America's Most Smartest Model
Context: America’s Most Smartest Model is an elimination show with male and female models competing for a V05 commercial spot, $100,000.00 and the ridiculous title of “America’s most smartest model.” This show is aired on Vh1 on Sunday nights at nine pm. Because the contestants are both very attractive male and female models it seems that the show is geared toward all genders and judging by the commercials, individuals ranging from teenagers to early middle age. Most of the commercials were either for the show’s sponsor: V05 styling products or for other Vh1 reality shows such as I Love New York 2. Interestingly the advertisements were either geared strongly toward the female consumer with moms in cleaning product ads and young female models displaying “V05 perfect hair” or strongly toward a male target audience with hypermasculinized commercials for Burger King and Guitar Hero.
Content: In the episode that I watched the contestants first competed in a “survival of the fittest” challenge in which they were divided into teams and the males ran on a treadmill while another contestant who was female answered trivia questions. The difficulty setting of the treadmills was set depending on how many answers the female contestants answered correctly and then the men had to compete by running with whoever ran the longest winning the challenge. Next in the episode the models are shown in their house forming alliances against each other, gossiping and calling one another names in video diaries. The “final challenge” of the episode was a runway challenge in which the losing term had to run an obstacle course in between costume changes. The two judges of the show are Ben Stein who is constructed as the “smart judge” because he uses big words and judges the trivia competition and Mary Alice Stephenson who is the “model” or beauty judge because she judges and comments on the runway competition. This was the first episode that I watched of the show, and was late in the season, I watched this episode with my friends who have been following the show and informed me that the reason why there are only 2 women to the 4 guys left on the show is because all the other female contestants were eliminated for not being “smart” enough.
Form: The opening credits of the show feature male and female stick figures dancing about the screen to music. Interspersed with these figures are images of equations and chemistry formulas which are also displayed in the background of every model’s video diary seeming to symbolize that the show is designed to test contestant’s intelligence although, beside from a series of 5 trivia questions the show has nothing to do with the model’s intellectual abilities. Throughout the episode the camera is constantly objectifying contestants by zooming in on specific body parts (i.e., the men’s muscles and women’s breasts and legs). This objectification is made even more blatant when the guest “fashion judge” is introduced and the camera shows a still frame of his face with his name and title underneath and framed pictures of female body parts behind his head such as, breasts with the head cropped out. The show employs sound effects to make spectacles out of the female models during the runway challenge by playing horse sound effects when one model fumbles with her shoes as she walks the runway.
Feminist Analysis: This competition is supposedly based on intelligence in “street” and “book” smarts as well as, of course how attractive the models are and how talented they are at modeling. However, although the premise of the show would have one believe that it is concerned with the models’ intelligence, like many reality television shows, after watching only one episode it becomes quite clear that the program is really about reinforcing stereotypical , heteronormative gender beaneries. Even the sequences that purport to be concerned with the models’ intelligence levels simply serve to humiliate them for the audiences’ viewing pleasure by making them into the unintelligent, public spectacles so typical of reality television.
One of the most disturbing aspects of this show and perhaps of the modeling world in general, is the different representations of the idealized male and female bodies. Specifically, male bodies (except for Ben Stein’s) are all excessively toned and muscular whereas in contrast the female models are emaciated and anything but physically strong. This stereotypical gender binary of strong male versus weak female is made abundantly clear in the “rapid fire” challenge, wherein the female models answer the trivia questions while the male models perform the only physical aspect of the challenge and their female “teammates” merely stand at their sides with water bottles. The message that this challenge sends to young women is clear and disturbingly reminiscent of the Victorian age: men do physical work while women are simply beautiful helpers and are too frail to engage in the rigorous physical activity that men can.
Although the show appears to be coed, it consistently privileges the male contestants over the female contestants in a manner that “replicates the familiar patriarchal society and presents the female body for voyeuristic gaze” (Moorti, & Ross, 2004), which is accomplished in several ways. Specifically, the dramatic underrepresentation of men to women on the show (5 men to 3 women including the judges) serves to maintain the representation perpetuated by larger patriarchal society of women as an inferior minority. Furthermore, according to my friends who have been following the show the women who were eliminated early on in the season were typecast as extremely ditzy and unintelligent and relentlessly made fun of by the judges. Such an elimination and casting strategy seems to echo the argument presented by Bertolini and Graham (2004) that Joe Millionaire “glamorizes traditional notions of appropriate demeanors for women and normalizes ideas about roles acceptable for women to assume and the goals that women should aspire to.” Such “heterogendered divisions” are also maintained by the seemingly deliberate choice of the female judge of beauty and the male judge of intelligence.
Perhaps an even clearer device employed by the show that demonstrates the strongly patriarchal, heteronormative and heterogendered message of the show is the dialogue used by both the models and the judges. Specifically, while the male models are competing they use extremely hypermasculinized terms to describe themselves, for example phrases such as “I am the God of this competition” and “This is war” are frequently employed by the male models but never by the two women on the show. In contrast, the female contestants talk far less than the males and when they do, one displays personal insecurities about her performance and the other gossips and forms alliances. Perhaps even more disturbing is the different dialogue used by the two judges. Specifically, the male judge is clearly the “intelligent one” as he is always using carefully constructed sentences with large words whereas the female judge has far fewer lines and uses grammatically incorrect language such as “I’m not sure if you have the smartness or the modelness enough to win this thing.” Yikes! The message this sends is awful: women are dumb but beautiful and men are strong and/or smart.
In conclusion, I feel deeply disturbed and saddened from watching only one hour of “America’s Most Smartest Model” because the message that it sends so blatantly reaffirms stereotyped gender beaneries in which women are skinny, ditzy, dumb and conniving and men are strong, powerful and smart.