McKey Wins ANTM

McKey has taken the top slot in Cycle 11 of America’s Next Top Model. Though her celebration was certainly not as memorable as Danielle’s when she won cycle 6, McKey did still manage the Olympian feat of picking Tyra up.  Tyra did her best to make it look fierce. McKey beat out Analeigh and Samantha, neither of whom were able to convey the complete high fashion and commercial package as well as the winner. Where McKey managed to look high fashion in person and on paper, Analeigh was always too sweet looking for high fashion (though she had a fabulous body) and Samantha looked too commercial in person(though she managed to look high fashion on paper).

Their first challenge when the show opened was to do a Covergirl commercial for some new lipgloss.  They had to memorize their lines and at the end, kiss a guy. McKey managed to give the best of a series of mediocre to bad performances. Analiegh’s nerves got the best of her. Where in the last Covergirl commercial challenge, she was easy and breezy, in the final episode she forgot all her lines and Mr. Jay had to feed them to her. Samantha was stiff, and almost looked like a Cindy Mccainbot. It wasn’t pretty. They had to give their best commerial headshot in the Covergirl photoshoot that folllowed. The photographer said Analiegh had a great body, but a not so great face. Mind you, Analeigh is gorgeous, and if she is considered unphotogenic, well. I’ll never take another picture of myself again. Tyra told Samantha that her smile was not modelesque. I guess that meant she doesn’t do commecial well. Everyone loved McKey’s very sweet gamine-like shot and Analiegh was sent home while McKey and Samantha prepared for a walk-off.

Before the fashion show that would determine their fate, the two girls did a photoshoot with Seventeen magazine where the director said this cycle’s winner would be a hard decision to make. Indeed as the girls posed away, and later when they walked the longest runway in ANTM history during the fashion show, it was not clear who would win. Mr. Jay outdid himself in creating this cycle’s confectionary pink runway, which he called his Willie Wonka design. With hills, and steps and winding ways, it reminded me of something out of The Cat In the Hat.

The first hill was so high that the models had to run up it to get to the top. it was interesting to watch. During their turns on the runway, McKey was all cool girl attitude while Samantha was all glamourous grace. It was a battle between dark and light, and in the panel as the judges reviewed the two models’ bodies of work, you could all see them trying to figure out who was better. Based off photos alone it was a tough sell, and for some reason I imagined them doing Paper, Rock, Scissors to determine the winner. But in the end, Samantha, who apparently took a lot of imaginiation to sell in person lost out to McKey’s immediate shining qualities.

Onward to cycle 12.