Britians 'Missing' Top Model
Aug. 14th, 2008 12:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
emmelinemayThanks to the iPlayer, I discovered a series called 'Britain's Missing Top Model.'
I watched a few episodes, and the final, and the 'What happened next' programme, and enjoyed it, generally, but the whole time I felt a little, well, odd about the whole concept, and couldn't quite define why.
There were elements of the 'freak show programming' there, which is present in all such shows, ANTM, Big Brother, X-Factor - shows that appeal to that part of us that love to people watch, that love to stare at the crazy people doign crazy things. After all, the best parts of shows like ANTM and X Factor are the early stages, where people are REALLY shit, right? It's the freak show aspect. So when you put that format and tie it up with people who, a hundred years ago, would have been 'freaks' themselves, however well intentioned your programming is, the result is honestly a little uncomfortable.
We're being asked to view these women as different because of their disabilites, but as the same time being told we should accept them as normal and capabable of doing things normal women do.
Well, fine, I say, of course everyone should be normal, should have the same opportunities as everyone else.
It wasn't until the 'What happened next' show that I managed to put my finger on exactly what it was that was bothering me. I watched it last night, and have been thinking about it ever since.
The show features a meeting between the winner, a very beautiful and photogenic 23 year old called Kelly, and the model agency Take 2. You see a discussion between the bookers, debating on whether or not they should take Kelly on. They takl very frankly about her disability, about the publicity that will be generated from the show, and the selling platform that creates. They talk about her disability, a missing left arm, as a selling point, as a way to set her apart from other girls, as a way to sell her to advertisiers who may feel she gives them that 'disability friendy' edge. They say she's too short (5'8") and too big (a size 10) but ultimately, they take her on because they think they can sell her because she, basically, has one arm and has been on a TV show.
Then, it stuck me what had bothered me all along. The show's premise is that disability should be accepted, and shouldn't prevent you from living a normal life, from doing things any other girl can do. But models AREN'T 'normal'. They don't represent your average girl on the street. They're super tall, super thin, often by nature rather than diet, and any girl with a full set of arms who was also 5'8" and a size 10 wouldn't get a second glance from a model agency however beautiful her pictures were.
The result is that she is taken on becasuuse of her disability, and in spite of her unsuitability to be a model. This, in my mind, goes almost against the point of the whole experiment.
Don't get me wrong, I am all for changing the model world so that normal height and healthy weight becomes the norm for the model world. Who knows, maybe Kelly really will change things, maybe girls with disabilties will be looked at twice by model agncies.
But I doubt it. The whole point of the moddellign world is to represent an image of 'perfection' which is nothing to do with the real world. Perfect hair, perfect clothes, THIS height, THIS weight.
The vast majority of us could never attain the standards of 'perfection' demanded by the world of modelling, able bodied or otherwise.
A really interesting thing that the show brought up was in the attitude of the girls to each other, and to each other's disabilities. As with ANTM, they were to live together as the show was filmed, and their reations to each other were fascinating.
The deaf girls were deemed to be 'not as disabled' as the girls with physical disabilities, as you 'couldn't see a difference'. It wasn't until the two deaf girls asked the others to wear earplugs for a whole evening that the rest of them began to develop an understanding oof what life was like for them, and that the fact that the girls coped so well in life was because they worked so damn hard to cope, not because being deaf was any easier than being in a wheelchair or having a false leg.
A girl with ME as well as a degenerative condition that results in paralysis of nerves was deemed 'hardly disabled at all' because when she removed her wrist splints she could 'still hold things'.
They each seemed to have an internal view of some sort of 'heirarchy' of ability, where one disability was more 'disabling' than another, and therefore more deserving of winning the show.
Just because each of them had a disability, didn't make any of them more empathetic to each other, or any more aware of the difficulties each of them faced. I found this really interesting, but it makes perfect sense when you think about it. How many of us really try to understand how hard life can be for each other, whether we have a disability or not? In an environment like that, pressured, livign together, in competition, it is natural to bitch. It happens on ANTM, on Big Brother, in 'I'd do anything', only the bitching will tend to surround attractiveness, team spirit, singing ability etc. In a show where the primary focus is disability (however hard the show tried to make it be about fashion) it seems natural that the girls would bitch about what sets them apart from each other.
The other thing that struck me, and bothered me in places, was the judging. Some girls were sent home because their pictures were bad; because they couldn't model.
