The First Annual New York City Stock Footage Film Festival shows its classic entry Bad Moon Setting, as light spreads over the city skyline and sets our scene, approximately, appropriately, as "Somewhere out there/ If love can see us through/ Then we'll be together/ Somewhere out there/ Out where dreams come true." Cut to the more direct location setting of the façade -- which I guess it's only putting up because Simon Doonan told it to look more like itself -- of the ZoLoft. Inside and upstairs, we discover Catie jumping on a couch that Sara is lying on because, I guess, the couch told her that her haircut made her look like a little boy and she decided to exact her cumulative sixty-seven pounds of revenge on it. You show it, Catie. Jump until your hair looks bad! Jump until you can't stop crying! Give that stuffy piece of furniture the Culkin Death Grip you know it so deserves!
But first, cry me a confessional! "The past eliminations," Catie tells us over a clip of last week's Elimination Ceremony Thingymahoosy Vaguely Named Wingding Bimbot, "I'm feeling relieved, I'm feeling disappointed that I've let myself slip down the rankings." And sure enough, there's Catie in flashback standing to...no one, no one at all! Oh, wait. Pan down, would you? There's a little weensy little girl to her who, having been shrunk to what I can only guess is a microscopic fraction of her original size, must be prepping for her upcoming trip into a sick man's carotid artery to destroy a blood clot in his brain. Should you fail, brave bloodstream warrior, the entire world will be doomed! Wait! Stop! It's just Jenascia getting eliminated, downcast and dour and hiding under the wide brim of her fashion-forward Mushmouth hat as she skulks back to the DQ. Hey hey hey! Try out the new Blizzard!
Camille, meanwhile, has actually found someone to talk to (well, at, actually) at this late date. She sits in the kitchen giving those "like, couldn't we turn this room into a walk-in 'shoes and elaborate scarves' closet?" eyes that all the girls give when confronted by the wasted space this room presents. I guess she's only talking to April because Camille thinks she's the new girl in the house, which would be the only explanation for why anyone would talk to Camille, and also why none of us has actually ever seen that other girl before. Camille declares, "They can choose, like, a million blonde-haired, blue-eyed girls to walk down a runway. But black women in a show are far and few between." Well, wherever they are, they're not in the back, memorizing their idioms. First of all, it's "few and far between." And, second, no one's asked you to be the token anything on a runway yet, so don't go counting your hatch before they chickens. Syntax, Camille. It's the crop of the cream of spoken grammar skills.
April, meanwhile, has her own downtrodden response at the ready, arguing, "C'mon, what percentage of magazine covers do you see an Asian on?" Is that a rhetorical question? Because you know who they say is really good at math. I'm kidding. I'M KIDDING. I'm being ironic. And, also, I can say it, because I'm Asian. And I'm also Jewish, French, Southern, a lesbian, a fierce Whig loyalist, and I have a mysterious third nipple. So I'm in the clear. Forever. April continues on, "Tyra has told me right up front..." and we kick it to what a label on the screen tells us are "auditions," where we find April standing before a preachy Tyra, who says, "If you're entering into this fashion world, you would be an underdog." I'm also a dog. Who talks. In French. And, back at the kitchen table, April finishes up in the second person (just like what Camille is quickly coming to learn is a required entity for this actual "conversation" they seem to be having), learning us all real good: she reminds us that, if you're Asian, "There's less [sic] slots for you in any runway show, editorial, or fashion magazine than any single other race you can even think of." I'd point out what a bold statement that is, but I'm too busy filling out my renewal subscription card for another year's worth of Prussian Fashion Weekly, because April's language on the matter was so strong I'm to assume that even cultures of nation's that no longer exist produce more supermodels than poor Asians. And if you're looking for up-and-comers who truly kick ass on an underwater shoot, look no further than the spread in the new Pangaea Wear Daily.
"I've never done anything that made me associate myself as Asian," April tells us, and on the knotty matter of race relations in America at the turn of the millennium, thank goodness we have a learned pundit of Camille's opinion on the matter to confessionalize: "I don't know how much April lives out her Japanese culture in her life, but her Japanese heritage might be that one thing that's gonna give her the edge." Oh, yeah? If you think that's enough to get her the pitying "disadvantaged youth" vote, y'all don't know there's a sick girl afoot.
