Real Blogger

America’s Next Top Model Cycle 14: Season premiere recap

Here’s the recap of the Cycle 14 premiere of “America’s Next Top Model.” For a spoiler-filled look at the finalists, check out the models and their bio info over here.

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We start out with an overview of Top Model from around the world. Did you know Jay Manuel hosts Canada’s Next Top Model? And I didn’t see any Antarctica’s Next Top Model. You’d think that one would be quick to cast and film.

Tyra has a MyFiercePage profile (myfiercepage.com directly links to cwtv.com, a missed opportunity to do some viral networking, CW). She has 32 “model requests” and she needs to narrow it down, blithely unaware of Facebook. Then she pops out from behiind the Wizard of Oz curtain, and the girls absoultely freak out. One girl falls down from excitement. They can’t believe she’s right there. Do they watch this show?

Initial challenge: Build their own MyFiercePage.com profile, with photos and a good social net-walk. Get it? Like network. Ha.

As we go through, I’ll do updates on what we learn about the girls…

Krista: She’s 24, and has tried out five times. You know what they say- if you don’t succeed the first five times, try, try to get turned down again.

Angelea: You may remember her from Cycle 12 auditions, when she said “I can’t go back to Buffalo. I caaaaannnntt.” She says she’s “classy ghetto.”

Brittany: She won an online contest on tyra.com.

Naduah: It’s pronounced Nah-do-ah. She grew up in a religious cult where kids were molested and forced into hard labor. Now she’s turning her life around. It seems every year there’s a girl who was in a religious cult.

Alexandra: She’s a plus-size model (i.e., she’s a normal, healthy girl). And she says “no one can touch me” because she’s so competitive. She loves her “fanny,” as do the judges (and most males). She makes a good point: Her skinny friends have more complaints about their bodies than she does about her own plus-size body. She’ll have a hard time making me forget my favorite plus-size model of recent seasons, Kourtney, who had a great personality and was gorgeous. That’s not to mention Whitney.

Hallie: “I can care less about that money,” she says. Must be nice. She’s a self-described “spoiled brat” who A) Doesn’t seem too broken up about her dead grandmother (who gave her a trust fund) and B) Seems proud she’s never had to work. Oh, and Cybil Shepherd is her godmother.

Time for the interview (chat room, as they say):

Simone: She’s from Kansas, and looks like an NFL cheerleader. Her life goals are either being a Victoria’s Secret model or Hillary Clinton. Let’s take a guess and say that’s not going to happen at the same time.

Raina: Raina’s eyebrows make Peter Gallagher’s eyebrows cry with envy.

Jessica: She’s 18, but is married and has a one-year-old baby. She’s also commercial gorgeous. She says she got pregnant the first time she had sex, at age 16, with a 22-year-old guy she met at church. So many things wrong with that sentence.

Brenda: Adopted. Oh, and like Jessica, she also got pregnant the first time she had sex (at 18). Maybe they should’ve been on MTV’s “16 and Pregnant” instead.

Alasia: She’s from the hood somewhere in Georgia. Alasia says she’s been crucified for Christ. Miss J says she walks like a stripper.

Tatiana: She’s a volunteer mortician. Some people read to kids, some people spend time with the elderly. Tatiana embalms.

Meanwhile, the girls try to figure out who is getting into the house. Usually, they say, it’s a Noah’s Ark approach, with two girls from each of several races. I don’t know why they are figuring it out based on race. In Top Model, it’s more about personality: A diva, a party girl, a recluse, a girl insecure about her weight, a lush, a backstabber, a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, a nerd and a cheerleader. Those are the basics.

Gabrielle: With a German dad and a black father, she said she’s had racial identity issues her whole life. She also has an issue with the also bi-racial Angelea, as the two are already jawing at each other. We’re only in the first episode, ladies. Save it for midseason.

Anslee: When she poses for the camera, she does an Austin Powers growl/cat claw. Wow. In her swimsuit, it kinda looks like she’s had some work done. Either that, or she has one great bikini top.

Danielle: She thinks her piercings and tattoos make her edgy and different. I always thought it’s attitude that makes people edgy, not cosmetic add-ons. What do I know?

Elimination time: Nida, who is Pakistani, and Danielle both got declined for their Tyra friend request, along with some girls who had no screen time. As far as Top Model premieres go, this is actually one of the more well-developed concepts they had with this social networking thing, when you compare it to the space alien/Egyptian stuff of recent cycles.

The remaining girls have to take a photo as their favorite supermodel. Surprisingly, they seem to know a few. That is until Tatianna tries to be like non-supermodel Megan Fox.

Every season, I say this: STUDY MODELING! The number of girls who go into this show having never studied fashion lines, models and the like stun me. It’s the easiest way to impress the judges.

Here are the finalists:
Naduah … Jessica (pictured at right) … Simone … Raina … Tatianna … Alexandra (plus size) … Krista … Brenda … Alasia … Anslee … Gabrielle … Angelea

Hallie, who was both sure she was going to make it and did not care about the money, was both cut and not going to get the money. Karma.

The girls are now in New York City, and celebrity blogger Real Blogger of York County, I mean Perez Hilton, is around to give them a tour of the Madame Tussauds’ wax museum. Perez had agreed to temporarily stop blogging about kids of celebrities in exchange for appearing on Top Model.

Oooh, there’s a bonus 13th girl, Ren, who is added to the cast. “I’m a free spirit who can’t be caged,” she says. Before we can even soak that crazy stuff in, it’s time for makeovers, which seem to come earlier and earlier each cycle.

Makeover roundup: Ren doesn’t shave her armpits, so they make her do it in what Miss J points out is the first Top Model underarm makeover, ever.  She looks really good in her makeover photo, though. An early frontrunner.

Krista hates the long clip-on pony tail they gave her. Simone got her head half-shaved, Rihanna-style, and she doesn’t freak out.

Brenda cries when they cut her hair like a boy. Naduah reminds us she was in a religious cult, in case you forgot. Angelea, who got a crazy-long weave, says she looks “fantasticals… I know ‘dem ******* gonna be hatin’ on me.” I wish she’d express herself more.

The girls get to see their house, which assuredly will be a wreck in mere weeks.  Angelea is the diva of the house, for sure, and is giving out attitude left and right. Now all the girls are yelling at each other.

First modeling challenge: Nude photo shoot, right off the bat.

What happens? Guess we’ll find out next week, because that’s it. Will a girl freak out about being nude? Will a girl have no idea what she’s doing and get the patented Jay Manuel eye roll? Will someone blow the judges away right off the bat (my guess is Nadua)? We’ll find out next week.

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