mind over matter

So, I’m finally caught up on Season Ten of America’s Next (Tenth-) Top Model, and I’m actually feeling a little guilt as to how much I am enjoying it.

Not just because it’s saccharine-sweet and all about Tyra and a celebration of superficiality and excess. What got to me this time was the exploitation of young girls’ difficult pasts, especially their sexual pasts. Take a few discussions from the very first time the contestants met with the judges:

Dominique: There’s so many people who know what I been through.

Tyra: Okay, you tell me what you’ve been through.

Dominiqe: I’ve been through an abusive relationship with a man who was very physically and emotionally abusive to me.

Or the Somalian beauty…

Tyra: You’ve gone through a very controversial rite of passage.

Fatima (crying): When I was seven years old I was circumcised…female genital mutilation is removing the entire clitoris and sewing the two labia together.

Then there was Marvita, the poor girl they cut in the last few minutes of Season Nine, Episode One, after asking her to talk about her experiences of rape, abuse and homelessness for the camera…and for the world.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about our voyeuristic schadenfreude in watching The Moment of Truth. The girls of ANTM are putting themselves through similarly uncomfortable rounds of Truth or Dare, but for them it’s a tactic to stay in the game - and not directly related to game’s objective, which is to become the best runway and high-fashion model possible.

If a gorgeous 5′11″ beanpole strode into Elite Model Management, no one would stop to ask her what she’d overcome in her past. Maybe this has something to do with putting these impossibly good-looking women back into place in our minds - “Yeah, she may be taller and prettier than me, but at least I never put up with an abusive boyfriend.”