Ambreal and Ebony were the first two giraffes spotlighted on Wednesday’s show, and with the weeks of negative critiques for Ebony and a tumble to the bottom two for Ambreal the writing was on the wall for both coathangers.
Tyson Beckford stopped by the house so the girls could practice their spokesmodeling on random household items. One girl grabbed a banana, another an electric tea kettle and they all practiced the not so subtle art of trying to seduce Tyson with clumsy innuendo and preteen giggles. Eventually the birds of paradise rung out their panties and flew to a real spokesmodeling job where they broke into teams of three to make public service announcements for the AIDS charity Keep a Child Alive. Heather, Bianca and the blonde girl who looks like she’s going to kill someone won, and Heather got to go on a special photo shoot with legendary lensman Mathew Rolston and Mary J. Blige. That shy broad is turning into a real model! She is gaining confidence week by week (and maintaining her sweetness) and looks more like a model than anyone on the show.
The girls dressed up in plastic bags and cardboard for the recycling photo shoot and Heather scored with her straight on pose (apparently autistic girls only like being shot profile) and Saleisha and Bianca also got praise for their improvements. In the end it came down to Ambreal and Ebony as an ambivalent Tyra held up Ebony’s picture. In what cult expert Rick Ross categorizes as disturbing behavior the final girl normally snatches the photo from Tyra’s hand and hugs her in weeping gratitude as though she’s a modern day Oskar Schindler. I love thinking of Tyra as my own personal cult leader. She makes me want to gather strands from her weave and make a synthetic hair doll I can stroke and worship in my lonely moments. Ebony did not follow script and instead revealed in a shocking moment of courage and defeat that she no longer wanted to be a model, the show was not for her. Tyra told her there was nothing less attractive than a quitter, which means Ebony is ugly and ugly people can’t be models.
I was taken aback by Tyra’s reaction. Tyra and the panel have done nothing to encourage Ebony (who has had a hard life as a crack baby) and instead they’ve belittled her continuously knowing her confidence was coming apart at the seams. This show does one of two things: it either tears you down so you can be rebuilt as a model-like Banks-bot, or it simply tears you down and kicks you to the glue factory with a sharp unemotional stiletto. Ouch. Ebony had no chance of rebounding from her funk. She does not have the internal fortitude to overcome the barbs of Tyra’s tough love and Tyra should have seen that and put her out to pasture before Ebony came unglued in an unceremonious exit.
