Big Brother regrettably spawned hundreds and hundreds of mutant reality shows, from wife swappers to wannabe chefs, from castaways to celebrities trying to resurrect their defunct careers.
One format that seems to have worked extremely well is a fashion industry show in which girls compete to become top models. Created in 2000 by the “fierce” mind of model, fashion industry expert and producer Tyra Banks, the America’s Next Top Model (ANTM) format was sold to 34 countries, including Afghanistan, China, Kazakhstan and the Philippines.
Somehow envious about its success and in a terrible attempt at turning Banks’ more commercial idea into something more intellectual and, possibly, viciously anti-ANTM, BBC Three launched Britain’s Missing Top Model. No, don’t worry, nobody has gone missing here, but the word is a reference to the search for Britain’s first disabled top model.
The programme takes place over five weeks and features eight wannabe models with various disabilities competing for a photo-spread in Marie Claire and a modelling contract. The final aim is essentially the same as ANTM’s, the only difference is that the BBC programme is burdened with flaws.
Exactly ten years ago Alexander McQueen guest edited an issue of Dazed & Confused with a photo shoot by Nick Knight featuring a range of disabled people, among them Aimee Mullins and Alison Lapper. Athlete, actress and model Mullins had both her legs amputated when she was one year old. In her photo shoot she was portrayed sitting on the floor like a broken doll, her smudged prosthetic legs and chipped nail varnish hinting at her broken beauty.
The skirt skeleton and the tight fitting Alexander McQueen top paired with a Givenchy Haute Couture wooden fan jacket and her “dummy-like” stained legs contributed to give Mullins a sort of Hoffmann’s mechanical doll-look, while artist Alison Lapper, born without arms and with shortened legs, looked like a pop arty broken Venus statue.
Both the images were static and contrasted with the magazine cover on which Mullins was portrayed like a dynamic athlete, wearing the sprinting legs that helped her winning the Paralympics. “Fashionable?” wondered the title on the cover of the magazine. At the time the photo shoot caused quite a few controversies in the media. And that was ten years ago.
Fast-forward to 2008 and we are still wondering if a modelling career is possible for a disabled person and tackling the issue in a completely wrong way and with a completely wrong programme. First it looks like the programme was produced on a tight budget: you might criticise Banks and her fashion crazed colleagues, but they know what they are doing. They might be living in a fake and glamorous world most of us are glad not to be part of, but they are still training girls to pose as models in the pictures and with amazing photographers, talented stylists and creative directors, astonishing results are guaranteed. There doesn’t seem to be such intensive training in Missing, and modelling bad quality lingerie in an unassuming window shop doesn’t register in the ideal modelling manual like the best training.
There also seems to be a lack of talented photographers and stylists, and often the pictures look rather bad not because of the model, but because of the pose she is told to assume and of what she is actually wearing. Besides, let’s face it, a photographer asking a girl if it’s OK to show her disability, reveals a total cluelessness you wouldn’t expect from someone working on a photo shoot for such a programme.
At the end of episode 1, the disability topic had already gone to the judges’ head, as they discussed if a deaf girl is a good role model for women with disabilities, as her disability doesn’t really show in a photograph. Maybe they should have questioned their own choices before the programme even started as their representation of the disability spectrum in the programme itself is rather limited. Anyway, there was more obsessive speculation about the issue of being deaf and therefore not disabled in episode 2. While being deaf proved as one of the hardest disabilities on the programme, not even mentor and “top model agent” Jonathan Pang was able to address it. Going to visit the girls on a Friday night he decided not to take a sign language interpreter with him for three main reasons: if a deaf girl is chosen to become a model she might have to end up modelling in places where there aren’t interpreters; he worked with girls coming from all over the world who couldn’t speak a single world of English and yet they got on well, and, third, an interpreter is expensive. I guess the last issue was more important as being given the chance of having an interpreter when you need it is actually a basic human right (imagine being arrested in a foreign country, asking for an interpreter and being told, “That’s expensive, and you should try to get by, you can’t always expect of being understood”).
One of the worst bits in the whole programme is probably the very end, when the girls appear in front of the panel. The whole thing turns into a painful ordeal with the judges dispensing comments and suggestions and a mini-therapy session to the eliminated models. In yesterday’s episode, one of the judges stated that Lilli’s pose made her look as if she had some extra pounds more (that’s probably mainly because you never taught her how to pose, but I guess there was no money nor money to do it). There have been girls on the “Next Top Model” series with bodies that didn’t look like your stereotypical top model’s, still it was the picture they took that was judged and not the shape of their bodies.
Maybe the cruel and totally unfair world of fashion can actually teach the Missing producers a couple of things: a while back Jean Paul Gaultier sent out during one of his catwalks the Paris-based American model and actress Velvet d’Amour dressed in a satin corset and negligee. Interviewed, Velvet d’Amour stated that pointing somebody out as too thin or too fat, means we’re still prejudiced. “The point is diversity,” d’Amour stated at the time. Lost in its crusade to challenge people's attitudes towards disabilities, Missing has really forgotten that vital thing it was supposed to champion, diversity.
Comments