America’s Next Top Amazing Model Race

If you’re still undecided about the presidential race and chose to exercise your intellectual muscles by watching Barack Obama’s prime-time special, you need not worry about having missed your favorite brain musher America’s Next Top Model. Since I’ve already voted, I watched ANTM for you. Last night, the Tyraettes arrived in Amstardam to be greeted by Holland’s Next Top Model host Daphne Deckers. (Sidebar: It’s amazing how the Top Model series is compelling even when you can’t understand what the judges are saying.)

Deckers tells the girls that they will be placed in groups of two and that the first challenge is to find their house using a variety of clues. The concept is ripped straight from the Amazing Race, but fun nonetheless as the girls take a train, a cab and ask for directions to get to their house. The first couple to arrive will get 50 extra frames during their photo shoot. Samantha is unhappily grouped with Elina, but the thought of 50 extra frames keeps her on task. They are the first to arrive. Meanwhile Marjorie hilariously tries to buy a train ticket with US dollars, and Sheena, thinking she and McKey had won the challenge, does a victory lap only to find out that they are actually the last to arrive.

 

After they get all settled in their gorgeous temporary home, they are whisked off to the red light district, where real live legal prostitutes stand in windows selling their wares. The girls find out that their next challenge is to stand in these same windows selling garments. It’s a political/fashion statement of some local fashion designers. Elina says she respects prostitutes and is excited about the challenge, while Samantha is full of apprehension.

 

The girls are once again coupled off into groups of two: Sheena with Marjorie; Elina with Analeigh; and Samantha with McKey. Elina and Analeigh are first. They’re standing in two seperate windows wearing these huge white confectionery type dresses by the same designer. Elina is at her best and the designer is pleased with her effort, though he does find her a bit too controlled. On the other hand. Analeigh is so busy trying to sepereate her dress from some silver things that are hanging from the ceiling that she practically forgets to pose.

 

Sheena and Marjorie are wearing very edgy dresses and the designer asks them to portray rock and roll type fierceness. Marjorie is amazing as usual, twisting her body into all types of hunchbacked weirdness with matching facial expressions while Sheena manages to just look like a prostitute. Samantha and McKey were the only two models who were actually in one window together. Their designer asked them to portray dolls and Samantha captures the directions wonderfully, looking as porcelain as the doll she is holding. McKey, on the other hand, was just okay, but the two girls managed to win the challenge, because they worked together, and synchronized their posing. What did they win? They’ll be modeling in Amsterdam’s Fashion Week, which is the biggest fashion event in Holland.

Back at the house Elina and Samantha, who had worked so well toghether in the first challenge fall out again over whether prostitution is a respectable profession. I’m sure they can petition Tyra to do a show about it, but I think she already did. McKey later says that Elina is ugly from the inside out.

The girls’ are sent to Amsterdam’s harbor, where the obsessively orange Jay Manuel gives them a quick history lesson abour Amsterdam’s shipping past. He tells them that their next  photo shoot wlll be on a boat where they will be wearing mid-century style clothing with a modern twist. Andy Tan is their photographer.

 

McKey, who goes up first, is intent on getting herself out of the middle. She is wearing all black and experimenting with her poses to find the most compelling one. Mr. Jay notices the difference in her passion.  Elina’ s shoot ran like a Verizon commercial. she was is thinking so hard about how to create the perfect shot, she doesn’t hear Jay giving her direction. So, he repeatedly has to ask her, “Elina, can you hear me?” Analeigh who could never channel her skater training without doing literal poses, finally finds the balance between being a model and a skater. Jay is impressed. Marjorie continues to use her signature hunchback pose to great effect. Samantha is a bit boring, and Sheena, no matter how hard she tries, still cannot jettison her inner hooch. She straddles  a pole and Jay stops the shoot to tell her that she’s not being ladylike.

In the end, McKey’s desire to move out the middle gets her the first photo, Analeigh’s ability to find balance gets her the second photo while Elina’s controlling nature and Sheena’s inability to control her nature land them both in the bottom two. Elina wins on the strength of being able to take better photos.

 

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• McKey Wins ANTM
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