This raised some intersting questions - would the proundly deaf girl, sent home because she looked a bit flabby in a picture, have produced a better picture if direction could have been given in sign language for her to sit up? Would it be reasonable to expect all photoshoots to provide an interpreter if she were a 'real'model? Would fashion shoots go so far to allow a diabled girl to model?
Other girls were sent home because their disability caused problems in photoshoots. One girl with partial paralysis couldn't cope with a catwalk shoot. The other paralysed girl, paralyised from the wasit down and so in a wheelchair, wasn't expected to 'walk' in the catwalk. And yet the partially paralysed girl was sent home, because she couldn't do a catwalk show - as if the fashion world would be more accepting of a cat walk on wheels than a girl with an awkward walk. The girl who came third was sent home because the judges felt her ME would mean she would be unable to cope with the pressures and long days of working as a model. She was the sort of girl Tyra loves, weird looking in person but taking incredible photos. All of her photos were amazing.
I can't understand the judging process - for a whoe like this to work it needs to be consistent. Are girls sent home because they can't produce a picture, or because their condition means they can't do the job? I think if they'd ben more consistent with sending girls home, it would have been a less awkward affair.
Emotionally, the journey Sophie, the girl who came second, went on was amazing television. Off al the girls, she was the one at the start who hated her disability, who would swap everything she owned to walk again and get out of her wheelchair. It came as a shock to her to meet girls who said they've never felt disabled, or said they'd never exhange their disability for a 'normal' life, who felt it was part of them.
She broke down during the catwalk training, missing walking and dancing so much. In the final nude shoot, she came up with a cracking photo of her and her chair, and said afterwards that the shoot, and the whole process, had helped her see her chair as part of her. She referred to it as 'us, in this together' rather than her chair as some horrible thing she had to lug everywhere with her.
The other finalist, and winner, Kelly, took a storming nude photo. She looked incredibly beautiful, and you only really notice the fact she has one arm after you see how beautiful she is. Sophie's photo was of a disabled model. Kelly's photo was of a model, who happened to have a disability.
I don't know if it will change anything - I doubt it. I think it was a nice idea for a show, but executed in a clumsy way. I wish Kelly all the best, and really hope she does well out of it - but I hope she does so for her talents and abilities, and not for her disability. Ditto for all of the girls on that show, who are each so much more than the disability they were represented as.
Apologies for typos and spelling mistakes, I will fix these later when I have a computer with a proper spellcheck and not LJ's own, which sucks.
I watched a few episodes, and the final, and the 'What happened next' programme, and enjoyed it, generally, but the whole time I felt a little, well, odd about the whole concept, and couldn't quite define why.
There were elements of the 'freak show programming' there, which is present in all such shows, ANTM, Big Brother, X-Factor - shows that appeal to that part of us that love to people watch, that love to stare at the crazy people doign crazy things. After all, the best parts of shows like ANTM and X Factor are the early stages, where people are REALLY shit, right? It's the freak show aspect. So when you put that format and tie it up with people who, a hundred years ago, would have been 'freaks' themselves, however well intentioned your programming is, the result is honestly a little uncomfortable.
We're being asked to view these women as different because of their disabilites, but as the same time being told we should accept them as normal and capabable of doing things normal women do.
Well, fine, I say, of course everyone should be normal, should have the same opportunities as everyone else.
It wasn't until the 'What happened next' show that I managed to put my finger on exactly what it was that was bothering me. I watched it last night, and have been thinking about it ever since.
The show features a meeting between the winner, a very beautiful and photogenic 23 year old called Kelly, and the model agency Take 2. You see a discussion between the bookers, debating on whether or not they should take Kelly on. They takl very frankly about her disability, about the publicity that will be generated from the show, and the selling platform that creates. They talk about her disability, a missing left arm, as a selling point, as a way to set her apart from other girls, as a way to sell her to advertisiers who may feel she gives them that 'disability friendy' edge. They say she's too short (5'8") and too big (a size 10) but ultimately, they take her on because they think they can sell her because she, basically, has one arm and has been on a TV show.
Then, it stuck me what had bothered me all along. The show's premise is that disability should be accepted, and shouldn't prevent you from living a normal life, from doing things any other girl can do. But models AREN'T 'normal'. They don't represent your average girl on the street. They're super tall, super thin, often by nature rather than diet, and any girl with a full set of arms who was also 5'8" and a size 10 wouldn't get a second glance from a model agency however beautiful her pictures were.
The result is that she is taken on becasuuse of her disability, and in spite of her unsuitability to be a model. This, in my mind, goes almost against the point of the whole experiment.
