My Feelings About America's Next Top Model

So, this is probably one of the worst/best shows ever created.

If you don't know what happens on this show, here's the gist: reality elimination competition for girls in their late teens/early 20's who want to be a model, hosted by model Tyra Banks. Every episode they get a new "challenge" and a photo shoot. The challenge usually involves them doing weird modelesque things, like for example wearing green body suits underneath their clothes so that when they're filmed, the only thing you can see is the clothes.

But my favorite part, and the only reason that a show with air-headed, ridiculously hideously skinny, self-centered, scantily clad brats as the main characters keeps me hooked, is the photo shoot. That, and the critiques are kind of funny, too. But mostly the photo shoots are just...cool! They're weird and creative and interesting to me. Advertising is like a weird kind of art designed to manipulate you into buying things, but even though (in my opinion) it's evil, it's still artistic and just...interesting. My favorite part is not when they show the actual photo shoot, but when they show the final products and get critiqued. Here are some of the photo shoots that they've done that I think are weirdly fascinating:

- the models had to wear bald wigs - they didn't actually become bald, they just looked bald.
- the models had to pose like they were on the cover of a raunchy romance novel, and then the final product had the text overlayed on it - I thought it was hilarious.
- posing dangling from a rope ladder
- posing with snakes
- posing as homeless people

...I haven't watched it in a while, so I'm having a hard time remembering my other favorites. I watched parts of 3 different episodes today while nursing. It was fun. It reminded me of when I used to watch this with Liel and Natascha in the Avenues.

But every time I finish watching this show, I'm left with a sickening feeling. I always promise myself that I will NOT watch it anymore, that I'm not allowed to because it definitely promotes bad body image, and (in my opinion) it's demeaning to women. And yet, I tend to break that promise often. It's just so addicting. I suppose there are worse things than choosing to watch the modeling elimination show instead of the chef elimination show while nursing - at least I'm not planning my whole day around episodes of this silly show, but still, I generally like to think that I should be able to defend my morals and values better than I do. Sigh.