Oh, there she is now. Sara is still lying stomach-down on the couch like she's the one losing hair and energy and dimensions to her ever one-note characterization of "sick girl," and Mercedes approaches and asks after a bracelet on Sara's arm. We learn that it is "from Iran," and we learn soon after that Sara's position on the couch must be known as the "juxtaposition," as she immediately picks up April's renouncing of her own thrillingly exotic plurality by countering, "I'm so proud of my Persian culture." But, proud or no, we are reminded that Sara's Muslim father would not prefer this particular vocational option for her, since it equates her with a whore. Don't ascribe such sinister intents to her career path, good Iranian citizen. She's not a whore. She's only a whore once a poll is introduced. Until then, she's merely a "talentless actress."
Mercedes, as it turns out, is not feeling well. In a confessional, she reminds us that she has lupus, which is "a chronic illness where it attacks your immune system about a year ago." It attacks your immune system a year ago? From her description, it sounds like lupus is most dangerous when it hits you in the place you're clearly least expecting: in the past. Sorry. If they're going to reuse the exact same confessional voice-over they used last week, I can volley back with the exact same retort I used in last week's recap, right? Awesome. But this time we take matters a bit further into the medicine cabinet, as we see Mercedes hiding pills and taking them as quickly as possible. She tells us, "I don't want to be judged. I want to be as normal as everybody else." Well, as far as normality goes, comparing yourself against the rest of this crowd is setting the bar pretty high.
"Jumping rope hilariously" is totally normal! Or at least it is if you're eight. Or if you're doing a Mad Lib entitled "A Day At The Asylum." Right near the catwalk which they should be practicing on -- and I'd just love it if J. Alexander could come in and be all "It's not called the 'cat jump rope' for a reason, ladies" -- Mercedes and Camille hold a jump rope while Shandi hoots and hollers and jumps and is generally amused. Mercedes? Camille? Shandi? When did Camille stop being all "y'know, I've always, like, held the jump rope for everyone" and start acting like a human being? Maybe she knew a photo op was coming, since at that moment Tyra "Jesus Christ Supermodel, Do You Think You're Who They Say You Are" Banks charges through the front door and starts with her own calisthenics of jump-ropey fun. Clearly, elegance on the ropes is not a prerequisite for this career path, as Tyra gets trapped and the cameras are turned off while the jaws of life are sent her to untangle her and the girls apologize for their girlish ways and promise never to sing that "Train on the tracks goes click click click" song ever, ever again.
Tyra rounds everyone into a circle and tells them that she can really see this experience weighing on some of the girls during the elimination thing-dingy-wheeze-its, so she wants to have a one-on-one with each of them individually to show how much she can be a friend to each of them before she pulls the ice pick out from under the runway and jabs between one girl's shoulder blades the second she makes the mistake of turning around. Who's first?
Xiomara. Tyra starts things right off by telling her how much she likes "her toughness." She warns Xiomara not to act too feminine, because that would be too much like everybody else. Uh-oh. As soon as you start getting speeches of the "don't embrace the you of the present, embrace the you of when you finally get those crazy mutant alien teeth fixed" variety, you can start counting your seconds, 'cause there ain't that many more of them. Just don't count your teeth. Because that would take way too long.
Catie is still looking for her "comfort zone" and trying to be less of a "plain Jane." Yoanna and Tyra bond over how much they miss their moms. Camille says that this is the first time in her life that she's ever been called a "diva." ["To her face, maybe." -- Wing Chun] April thinks her calling in life is to be "a source of inspiration and strength to other people," and Tyra thinks that's even more of an inspiring comment coming from "a woman of color," to which April is all, "Wait, who is?" She reminds us once more, "I haven't been connected with my Japanese heritage, and I'm not going to pretend I have." Sara asks what to do about her dad, and Tyra thinks that might be "something [she] has to deal with," because that would be some kickin' TV right there. Shandi says she won't be going back to Walgreen's. Tyra tells Mercedes that she seemed to be throwing off some attitude at last week's shoot, and Mercedes promises, "I wasn't feeling well." Tyra tells her, "If you get eliminated, it's not going to be because you're tired at work." But if there's an attitude problem...she'll dangle on for weeks like Camille and be kept around in lieu of girls with ghastly physical deformities like ass fat or porn boobs or Martin Short's height while being injected into Dennis Quaid's bloodstream.
