America's Next Top Model Cycle 18 premiere with Kelly Cutrone & Kelly Osbourne featured a 19-year old black Elton John and the reincarnation of Pocahontas, jumping on trampolines for middle-America's amusesment.

Dear tele-trannies & fashion fans in the flyovers:

I never watch the ridiculous "America's Next Top Model" but I tuned in to the season premiere last night to see my friend Kelly Cutrone, best-selling author and owner of People's Revolution PR company, who has been chosen as one of the judges (replacing Andre Leon Talley). I'm not here to do a recap--I'll leave that to the parasitic TV bloggers--as I'm sure you can watch the episode on Hulu. I will say that Cutrone did a right-on job with her savvy, seasoned advice for the young contestants and I'll never say a bad word about Kelly Osbourne because I revere her father and adore her mother.

However, I can't resist logging in my drive-by comments regarding the segment where the models were dressed as either American or British archetypes (this season pits girls from the US and the UK against each other), and then asked to jump up and down on a trampoline while being filmed by sixty cameras. (For a 3-D effect....the money they throw away on these shows could go to feeding several African countries and then some.) The girls were expected to mimic the precise facial expressions and mannerisms of each icon they were imitating, while jumping. How on earth a 19-year old girl is supposed to possess insight into the likes of Andy Warhol and Pocahontas (which, in a racist jab, the judges imposed on the show's Native American girl) is beyond me. The judges were unrealistically harsh on the contestants, which I suppose is all part of the show's cartoonish appeal. (They acted like they had cocktails with the real Pocahontas, who died in 1617, on a regular basis and therefore understood her intimately.)

I'm surprised they didn't set fire to the contestants and then pour molasses on them while they were jumping up and down....and then berate and humiliate them for not projecting the exact same facial expressions, body odor and souls of Jackie Kennedy and Elton John.

Ciao,

Glenn Belverio

Comments

[bj]

Completely racist and inappropriate. I hope someone has set the judges straight since then.

[Glenn Belverio]

I'm surprised there weren't protests by Native American groups. It's one thing to have put her in that offensive minstrel-show costume but then they rubbed salt in the wound by berating her for not utilizing her "Native American heritage" and for "failing" to imitate Pocahontas properly. Disgraceful.