Modelland by Tyra Banks
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
01/21/2016 Update:
And now, our next chapter, The Porcelain Pact.
Finally, a frank discussion of eating disorders as only Modelland can handle them.
We find Dylan hurling in the bathroom. She’s got her hair dipped in the toilet, puke on her clothes. She’s moaning. And we find out that she has an eating disorder, which had been under control for three years, but her close contact with Zarpessa and Ci~L brought it roaring back. With a vengeance. REvengeance!
Before we go any further, I don’t think eating disorders are hilarious. But I do think that the topic is pretty poorly handled here, and that’s what I’ll be mocking.
Dylan, for someone familiar with the binge and purge, is not great a puking. I have an acquaintance, let’s call him, who managed to puke more neatly while he was completely wasted and dressed in half a Santa suit. Get it together.
But no time for critiques, it’s time to solve eating disorders. The girls all crowd around Dylan and reveal their vulnerabilities, showing that none of them are perfect.
Piper: Hates her mom for marrying her dad because her dad is albino. “If she had just picked someone normal, I might not be this way.” Sure. That’s how genetics work.
Piper passes around a picture where she’s got on a wig and makeup. Not blackface, exactly. Tan face? I would accuse this of being racist, but it’s really only as racist as the over-tanned appearance of every person from the Jersey Shore.
Shiraz: I’m really small, and then my mother died, and my father subsequently died of a broken heart, which means my father only loved my mother, not me. Shiraz then pulls out a picture of her and her father with a hole poked through the picture where here father’s face would be. Which is a move I never understood. If you have a picture with your ex and then you hate your ex, throw that shit away! Don’t cut him out or stab his eyes out with a pencil. That’s some Girl, Interrupted shit. Just throw it away and take a new picture. Same goes for dad. If you ever have the impulse to mutilate a photo, go ahead and just place it in the trash.
Tookie: Tookie reads a letter from her T-Mail Jail, which is a letter about how much she hates herself. “Why do you rise each day? What is the point of you even existing? Of breathing this earth’s precious air, which rots each time you exhale?…I hope you sleep tonight and don’t wake up. Oh, how beautiful the world will be tomorrow, with you dead. Oh, I can’t wait…Please hurry up and end it. Just go…for all of us.”
What. The. Fuck. A murder/suicide note. Not even of the “What’s the point?” variety, but of the “You have no point” flavor.
Okay, okay, that’s pretty dark, but let’s cut back to Dylan’s reaction:
“I feel so guilty!…I’ve had issues with my body my entire life, but I never, EVER wanted to be dead.”
Aaaaand problem solved!
It turns out that all you need to do for a friend with an eating disorder is to tell her something EVEN MORE FUCKED UP that you feel, and then she’ll just be like, “Christ, I thought I had it bad, but you’re really messed up. I’ll stop hurling and let’s be friends.”
Cool.
If there’s anyone out there with an eating disorder, allow me to cure you.
I used to have some fear on airplanes, and then it just went away, and when I tried to figure out why, I figured out it’s because I used to care whether or not I died, and now I kind of don’t. In fact, if the plane crashes, I mostly just want the plane to crash early rather than spending the last 3 hours of my life bored and on an airplane.
You’re welcome.
The group then decides they need to come up with a name for their friendship circle. I wish I’d been included on the conversation, and through the magic of review, I can be!
“The Vulnerable Four? Or maybe the V4?”
No, that sounds like a group of 4 vaginas. Or a vegetable drink that’s half as fortified as its competitor.
“How ’bout Krapper Sisters?”
Already taken by an Amy Poehler/Tina Fey spec script.
“What about the UL’s?”
Stands for Unfortunate-Lookings. I guess it saves the time for other people who want to mock you.
“We can take the power back. Have it mean something else. Like…Unique-Lookings.”
And we’re clearly seeing how Tyra came up with all this crazy bullshit, on the page. Just start with a terrible idea, pop it in your mouth, roll it around for a while, and out will emerge a pearl. Or whatever you put in your mouth before, now coated in saliva.
“I kinda like it…but I hate that U and L are a big part of U-G-L-Y.”
A valid and good point. Words ARE made up of letters that are in other words. I hate that my name, Pete, has the letter P in it, as does priapism, which is a boner that won’t go away.
“What about…the Unicas?”
Pronounced like you-knee-cuhs.
Agreement all around. What a lovely name. What a good and important thing to do, name a friend group with a dumb name that doesn’t mean ANYTHING.
There we go.
I know we addressed and fixed eating disorders here, but it’s come to my attention that there are other problems in the world. So allow me to use the Modelland cure to fix everything else. I’ll just list the problem so you can scroll and find yours, and then tell you something bad, which should fix everything.
Depression:
Last night I saw a video on Youtube that had dead kittens in it. I clicked on it, and I don’t know why, and then I regretted it and it was horrible.
Obesity:
I’ll eat a fucking Kit Kat by just biting straight into it, and my bite will cross over into multiple bars.
Cancer:
I use Qtips in my ears even though I know you’re not supposed to, but it’s like, what the fuck, why do they even sell them if it’s so bad for you, you know?
ALS:
It takes me a SUPER long time to text my mom back.