Hello, Sam Christensen, "personality coach." We walk into a studio room somewhere and are introduced to this gentle-looking gray fellow, possibly the only human being in history to walk a perfectly divided line between the dueling physical types of "gay-porn bear" and "department-store Santa." And what career qualifiers are there that lead someone to an announced vocation of "personality coach"? Is it BA in Psych and a failed MSW? Is it a major in "nerds" with a correlate in "revenge of the"? If he's Mr. Personality, is his wife Miss Congeniality? Yeah. Like he's married.
Today we're going to learn about "the magic of charisma," Sam tells us, meaning that they're there to learn things about themselves that other people see in them. Or something. Really, it's just a good exercise to say some twisted smack about one another. And, to that end, they're all handed sheets of paper with a million adjectives on them, and everyone has to mark off words they use to describe the other girls. Man. A career in modeling containing a contract to IMG and a campaign with Sephora all on the line (or, y'know, so Tyra sometimes tells us), and they still find a way to get these girls to write about each other in their slam books like it's some damned junior-high slumber party. Maybe the photo shoot later will be a girl photographed sleeping while the other models conspire to land her wrist in a bowl of warm water. At least if the ad is for Depends, there will finally be an actual intuitive reason for the aesthetic of the whole thing.
Camille cops to feeling attacked by her results, and I've got to say you would too if your words were "superior, relentless, headstrong, defiant, outspoken, cunning, aggressive, opinionated, demanding, and single-minded." And thus every blank in the Mad Lib "A Trip To Camille's was nobly filled in. And those words were certainly the worst of the bunch available, I'm sure. It makes you wonder why the designer of The Christensen Judgment Sheet would leave out such obvious designations as "Camille-loving," "elevator-not-holding," "Fisk-constantly-talking-about-ing," and "that'll do, pig."
But ! It's time for Santa Bear to take down the room a little bit. The thing the girls will be doing is a series of exercises in which they speak in front of each other to...again, I'm not entirely sure. This is totally the one emotional-clearinghouse episode. It's very special. Lupus. Got it.
Mercedes has a great relationship with her mother. Shandi...well, doesn't. She's always been "the black sheep" of her family, and the only person she's ever had to talk to is her boyfriend. And now his girlfriend is a supermodel! Boy, did he luck out. He's almost as lucky as the guy who becomes Shandi's boyfriend !
The exercise they have is to answer the question, "The worst thing I've ever done was...." Sara starts to tear up when she says she's never been able to be honest with her father, adding without provocation that she loves her very supportive mother. Sara returns to her seat all weepy, which allows Santa Bear to return to the locus of his somewhat hazy point: "That is where charisma comes from. It comes from public self-acceptance." Or, in the case of stand-up comedians, writers with public personas, most actors, and I'm guessing one out of every one politicians: public self-acceptance is one thing, but private abject self-loathing is...the same thing. But wait, there's more: "The models that succeed do so not because of how they look." Uh-huh. "They do it because they let people see their individuality. Who they are." So, it was just Jenascia's soul that was too short, then?
"My mom always thought that I looked like a boy," Shandi says, spooning out the last of her Frozen Café Truth Serum-uccino from a near-empty Starbucks Cup. And, having referred to her as my long-lost fraternal twin brother, I have no leg on which to stand with the whole righteous-indignation- against-the-parents thing, have I? I have not.
