara is certain that some good will come of it all. “I’m starting to see a light in her eyes,” she said, of Ajoh, “and I think that those bad experiences are becoming positive for her!” It seems there’s no end to what parading around in a bikini and heels can achieve.
