Australia's Next Top Westie Scrag Series Six #8

You know what life, this show, the modelling industry and tampons all have in common? There’s always strings attached. Just because cheese is made from angel tears doesn’t mean it isn’t packed full of fat. Just because it’s your birthday, it doesn’t mean you’ll win a modelling challenge. Just because you’re good at commercial shoots, it doesn’t mean you’ll be able to do editorial. And just because... well, I’m sure you’re familiar with the tampon thing. And if you’re not, then I’m guessing that watching girls swinging from a vine in a studio will remind you.


Buckle up your harness – it’s the ‘It Don’t Mean A Thing, It’s A Scrag On A String’ episode of Australia’s Next Top Model.

Skin-Tight Budget
What, you could only find a sixteen million dollar yacht for this week’s photo shoot, image scouts? Pffft.





Me Talky Proper And That
• In the Joanna-elimination aftermath, Sssophie says to camera “With Jo gone, there’s now only five of us. It feels so weird to even say that. Five”. Sssophie has never counted that high before.

• Shiny Alex Perry is concerned that the modules are not progressing as they should, saying “It’s week 8 of the competition – walks are meant to be perfect, and they’re not. And I think that’s a modern-day tragedy”. Yep. It’s right up there with global warming, oil spills and shrinking panda habitats. THIS IS NOT A CRYING PROBLEM, SHINY ALEX.

Learnment
• The scrags get an early morning Sarah Mail which mentions something about being in public. Jessica is nervous, saying “It sounds really scary to me, because I hate having lots of people staring at me”. Um… guess what happens when you’re a model, lovey? That’s like Cindy Sherman saying she doesn’t like self-portraits, or, for the lowbrow amongst you, like Charmyne Palavi saying she doesn’t like fake tans or UTIs. Sssophie, in turn, takes dictation for Captain Obvious, saying “Oh my god, they’re gonna be judging us”. An earthworm at the bottom of a compost heap in a rainy garden in Tasmania stops eating last week’s zucchini for a second, looks up and says “You think?!”.


• Josh Flinn, in highly necessary leather half-gloves, meets the girls at Swissotel and tells them that they’ll be taking part in a very public runway parade through the streets of Sydney. So basically they’ll be dressed up in flowiness and turbans and taking a five kilometre wander down to Circular Quay and back, stopping to pose at the traffic lights. This is only not awesome if you’ve just had a stroke, and even then you could still appreciate it with your one good eye. I love this show.

• Hidden away in a white van, watching, are “Covert Agents” Shiny Alex Perry and Uber-Model Anneliese Seubert, whose surname is pronounced “Soy-bert”, which makes me kind of want some dairy-free ice cream. There are ill-fitting shoes, stumbles, stacks, bad posture, Kelsey thinking that sitting on the ground is a catwalk pose, and massive, wincing amounts of pain. All of which means just one thing – hot, burning amazing. And a zinger or two:

o Anneliese about Kelsey: “Are they going to shuffle around so we don’t have to look at her the whole time?”. ZING!

o Shiny Alex about Kathryn, who walks like she’s chewing a Mintie with her buttocks: “She’s invented a new walk – she’s not doing the pony, she’s doing the camel!” KA-ZING-CHING!

o Shiny Alex calls Amanda “filler”. Anneliese says she’s “not bad enough to comment on, not good enough to notice”. IT BURRRRNS.

o When Kathryn changes into her own shoes, Shiny Alex disapproves, with “You don’t turn up to like, Christian Dior and say 'yeah thanks, but I’ve brought my own shoes with me”. WOULD YOU LIKE TO ZING ON A STAR.


o Anneliese thinks Kelsey looks bored, and says “You’ve got to have animation in your face, otherwise it’s so boring to look at”.

I see what you mean.

• After the modules return to the hotel, the Covert Agents get them to walk up and down the room, giving them a technique critique. Now, I know that watching girls who have just walked for two hours outdoors keep walking indoors may sound interesting, but I’m momentarily distracted by the surname ‘Smith’.

• Back at the house, the girls soak their poor, tired, blistered feet and discuss the pain. On the phone, Jess tells her boyfriend “I swear to god, the blisters on my feet are like little moons. Little moons doing their little... what do moons do?” Her boyfriend helpfully offers: “Orbit”. “Orbit!”, cries Jess. “They’re like moons orbiting my feet!”. If that’s true, I think they may have picked up some aliens along the way, because… um…

That shit ain't right.

