Apparently It Doesn't Pay to Be Thin

I have a confession - I used to like the show America's Next Top Model.

Oh, I knew it was horrible, and went against some of my convictions, but I was rather fascinated by it in an artistic way. I'm serious. I was amazed at how a photographer could take these skinny, scraggly looking, 18-20 year old college girls, and turn them into red-blood-statues of modern art and pop culture. Yes, sometimes the shots ended up being too sexy and sort of rubbed at my conscience ("Look at what this show teaches young girls about their body image!") But still, I was fascinated.

I say "used to like" now, but I would have confessed that I liked Top Model (as in, in the present tense) had I not watched tonight's episode. (Which, now that I think about it, is probably a rerun from an old season. No matter. My point holds.)

Husband and I only have five TV stations - eleven, I guess, if you count the Spanish speaking channels (which I do sometimes watch). So there's not much option for me on a night when I want to veg out. Tonight, I chose channel 9. I knew what I was getting.

I only caught the last twenty minutes. The girls (there were 8 of them at the start of the show), were modeling for an Enrique Iglesias music video. Super sexy, super stylized... rather disturbing. All were dressed in scanty leather-like costumes resembling bathing suits that had been put through a shredder. Some wore chains or some other industrial looking jewelery. And then they were filmed climbing all over Sr. Iglesias.

That annoyed me. But I kept watching, because, like I said, I honestly like seeing the final product. It is amazing what cameras do. And, true to expectations, the final cuts were stunning. I'm not approving of what I saw, just admitting incredulity.

What caused the change for me tonight was who was cut. One girl (I've forgotten her name already, poor thing) came onto the show as a potential plus-size model. In real life, this 5'10" girl is probably a size 8. It amazed me how slender she looked, considering the title they pinned on her. Until Tyra and all the other weird judges mentioned her being a plus size model, I had been looking at her as just a normal, pretty, thin girl. (The other girls on the show, incidentally, look skeletal next to her.)

Anyway - the point? She started to lose weight over the course of the show, and they cut her. What? I don't get it.

Last week, they told the girls that if they made it big time they would have to lose weight (But of course, never to compromise their health. Is that even possible at this stage in the game?). So perhaps this poor girl started to try - or perhaps she was just shedding weight from stress, like she said - and they kick her off, because she no longer fits into the description of a plus-size or a regular model.

How dare they.