J. Alexander comes pounding through the door, and we learn that he'll be staying for dinner and bringing along a "special guest." Said guest is a woman named "Suzannah Galland," a self-styled "intuitive advisor." Ooooh, a psychic! And while I never gave that much credence to the horoscopes or any other ostensibly spiritual art one could find broken down by star sign into blurbs appearing below "The Family Circus" on a page marked "FUN!" in my local Newsday, it'll be worth it for the "it's like you've known me all my life!" reaction the girls will give to her platitudes about being themselves no matter what happens. ["No matter what others might think, I'm sure that this gifted professional wasn't given dossiers on each of the girls in advance. Though others might consider that a distinct possibility. Which I do not." -- Wing Chun] I went to a Halloween party with a psychic at it once, and she took one look at my costume -- which included a significant amount of white paint and black lipstick, but no, I wasn't a mime -- and gathered, "You aren't like all of the other boys." I was like, "Gee, what gave it away?" It was no Sydney Omarr telling me to cultivate my desire for romance by wearing shades of green and mauve, but it was still pretty good. And so is the good and great Suzannah, who takes Mercedes's birthday (8/24/81) and immediately busts out, "Your body's tired. Your mind isn't. Sometimes you want to do more than you physically can." All this and without one word from the producers! ["Exactly!" -- Wing Chun] "Camille...you put people off." All this and without one word from the producers! ["I'm saying!" -- Wing Chun] Sara asks her how her father is going to react to her becoming a model, and Suzannah responds, "He's gonna hate it, but he's gonna secretly love it." When he figures out that the part of Muslim religious doctrine about which parts of the woman's body are never to be seen in public is...what, a typo? "April, you are determined to be a top model, no matter what. You will be a top model." Wow! The stars said that? I am looking at the wrong constellations. Xiomara: "I don't know how long you remain friends with people. It isn't shallow. It's self-protection." Also, if you're forced to pack quickly and abruptly leave a place, that would be an inhibitor to remaining close with people as well, and I don't know why but I just feel like that's on the cusp of happening, for some strange reason. And Shandi? Well, no one ever hugged Shandi. "I'm not close with pretty much anyone in my family," she confides in a confessional, and back at The Séance Of A Once Razor-Sharp Show About Careerist Bitches Who All Wanted One Very Good Job, Shandi is hugged by Yoanna (where you been, girl?) as the rest of the girls cry at Shandi's bad lot in life. Even J. becomes a human being and offers Shandi a big, manly hug. Or maybe he's just looking for her to show him to the aisle with the nude hose and lady fragrances.
"Do you know how many people said, when I told them I was trying out for this, the word [sic] 'token Asian'"? April asks Catie. Because almost every word in that sentence is one Catie has not yet reached in her Jerome Shostak workbook, she pounds ahead with her line as scripted, saying, "That's what makes you stand out." April bemoans the fact that her mother doesn't think of her as a model, particularly since her mother already committed one terrible crime of being "the one who's responsible for me being Asian." April's mother thinks that all models are "big-boobed, blonde-haired Barbie dolls. So she doesn't look at me and see a model." An awkward moment passes during which Catie nervously twists the short blond hair she hasn't taken her hand off since she walked into the SA-lon and was all, "Do you have anything in a Julie Andrews? I don't want to scare off the animated cartoon birds." Oh, chill out, Catie. She's not talking about you. Your boobs aren't big at all.
Santa Bear enters the loft and tells the girls that a "surprise guest" will be interviewing them individually, and that the most charismatic and comfortable girl will win a shopping spree. Just like a girl, Xiomara muses in a confessional, "Where and how much?" Answers for Xiomara: "At the Port Authority." And, "However much it costs to buy an off-peak ticket to that station known as 'Outta Dodge.'"
Ha! It's the world's first supermodel, author (does that mean she wrote the Bible?), and my future partner on the panel at the elimination ceremony (people, I'm still waiting for my phone to ring, here) Janice Dickinson! She's the surprise guest! Jeez, that's keeping it all in the family, isn't it? Who cancelled? And, more importantly, shall we begin the thawing of Jim Nabors?
Xiomara is once again first, because first is the worst, second is the best, and Santa Bear is the one with the hairy chest. Because he's the only one who's graced this show's set who hasn't has it waxed to within an inch of being used as a functional Slip 'n' Slide. "Yesterday, you were taught how to make the most out of your personality," Janice tells us. "Today, I'm going to ask you a few questions so we can get to know the personality inside of you." Still having a little trouble grasping the vagaries of this week's theme. Anyone with me yet?
But who cares! Because the first thing Janice asks is, "What's the craziest place you've ever had sex?" In L.A.! I mean, you have to drive to walk and everything's made with cilantro. That place is crazy! Oh, I see what you mean.
Xiomara: "In a broom closet in high school." And then, after the janitor got what was coming to him, in a conjugal-visit trailer at the Morganville Maximum-Security Home For Wayward Civil Sanitary Workers.
Camille: "Stuck in a ferris wheel." Bet you never baby-sat for that kid again.
Catie: "I'm a virgin." So the craziest place she's ever had sex is "in the future." ["Also, I call bullshit. She just didn't want her parents to find out on national (sort of) television that she wasn't a nice girl anymore." -- Wing Chun] Nevertheless, Janice looks scandalized, as if half-expecting Catie to conceive immaculately and father the human manifestation of the lord. I mean, what other virgins are there?
