Auntie Fashion

Whitney & Dominique

I posted this photo from last week’s episode of America’s Next Top Model to prove a point: Dominique is pretty.

I’ll admit it: I’ve made the tranny jokes, too.  Still, trannies often make the best models.  The fierce background models in the Homeless photo shoot were transgendered.  The House of Ninja brought its fair share of gender non-specific models along to the posing challenge.  And then there’s Ms. Jay him/herself.  This show loves its trannies!

Now I don’t believe that Dominique is a man, nor do I believe that she ever has been a man.  She just has that je ne sais quois that trannies have.  When the camera is on her, she’s fabulosity personified.

I went through her portfolio this morning, just to have a look at her body of work, and I was surprised by how much I liked it.  In fact, except for Anya’s book, Dominique has the strongest photos of the remaining contestants.  What’s even more impressive is that she’s still trying hard to win ANTM while many of her competitors are falling apart.

I don’t believe that she’s pretty all of the time.  In many candid shots, I’m nearly blinded by her appearance.  But when it comes to the challenges, Dominique has earned her place in the top four on ANTM.  And just look how gorgeous she looks in the photo I posted.  Sure, it’s a little blurry, but she does have terrific bone structure, especially when her face is relaxed.

I’m not going to deny that she can look scary sometimes, but I’d rather see a hundred Dominiques in the house than one more Kimberley who doesn’t want to be there, or one more Lauren who can’t figure out what it takes to stay there.

I guess it goes to show you that beauty is a state of mind.  When the camera is on her, Dominique believes that she is beautiful.  Like Furonda before her, she’s starting to make a believer out of me, too.

Lauren

Oh, Lauren!  You just had to get sent home, didn’t you?  At least you got to say “Crap, crap, crap, CoverGirl!” before you left.  Maybelline owes you a favor now.  I’ll make a couple of calls and see what I can do.

I actually didn’t think Lauren was going home until Tyra handed Whitney her photo on last night’s episode of America’s Next Top Model.  For some strange reason, I kept thinking back to CariDee’s CoverGirl commercial in Spanish.  Lauren may have been awkward, but CariDee was downright scary — much like Dominique was in her commercial.

Holy Zob!  Could Dominique be the surprise winner?

I actually do like Dominique.  I laughed out loud when Gai Mattiolo said that she didn’t look “fresh.”  The girl has a lot of spirit, though, and she seems to try a lot harder than most of the contestants on this show (she’s this season’s Furonda).  And we all know that you can’t spell Tyra without t-r-y and an A for effort!  That’s one of the lessons I learned at T-Zone when I infiltrated the camp for a tell-all exposé.  The camp counsellors would chain us to our bunks and make us repeat that slogan over and over and over again before our dinner of cold celery broth and the week-old Olive Garden breadsticks they would find at the bottom of Tyra’s tote bag.

Anyway, Dominique gets an A from me.  It’ll go well with her X and Y chromosomes.  She can start a collection.

Last night marked the debut of the tenth cycle of the greatest television show in the history of the medium: America’s Next Top Model. While the competition has never lived up to the hype of its own title – Jaslene, Caridee and Naima have hardly become household names – that’s beside the point. The show is great because it’s about the greatest role model in the history of the world: Tyra Banks.

The inaugural episode featured Tyra as a blubbering homecoming queen, graciously accepting her title as an audience of thirty-five awestruck hopefuls trembled in her presence. By the end of the episode, only fourteen girls remained. Although a few of the contestants appeared to have a slight glimmer of modelling potential, there wasn’t a standout contestant. The problem? As Tyra will undoubtedly remark in a future episode, too many of these girls have “lost their spark.”

Lately, that’s the problem with models in general. What happened to the day when a model could be a household name? Sure, I know the names of the so-called supermodels, but I’m in the business. I recently mentioned Erin Wasson to a friend, and she had no idea who I was talking about even though she’s probably seen the lovely Ms. Wasson a thousand times over.

But gone is the era when a top model actually had to have much of a personality to get ahead in the business. I miss the day when Tyra was actually a relevant force on the catwalk. I miss the day when women who were old enough to try out for ANTM would get booked to walk in a runway show. I’m sick of the army of fifteen-year-old nobodies who have seized control of the runways in Paris and New York.

But Tyra is obviously sick of those girls, too. That’s why she never chooses anyone with any potential in the real world of modelling. She wants to turn back the clock to 1990 as badly as I do. One day soon, she might just do that. The reason: Fashion is cyclical, and the day when supermodels ruled the earth was nearly two decades ago. If Tyra sticks to her guns and continues to choose girls who currently have no relevance in the business, she’ll eventually see the business come back around to her. One of these days, another Furonda is going to enter the Top Model house and win the contest solely based on her ability to not only believe her own hype, but also to model through it. Then she’s going to convince the rest of us to believe it, too.

Frankly, I can’t wait for that day. The world doesn’t need any more anonymous models. The world needs another Tyra. Or maybe a Furonda. Don’t make me decide.

Furonda