Don't get me wrong, I am all for changing the model world so that normal height and healthy weight becomes the norm for the model world. Who knows, maybe Kelly really will change things, maybe girls with disabilties will be looked at twice by model agncies.
But I doubt it. The whole point of the moddellign world is to represent an image of 'perfection' which is nothing to do with the real world. Perfect hair, perfect clothes, THIS height, THIS weight.
The vast majority of us could never attain the standards of 'perfection' demanded by the world of modelling, able bodied or otherwise.
A really interesting thing that the show brought up was in the attitude of the girls to each other, and to each other's disabilities. As with ANTM, they were to live together as the show was filmed, and their reations to each other were fascinating.
The deaf girls were deemed to be 'not as disabled' as the girls with physical disabilities, as you 'couldn't see a difference'. It wasn't until the two deaf girls asked the others to wear earplugs for a whole evening that the rest of them began to develop an understanding oof what life was like for them, and that the fact that the girls coped so well in life was because they worked so damn hard to cope, not because being deaf was any easier than being in a wheelchair or having a false leg.
A girl with ME as well as a degenerative condition that results in paralysis of nerves was deemed 'hardly disabled at all' because when she removed her wrist splints she could 'still hold things'.
They each seemed to have an internal view of some sort of 'heirarchy' of ability, where one disability was more 'disabling' than another, and therefore more deserving of winning the show.
Just because each of them had a disability, didn't make any of them more empathetic to each other, or any more aware of the difficulties each of them faced. I found this really interesting, but it makes perfect sense when you think about it. How many of us really try to understand how hard life can be for each other, whether we have a disability or not? In an environment like that, pressured, livign together, in competition, it is natural to bitch. It happens on ANTM, on Big Brother, in 'I'd do anything', only the bitching will tend to surround attractiveness, team spirit, singing ability etc. In a show where the primary focus is disability (however hard the show tried to make it be about fashion) it seems natural that the girls would bitch about what sets them apart from each other.
The other thing that struck me, and bothered me in places, was the judging. Some girls were sent home because their pictures were bad; because they couldn't model.
This raised some intersting questions - would the proundly deaf girl, sent home because she looked a bit flabby in a picture, have produced a better picture if direction could have been given in sign language for her to sit up? Would it be reasonable to expect all photoshoots to provide an interpreter if she were a 'real'model? Would fashion shoots go so far to allow a diabled girl to model?
Other girls were sent home because their disability caused problems in photoshoots. One girl with partial paralysis couldn't cope with a catwalk shoot. The other paralysed girl, paralyised from the wasit down and so in a wheelchair, wasn't expected to 'walk' in the catwalk. And yet the partially paralysed girl was sent home, because she couldn't do a catwalk show - as if the fashion world would be more accepting of a cat walk on wheels than a girl with an awkward walk. The girl who came third was sent home because the judges felt her ME would mean she would be unable to cope with the pressures and long days of working as a model. She was the sort of girl Tyra loves, weird looking in person but taking incredible photos. All of her photos were amazing.
I can't understand the judging process - for a whoe like this to work it needs to be consistent. Are girls sent home because they can't produce a picture, or because their condition means they can't do the job? I think if they'd ben more consistent with sending girls home, it would have been a less awkward affair.
Emotionally, the journey Sophie, the girl who came second, went on was amazing television. Off al the girls, she was the one at the start who hated her disability, who would swap everything she owned to walk again and get out of her wheelchair. It came as a shock to her to meet girls who said they've never felt disabled, or said they'd never exhange their disability for a 'normal' life, who felt it was part of them.
She broke down during the catwalk training, missing walking and dancing so much. In the final nude shoot, she came up with a cracking photo of her and her chair, and said afterwards that the shoot, and the whole process, had helped her see her chair as part of her. She referred to it as 'us, in this together' rather than her chair as some horrible thing she had to lug everywhere with her.
The other finalist, and winner, Kelly, took a storming nude photo. She looked incredibly beautiful, and you only really notice the fact she has one arm after you see how beautiful she is. Sophie's photo was of a disabled model. Kelly's photo was of a model, who happened to have a disability.
I don't know if it will change anything - I doubt it. I think it was a nice idea for a show, but executed in a clumsy way. I wish Kelly all the best, and really hope she does well out of it - but I hope she does so for her talents and abilities, and not for her disability. Ditto for all of the girls on that show, who are each so much more than the disability they were represented as.
Apologies for typos and spelling mistakes, I will fix these later when I have a computer with a proper spellcheck and not LJ's own, which sucks.
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Date: 2008-08-14 03:53 pm (UTC)