The question is for Camille, and Janice asks, "If you could be a judge and eliminate anyone, who would it be? Camille balks: Oooh, that's a hard question!" Not for:
Sara: "Camille."
April: "Camille."
Xiomara: "Camille."
Yoanna: "Camille!" Janice has a follow-up for her because Yoanna answered so gleefully, I guess, asking, "Why?" Yoanna has the answer at the ready: "Because she's a witch!" Hee. Nice job, show. You've got me back. Just don't go blowing it again by bringing someone else in from the "Fun" page to make everyone cry again, like some chick who reads the Wordy Gordy or some shit.
Janice seems to think that Camille is intimidated by her, but Camille promises that it is not so: "People may call you, y'know, the bitch or whatever." Janice asks if people are calling her that, and we cut to a Janice confessional (which is what the whole show -- nay the whole world -- should be made up of) where she opens up, "That was really offensive to me. I'm a member of the PTA." And god bless that woman I have no idea what that means, but if you don't see me for a while it's because I'm in my parents' garage silk screening t-shirts with the ANTM logo on the front and their new corporate branding tagline written in quotes across the back. That tagline? "That was really offensive to me. I'm a member of the PTA." If you see me wearing that shirt, it's me. Until they take over the world.
Janice natters on (I mean "lilts with gentle poetic grace like a babbling brook of perfectly chosen words, as would befit a queen, a poet, or a future colleague of mine") that Sara's got her act together because she feels it for her cultural upbringing, whereas April doesn't identify herself as Asian or white, which puts Janice off. "She clearly looks Asian," she says. "And she should be proud of it." Just like Janice. Is proud. Of the fact. That she's half-man. Because if you split it up over a bunch of sentences, it's like you've never really said it at all!
up, Janice asks Shandi if there's anything that might come out, were she to become famous, that she wouldn't want people to know about. Shandi deadpans in a way that makes me think she's just kidding: "Probably the drugs." Janice gets all panic-stricken in a "WHAT DID YOU DO WITH MY DRUGS" kind of way, before relenting when she realizes, "Oh...your drugs. Never mind." Nevertheless, Shandi's disclosing an ambiguous drug history causes the same electric current of surprise as asking the same question of a quiet, unassuming neighbor who's never bothered anyone and having him volley back, "Probably the head in my freezer. I mean, NOT the head in my freezer. I mean...dang."
And, Mercedes. Janice notes the flagging energy, and Mercedes finally just busts it out: "I don't want to make excuses that I have an illness. But I do." Janice wants to know what that is, and Mercedes explains the talking points. And wins a shopping spree "because of [her] honesty." Janice elaborates: "When you shared that you have LUPUS, that's when you reached me." D'oh! The girls look surprised, and Mercedes is all, "Thanks, freak." Mercedes chooses Sara to go with her on the spree, and I totally picture them showing up at Toys 'R Us and sweeping everything they can off the shelves and into their carts for five gleeful minutes, because that was something they did in the '80s so that's how I learned what a shopping spree was. Get a really good rubber ball, ladies! The ceiling in that loft is definitely high enough for Spud.
And off Mercedes and Sara go to Intermix (there are several locations in Manhattan, but don't worry about which one these girls are at...you can't afford any of them), where we montage through a shopping spree and find Mercedes back at home being congratulated by Yoanna for having lupus.
Tyra Mail! Tyra Mail! Yoanna knows her screen time is limited this episode (must shove her in the background to make it less obvious she's the winner. Must shove her in the background to make it less obvious she's the winner. Must continue to try and believe that), so she leaps in for a sec to tell us that the Tyra Mail read, in part, "sink or swim." Photo shoot in a dunk tank for a shitty regional theme park like "Fun Zone" or "Adventureland" or something? Pool party to go along with slam books and other girly birthday activities? Ritual drowning of the least charismatic, most lupus-free top model contestant? The Tyra Mail! She is so maddeningly vague!
Jay "Woman! Whoa, Man! Whooooooooa" Manuel greets the ladies at a studio, standing in front of a big enclosed tank filled with fish. He tells them that it's "a fish theme," and he introduces us to the photographer, George Holtz, and celebrity stylist Nolé Marin, whose name I had to arrive at on Microsoft Word by spelling the word "résumé" incorrectly, autocorrecting it to make the two accents appear (fuck you, keycaps, I still don't know what or where you are), copying one of the é's, and pasting it on at the end of the letters "Nol." So we're just going to call him Dr. Evil from now on, because he's a sinister-looking squat bald man who totes a tiny dog that he pets incessantly, and it's not like it's a dated reference because when I first began the process of copying out the accent it was, in fact, 1999.