• About two seconds later, the Best Editors In The World offer a useful comparison.

Just like a blister.

Challenged
• This week’s challenge happens at B2 studios (named after Josh’s previous career as a fruit), which excites Jess because they have heated toilet seats. Bitch totally has her priorities in order. The girls are met by Monty Noble’s teeth, followed immediately by the rest of Monty Noble, who will be directing a print campaign for Platinum by Kotex, which is a fancy way of saying 'tampons'. Josh says some stuff, but he’s wearing acid-wash, so I can’t hear him over the sound of my eyes screaming. The winner of the challenge will get national exposure, ensuring that they will henceforth be known as ‘That Tampon Girl’.

• Can I just say, right, that I’m not entirely sure that swinging on a vine suspended from the ceiling is a far-enough-away visual in an ad for tampons from the whole tampons-have-strings thing. Aaaand now I’ll stop saying ‘tampon’.

• The set and every single girl looks utterly gorgeous, and despite it being difficult to hang on to the vine and look glamorous, everybody manages to.

o Kelsey rocks it. Kelsey does this with almost irritating frequency.

o Monty tells Kathryn, whose 21st birthday it is today, that it might be a nice birthday present for her if she won the challenge. A national print campaign forever associating her with periods? I think maybe she’d prefer a car.

o The hanging-on strain shows on Jess’s face, Sophie gets a long blonde wig to wear, and Amanda can’t keep the vine steady. She says “I’m trying to like, jerk it around, but it just wasn’t happening for me”.
Okay, so:
a) If I had a dollar for every time I’ve said that, I could buy Kathryn a car; and
b) When you say that, it’s perhaps best not to do this at the same time.

Make no mistake. I'm talking about penis.

• Kelsey wins the challenge. Happy Birthday, Kathryn!


Besties
• When Amanda isn’t being awesome or talking about crapping herself, she’s generally just using the phrase “a big wet fish to the face”. After Joanna was eliminated last week, she left just that – a big wet fish – in Amanda’s bed. SHE’S THE CODFATHER, YOU GUYS. Kelsey dutifully slaps herself in the face with it, partly because I made that joke.

I'm gonna make you a snapper you can't refuse.

• If Sssophie doesn’t become a fashion model, she should still be able to find work as the inspiration for a line of inflatable life-partners. Just saying.

Or maybe one of those amusement park clowns you put ping-pong balls into. In like, a non-Thailand kind of way.

• For Kathryn’s birthday, the modules go out to The Rum Diaries for a drink, dressed as the girls from Robert Palmer’s Addicted To Love video.

Your lights are awwwwn. But you're not hooooome.

Robert Palmer is nowhere to be found, but in my industrious and glamorous research for this excellent, non-lame joke, I did find something spooky.

TELL ME THAT'S NOT KATHRYN.

Phoy-toys
• The morning after their night out, the girls lounge around the Module Mansion, when Kelsey narrates “We were all sitting ‘round, and we heard a bit of a ring!”. Yeah, that happens to me after drinking rum, too. Pardon me. It turns out to be a Sarah Mail with a quote from Coco Chanel in it. Everyone has heard of Coco Chanel, which makes me kind of miss Brittney at this point. I’m sure she would have been excited, because Coco Chanel is totally her favourite breakfast cereal.

• The photo-shoot this week is all about high-end labels on a posh yacht, supervised by Saint Sarah and photographed by Georges Antoni, who maintains this series’ general theme of Photographer Hotness, albeit in miniature form. Our scrags rock up to the wharf ready to wear designs by Armani, Gucci, Hermes, Bally and Burberry, and if any of those designers are watching, they are doing so with dread. Because of this.

• I learned a lot about high-end fashion during this shoot, namely:
o That high-end fashion shoots haven’t changed one bit since I used to flick through my mother’s copies of Vogue;
o That slicked-back buns are not everyone’s friend; and
o That rich women sure do like to wear brown.

• Jess wears Bally and looks amazing during the shoot, but not so much in the final photographs.

