Modelland by Tyra Banks
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
01/28/2016 Update:
We rejoin our models in the night, and Zarpessa has a night terror thingie. She’s digging in imaginary dumpsters, and Tookie has the chance, once again, AT THE BEHEST OF A DOCTOR, to reveal anything she knows about Zarpessa.
She almost does, but then she remember’s Ci~L’s words: The girl who is sucking your blood is hurting way more than you.
So she keeps quiet, yet again.
Even though we now suspect Ci~L is a murderous crazy person, her words still hold sway, somehow.
Would it change how we felt about a big speech, like if we found out Abraham Lincoln was tripping balls or something? If the great words come from someone insane, does that matter?
“I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.” That’s a Hitler right there. It sounds almost nice, I think, but then you know who it’s from and you’re like, “Oh, I think he means something way different than what I first guessed.”
Maybe if Abraham Lincoln was tripping balls, they should just put an asterisk next to the speech’s title or something.
Anyway, that boring and pointless Zarpessa interlude leads into our next encounter with Bravo, the romantic partner, and the second major Modelland character who explains to us how it’s difficult to be really beautiful.
Yeah, this is a Modelland thing.
Bravo tells Tookie his story. Well, he pretends it’s not his story, but he says, “Let me tell you a story about a boy named Deco,” and then proceeds to tell us a story about a super-handsome boy who really likes architecture, handsomeness and love of architecture being the two things we know about Bravo at this point. Why he tells the story this way I do not know.
The story is like this:
Once there was a boy named Deco, and he loved architecture a whole lot. And he wanted to learn everything about architecture and to be an architect, but there was a problem. He was just so damn good-looking. Yes, people swooned. Grown women would want to marry him when he was just a young boy. Things were so out of control that a symphony conductor saw Deco in the crowd one day, and his face was so handsome that the conductor decided to create and perform a symphony for Deco’s face. Just his face. And Deco had to stand on stage the whole time, but it was worthwhile because the concert hall was a rad building and he likes architecture.
As Deco grew, so did his interest in architecture, but he found that no one took him seriously. Or they took him kinda seriously, but when they saw his face, they didn’t want to ask about his buildings or his designs, they just swooned.
Meanwhile, two of Deco’s heroes, both architects, attempted to hike the Diabolical Divide in order to get to Modelland and see its unusual architecture. They didn’t make it, but Deco, inspired by his heroes, decided to make his way to Modelland the only way he knew how: By being really hot and going to Bestosterone.
(By the way, not really sure if the Bestosterone guys are selected or just show up or what. Would have been a good time to find out, but here we are)
And that boy, Deco, is the man you see before you today. Bravo. I’m Bravo, but I’m also Deco. Do you understand? Can I make this more obvious?
Okay, okay. I’m sure I said something like this before, but it bears repeating.
It is possible to write a book about how it’s really hard to be attractive. About how being attractive means you don’t get to be taken the same way as the rest of us normals. I think it’s technically, philosophically possible to write something that would make someone sympathetic because they are SO hot. I’m wracking my brains to think of something that’s done this. But…I don’t know.
What I DO know is that Modelland is not the right book to do it.
While I can see, like celebrity, super-hotness would be a burden at times, I think you have to consider that, like celebrity, it’s certainly got some distinct advantages, and it’s hard to convince anyone that good looks are worse than bad ones. I can see how the stares and overtures would be obnoxious, but I’m not really buying this idea that Bravo was too hot to be an architect. “I went into offices, and they thought I was so hot that they just wanted to talk about how hot I was.” Come on. That’s dumb.
Because seriously, when they do that thing on the news where they uglify themselves and see what it’s like, they never do it the other way, get super pretty and then be like, “WOW, it’s SO HARD to be attractive! I’ll never be attractive again. I’m going to go home and buy two onion sacks full of pepperonis, one sack to be applied externally, one internally.”
And it’s kind of a weird idea. Bravo doesn’t get to be an architect the way he would like, and that’s his tragedy. But I think a lot of us don’t get to do what we want, and we can’t blame super hotness for our failures.
Maybe that’s what I’m getting at. No one is going to cry for you when you say you were held back in life by hotness. Everyone is held back by something, whether it be money or geography or missing a leg. We’ve all missed out on jobs because we were underqualified or gave a shitty interview. I think that would be a lot easier to take if I genuinely thought, and it seemed genuinely true, that I couldn’t get gigs because I was so fuckable.
I’m not one to be hungry and think “There are starving kids in Africa.” That’s a weird way to think about stuff. Someone being hungrier doesn’t mean I don’t feel hunger anymore.
But in this case, I’m prepared to declare being too hot a non-problem. It’s like if I declared I’m just too good at giving oral, and it’s a problem because my partners only want to do that with me. Wow. What a terrible life.
So that’s Bravo’s tragic backstory. Too hot to exist in the regular world. Up to this point, the book really got across that he was good-looking, but not that he was so damn brave.
At the story’s climax, Tookie and Bravo almost kiss, again, and Bravo talks about how he sees Tookie’s inner beauty, even though they’ve barely spoken, and then Bravo reveals that there’s a Zip-Zap hidden in the stadium! The Unicas can make an escape! He’s going to show it to her, take her out of Modelland so they can kiss and express their love, but it can’t happen right away because, you know, someone comes in to interrupt everything because (say it with me) FUCK YOU, IT’S MODELLAND.
Oh, also, real quick, Tookie hesitates to kiss Bravo because she “Promised [her]self to Theophilus.” Remember? That dude we haven’t seen since the first like 10 pages of this muhfucker! I completely forgot that guy existed, but I guess Tookie was planning to kiss Theo, bang him, marry him, and then they could have babies together, and together they could concoct the absolute most unholy names a child has ever been burdened with.
We then have another Diabolical Divide interlude, Creamy and Myrracle fight a monster that’s a giant spider with a hundred human legs, the monster is defeated by the power of dance, and then fireballs rocket through a graveyard and incinerate a couple people in the group.
And then it’s back to Modelland.
What? That Diabolical Divide bit seemed rushed? Like there was some stuff missing? Welcome to my world, fuckers.
In Modelland, we find out that Tookie is going to be a contestant in something called ManAttack where models go up against boys from Bestostero for some reason, in some activity, in an egg-shaped stadium. And who is she matched with? Bravo. Doy.