Sara kicks it first and holds her pose despite "too many bubbles" (people, it's water). Catie holds a cool pose that they like; Yoanna does something "gorgeous"; Camille isn't ethereal enough and gives Jay a "drag-queen vogue"; Xiomara chokes and can't keep her eyes open; April gets a "nice" and a "wow"; Shandi looks "like a drowning chicken"; Mercedes has lupus but tells us, "Like Gloria Gaynor says, 'I will survive in this competition.'" She never said that. But she did say, "Go on now, go. Walk out the door. Just turn around now. 'Cause you're not welcome anymore." Xiomara. Do you like Gloria Gaynor?
Sara and Mercedes find out that they get another present as a result of their challenge win, and the elevator door to the loft opens and Sara's and Mercedes's moms walk out. And there's Tyra! And she brought her mom, too! And here's my mom! 'Cause I'm still in the garage making these t-shirts! Tyra's mom crowds everyone around her in that "Oh, look, an old man is talking" kind of way, and explains that when you're a model, "what you have to do is keep a strong connection to the people who will be there whether you win or whether you lose." Tyra picks it up and says that girls have low self-esteem, so she started a camp called "T-Zone." Cue grainy b-roll of Tyra chilling at some rustic outdoor locale, where, we learn, she talks to them about "relationships and sex and beauty and body image." She walks with girls, she talks with girls, she puts a condom on a banana. Okay, so maybe she doesn't actually do one of those things, but I don't recap commercials and this is a commercial for T-Zone. Tyra takes over to let the contestants know, "This industry only allows for one person of color in that certain category at a time." Therefore, no African-American contestant will be winning while the executive producer of this show plans on maintaining her modeling career. So pack it up, girls. Let's start right away.
And straight to the depths of the Eliminatowhatchamcallitjonespierre Chamber, where Tyra meets the eight remaining ladies and readies them for the night ahead. We meet our old buddies Janice, Eric, and Nigel, and we discover that Nolay Marin (I'm sorry, it was just easier to go phonetic with it and, well, I can't abide by this archaic "Dr. Evil" thing, as it would open the door to other passé nicknames like "Princess Leia" or "Calvin Coolidge" or something and, well, I just can't be responsible for that) will be the guest judge. Groovy, baby! See that? See what we avoided here?
Yoanna breaks down in her presentation, and Janice deems the results of her photo shoot "the worst picture I've ever seen in my life." Eric piles on the well-honed snark with the line, "It looks a little bit like an adult ultrasound." ["Janice, when you get older, there's no shame in admitting that your eyes aren't what they used to be. Get glasses. That photo rocked." -- Wing Chun]
"Last year, I won the competition for America's Top Model," Camille lets us know. That one gets some looks around the panel, and Janice tells her she is "arrogant" and "pathological." But her picture is once again great, though she gets a parting shot of "insane" from Eric on her dismount.
Janice loves Sara. Eric loves April. New Jersey loves Xiomara. Shandi was "mortifying," according to Dr. Evil. Mercedes looks uncomfortable underwater, and Yoanna looks, according to Tyra "serene." Catie "can be a lot more edgy," according to Dr. Evil, and Tyra believes that this is not the place for Camille. Janice agrees, telling us in as straightforward a fashion as possible, "She turned me off. I mean, I'm gonna vote her out tonight."
SO WHAT HAPPENED? ["They don't have to reach unanimity, even when commuting a career death sentence?" -- Wing Chun] The ladies reconvene, and Tyra gets right to business. Sara, you're still in the running toward becoming America's Top Model. As are Mercedes, April, Yoanna, Catie, and Shanthrax. Xiomara and Camille step forward, and Tyra tells Camille that she has some trouble with authority. Xiomara is loved by the judges, but her photo shoots have not gone real well overall. Xiomara is out, and the world cries blood. And since it's so brilliant, we'll let the top models (or, in this case, the average ones) speak for themselves this week, because personality is what we've come to prize so much, right now above all else:
"Besides being born, this is the best thing that's ever happened to me."