• Amanda, despite feeling desperately seasick (and may I thank you for that image of her retching, darling editors), completely rocks her shit backwards sprawled on the deck in a ruched Burberry number and thigh-high boots. Georges asks her to imagine she’s a “snake, like an S-bend”. High-falutin’ fashion shoot? Just pretend you’re a toilet.

• In an eleven-thousand-dollar Hermes frock, Kathryn does her usual trick of being completely and suddenly dribble-worthily stunning as soon as she’s in the lens. I’m going to say it, and I’m going to hate myself for it, but – THE CAMERA LOVES HER.


• Sssophie, she who hates her short hair because she thinks it makes her look masculine, is given an Armani men’s-style suit to wear, because this show can drink tequila out of my belly button any time it likes. She says to camera that she needs to find the balance between strength and being “fenimum”. Truth be told, she completely kicks the shoot’s ever-lovin’ arse, right between the buttocks. A bonus?

I TOTALLY FOUND ROBERT PALMER.

• Kelsey doesn’t do so well in her Gucci dress, having trouble getting the right kind of expression into her face and eyes. Both Sarah and Georges call her ‘blank’, and tell her she looks like she’s in an 80s catalogue. Guys. Seriously. She’s got slicked back hair, big earrings, and a leopard-print dress with big shoulders, buckles and a pencil skirt. She’s an 80s catalogue folded up in the pocket of a Choose Life t-shirt next to a Walkman playing a ‘Best Of The 80s’ cassette.

Eliminationosity
It’s finally arse-kicking time again, and the scrags gather in the Eliminarium, where they’re met by Saint Sarah, who only just makes it in time after distributing Band-Aids to patients in the Blisters That Are Totally Like Orbiting Moons Ward at St Vincent’s. She rattles through the prizes, which I think this year include a USB stick and a handful of grapes, and then introduces the judges. Guest judge Anneliese Seubert is there, as is Alex Perry, dressed in all black. YOU’LL NEVER BE A NINJA, ALEX, YOU’RE TOO SHINY. Chest Smith loses points for not having enough buttons undone on his shirt, but wins some back for clinginess. Charlotte Dawson raises her eyebrows at the girls – no mean feat when you have barely any movement in your face. Her secret lies in clenching her buttocks at just the right moment.

Photos are poked through and the judges deliberate, with a smattering of topsness:

• Shiny Alex invents two new superlatives in the TOUCHDOWN hierarchy, being “Expensive to the extreme”, and “Expensive in a league of its own”. Stay tuned next week, when he comes up with “Expensive times a billion plus one turbo”.

• About Jessica’s yacht shot, Shiny Alex remarks “That’s just not the angle for your head. You look like a little turtle poking out of its shell”. Yeah. Around my house, that’s a euphemism for poo. He adds “And I say that in the cutest way possible”. Yeah. Still about poo.

• When Kathryn’s amazing shot is flashed up on the screen, Charlotte says “Holy shit, I’m gonna swear!”. But she never does.

• The judges ignore the fact that Sophie has worn yet another chain dress (meaning she has two, which is like, three too many), and instead praise her hair. As Dawson says “I wouldn’t usually recommend that a young lady go out and get a shag, but that’s what you’ve done”.

• Of Sophie’s blokey suit shot, Shiny Alex comments that “It’s the most fabulous stiffness that I’ve ever seen in my life”. IT IS THE MOST FABULOUS STIFFNESS THAT HE HAS EVER SEEN IN HIS LIFE. And you know what this is?










 That is me leaving that comment the Fuck. Alone.


The scrags return to the room, and Saint Sarah doles out photos until only Kelsey and Kathryn remain. Yes. The two girls who performed the best in the challenge. The moral to this story is: Don’t do well if you’re swinging on a vine in a long frock advertising feminine hygiene products. Because I know you were about to. TAKE HEED.


Kathryn is told she takes great photographs, but that her walk is fifteen kinds of wrong. Kelsey learns that she is living in a material world, but she’s not an editorial girl.

Three luxury yachts pass, and Kathryn is pushed off the cliff. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KATHRYN!

Bye, pretty girl. Mind your shoe doesn’t fall off on your way ou… oh.




Next week, the modules are off to Japan. Like, in a plane and everything. Fly. High. Kanpai!