America's Next Top Model: Elyse's Dukakis Moment

For a while, it was almost worth tuning into "America's Next Top Model" just to hate Elyse Sewell.

Elyse seemed like the worst hipster poseur imaginable. She's dating someone from The Shins. She effortlessly navigated the streets of Paris with competent French while other contestants were caught on camera gesturing ineffectually or, even worse, engaging in the "speaking loud, slow English to foreigners" conversational gambit that makes Americans so endearing. She attacked her competitors for their gaucheness — Giselle was "wasteful, bitchy, stupid, worthless," while even her closest ally (and the eventual winner) Adrianne annoyed her with incessant quoting of Jay and Silent Bob. (She later regretted the comments.)

Worst of all, she had the nerve to call herself a nerd. Sure, she has two undergrad degrees and says she's planning on med school, but what kind of nerd has a rocker boyfriend and appears on a reality-show modeling contest? And since when is medicine a particularly nerdy profession anyway?

Elyse was portrayed as a quirky, unconventional anti-model, as if 5'10" gamines with artistically short haircuts have been historically underrepresented in the world of fashion. The announcer described her as feeling "out of place." Much was made of the fact that she'd just tried out for the show on a lark.

Throughout most of the contest, Elyse was just outré enough to attract interest without subverting any of the bylaws of the carefully constructed world that "Top Model" had created for its aspiring mannequins. She engaged in playful faux-lesbian frolicking with Adrianne for the cameras. She participated enthusiastically in the almost-nude photo shoot that her competitors Shannon and Robin walked away from for religious reasons. Elyse may list Bust as one of her favorite magazines, but she was more than happy to be evaluated on her ladylike behavior by a group of men described as "French aristocrats."

And all of it seemed to be working out perfectly, until the finale. First, she appeared to doze off during a pompous, long-winded lecture on interview etiquette. But the main act of self-sabotage occurred when the three remaining models walked into the room of judges and fielded a few questions before one of the three would be eliminated.

Tyra Banks, the show's host, showed Elyse a few clips of herself when she first entered the competition. Beauty, Elyse said on the recording, was purely physical. Models simply had to look pretty. Tyra asked her if her experiences on "Top Model" had caused her to reassess any of her ideas.

Elyse's response should, of course, have begun with an acknowledgment that modeling is intense work. It calls for brains and stamina and heart. She'd waltzed in there underestimating the whole thing in her condescension, only to find that being a top model is a whole lot more than looking cute in front of a camera.

Instead, she embarked on a disastrous explanation of how estrogen exposure early in life results in what we consider to be visually pleasing facial features.

Befuddled looks. Whooshing "over my head" motions. And Elyse's swift elimination from the contest.

It was a television meltdown of Michael Dukakis proportions. Like the infamous Bernard Shaw question about Kitty Dukakis' hypothetical murder, this one had an obvious audience-pleasing answer. And, like Dukakis, Elyse gave the answer that was cold, clinical and honest.

"Top Model" purported to debunk some of the myths about modeling. The industry, Tyra said predictably and often, isn't about "glitz and glamour" — it's real work. But that it might have a lot to do with a chemical that science already knows a great deal about? That's a little bit too much myth-shattering. You might as well tell Star Wars fans that the Force is something you can measure with a blood test. Naming Jonas Salk as your hero, as Elyse did, is appealingly novel; writing off decades of fashion dogma as a quantifiable consequence of biology is an affront. The judges seemed genuinely intrigued by the effect of estrogen exposure on their profession, coming out with a barrage of questions, but in the end, Elyse's strategy, unsurprisingly, didn't pay off. On her exit, she was called "arrogant" — this on a show where contestants who failed to fall into line were told to work "in a car factory or a bakery," "at Avis" or "at Burger King."

So forget the indie-rock boyfriend, the waifish figure. Elyse is the real thing. A double major may not cut it, but alienating a whole table of cool kids by failing to pick up on nonverbal cues and spouting scientific results is more than enough to get you into the nerd club.

— Julia Lipman (julia@flakmag.com)