Modelland by Tyra Banks
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
01/14/2016 Update:
Apparently we have an Australian instructor in Modelland.
Excuse me, not Australian. She’s from a land called Didgeridoo. Which sounds exactly like Australia, has koalas, and kangaroos, although they’re tiny and rat-like and can be eaten alive, which happens twice in this chapter.
This Aussie also has a special power, which is that she’s a tongue reader. This is not a make-out thing, which is not surprising because for being about modeling, this is THE MOST sexless book I’ve ever read, and that includes Cormac McCarthy joints that seem to be primarily about waiting for someone to have a hole blown in his head.
No, tongue reading is the ability to look at someone’s tongue and determine their favorite food. Which is kind of a worthless superpower because
A) You have to grab someone’s tongue, and
B) You could just ask.
The girls all go to the Aussie’s class, or maybe it’s a cafeteria. It’s hard to tell what’s going on, honestly, but after not eating for a day, they’re all hoisted up in harnesses, put in front of cauldrons full of their favorite foods, and suspended there for a while before being released to eat.
Tookie’s favorite food is whipped cream. So that’s what she eats a shitload of, including many varieties of whipped cream that don’t exist.
Zarpessa, the secret dumpster diver, is determined to have weird mixtures of old, tossed-out food as her favorites, which suggests that she is a dumpster diver who LIKES dumpster-dived food, not that she eats it as a matter of necessity. I suppose there’s possibly someone out there who prefers half-eaten meals from a dumpster. Actually, no. I don’t think so. I can’t believe that there’s anyone who, on a pure taste level, prefers thrown-out food to its not-thrown-out version. That’s fucking stupid. Tyra, that’s dumb.
The girls’ cauldrons then all transform into elevators, the girls step inside, and the elevators go sideways into another room. Why they needed elevators to go sideways, and why they needed elevators at all if they could just walk around is another Modelland mystery. In fact, I bet whoever built this fucking place had a LOT of questions. “You mean you want me to build food cauldrons, which aren’t a thing, and harnesses that allow girls to be hoisted into them, which is not a way anyone eats, and then you want the cauldrons to transformerize into elevators that move sideways rather than up? Would you be willing to settle for a table, some plates, and a hallway? Because boy would that be a lot easier.”
The non-elevator elevators drop the girls in a shower room where all the showerheads shoot out desserts. Chocolate, caramel. One is jammed because it’s full of pralines.
“Again, I got my plumber in here, and he says that there’s a lot you might not know about fluid dynamics, but you just can’t really make a praline shower. Nor would you want to. And if you did, you’d definitely have to make a shower head with big enough holes for the pralines to fall through. I’m not trying to tell you your business. I’m just wanting to make sure you know what I’m about to do in here.”
And once again, a bunch of models covered in chocolate sauce, whipped cream, and caramel, and not an ounce of anything sexy happens. Not even the slightest suggestion.
Oh, and Tookie drops a whipped cream can, and do you remember the corsage thing she made out of her pin to disguise it? That whole thing? Well, apparently that has somehow become a magic food receptacle. It somehow hides the whipped cream can inside of it, even though the object itself is smaller than the can. I don’t get it at all. The pin swallows the can, Tookie reaches into the center, and there’s a whipped cream can. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, I don’t know. I don’t fucking know. I’m getting so fatigued by things that don’t make any sense, but here you go. Sometimes you drop a thing and it falls into a magic thing that you made yourself without knowing it. We’ve all been there.
The girls finish eating, and then the Aussie labels them as one of three things: Jammers, Chowers, and Poachers. These are people who eat too much, too little, or just right. And the significance here seems to be that the Aussie tells those who starve themselves that when they’re ready for help, they should come to her. Which makes total sense. Come to me with your eating disorder. I harnessed you up and dropped you in a vat of bacon grease. I definitely have a healthy relationship with food.
And again, for no reason, the Aussie uses a heretofore unheard of magic power to renew the girls’ appetite, which she follows with this blessing: “You’re now so hungry, you could eat the ass out of a low-flying duck!”
See? You ask for sexual content, and this thing goes from zero to bestiality in one chapter.