Episode Report Card Potes: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT It Gets Worse
By Potes | Season 18 | Episode 7 | Aired on 04.18.2012
And then it's time for the young girls to enter. They. Are. The. Cutest. Each young girl is paired with a model, and hugs abound. The models seem to have a little questionnaire to give to their girls, and we see Sophie asking her counterpart Raquel when she feels beautiful. Raquel answers, "When I dance and when I act," and Sophie sees PSA potential. Raquel, however, didn't feel so beautiful when she went to a new school and people told her she was ugly and made fun of her Cindy Crawford-esque mole. They said it looked like someone took a dump on her face! That is so mean! Sophie tells Raquel that the other kids are jealous, and then we see photos of little Sophie, who was not quite the glamorous gazelle that she is now, but was still really cute. Raquel says that inner beauty can't be bullied, which Sophie loves.
We see Kyle's younger counterpart say that confidence is beautiful, while Esthefany, the little spunkmeister working with Laura, says that it's beautiful when she gets good grades and wins awards and makes her parents proud. We then get a little more backstory on Laura, who tells us that when she was nine years old she came home to the smell of rotted, stale beer and felt that she wasn't good enough for her parents to stay sober. She knew she had to get herself out of that situation, but doesn't tell us exactly how she did it. Still, it's a compelling piece of information. This is exactly the kind of thing that makes me miss the casting special, where Tyra would have made Laura talk about this at length while wearing a bikini.
Oh my God, and then it's time to focus on Alisha and her young friend, Anahi, who is the cutest, most beautiful little thing. But also the saddest! She says that she doesn't feel beautiful when she looks at the color of her skin and her hair. And seriously, her skin and hair are so gorgeous, you can't even believe it. But she says that when she looks at princesses they're all pretty and have different hair. And then everybody's crying, including me. Damn you, Top Model! Alisha tells Anahi that she is so beautiful, and then tells us that she's been there and done that and totally relates to being bullied for things that you can't change. This whole thing is taking her back to a place where she doesn't want to be. Alisha tells Anahi that God made her this way because it's how he wants her to look and she's so beautiful. As tears fall, we head to commercials. Thankfully, so I can get a tissue! Fine, a box. Curses. Being reminded that I have emotions while recapping this show is, in fact, a professional hazard.