America's Next Top Model Cycle 12 Recap: Seriously, did the producers tell her to do that?

Open letter to Celia:

Alright, so let me preface this by saying that I did not see the end of last night’s episode. I tried to watch it online this morning, but could only find the first part of the show. So I didn’t get to see your spectacular fuck up that everyone else is talking about today. Luckily, there are plenty of quotes, pictures, and commentary available at my fingertips, so I was able to piece it together pretty well.

The episode started well for you. First you were super cute when you opened the Tyra mail and said “it rhymes!” Adorable and condescending. Love it. You survived a pointless visit by Toccara, some ex-contestant who the producers brought in only to prove that their little competition is legit, and listened to her babble about getting to know you all within the space of two minutes. She was annoying, Aminat’s lisp was annoying, and the whole thing was head bashing. But you withstood it, with no audible complaints. I credit your age and maturity for this.

You braved the idiocy of Benny Ninja, a man that makes me cringe with memories of a certain club in Akron where the meth flowed like water and the conversation routinely included discussions of “bitches” and “that slut whore”, while dressed in day-glo feather boas. He brought in his coke connection, who pretended to be a DJ and “dropped some tracks”. This euro-Hall and Oates team made you all dance to crap they would never ever play in real life (who poses to country music?), and laughed snarkily into their red bull and vodkas. But while SOME people flopped around like dead birds (SONDRA), you vogued like your desperate Kentucky soul, the very honor of the Confederacy, depended on it.

Most impressive was the way you stood the “heat” of a thousand congregated gay men in glitter staring you down at the Mansion. It’s obvious you have an inner drag queen, unlike Allison who was leaking confidence like the sawdust in her ragdoll limbs. You even out-dragged Natalie, who’s had experience with posing (i.e. sleeping with agents), but lacked your arrow shooting, Annie Lennox skills.

When I ran out of YouTube videos to watch, I was confident you had this in the bag. And yes, I’ll admit, I’ve called you mean things in the past, like flat iron face, and Neanderthal. But I knew from the moment I saw your squished up brow, you were going to do well in this thing. Not win it, of course, because Cover Girl doesn’t pick weird looking people, but I expected you to make the final four.

I don’t know if it was the humiliation of being made to dress up like a mother vampire with her Transylvanian brood, or maybe your system is in withdrawal from the fumes of the Post It Note factory where you grew up, but something snapped. I know it’s hard, being the oldest in a village of babies. People like Talia ARE horribly annoying (“I wanna go, it’s too hard! Wait, I wanna stay, this is my dream!), but you are expected to be the sane, professional voice of reason in the house.

You may have dreaming about this since you were fourteen, stripping to your undies while your 30 yr old boyfriend took pictures and told you how very unique looking you were. You may feel entitled to this experience, given how many Sears’s auditions you’ve lost. But remember, when you’re old, nobody gives you the excuse of youth. At 25, you’ve gone past the point of “she’ll learn” and “she’s new and this is hard.” You are used goods. You have to be twice as good and twice as nice in order to compete with the dewey 18 yr olds. You're right, it's not fair, but there it is.

If the judges allow you another chance, it’s going to be a short one. So don’t pull any prima donna shit like this again okay? When a girl says she wants to go home, the proper response from now on is to shut the fuck up and let her send herself home. They always do.

If you go home next episode, like we all suspect will happen, please try to remember that your co-workers at the Post It factory don’t want to hear you bitching about your fifteen minutes of fame for the next ten years. It’s just not classy.

Oh, and on the off chance the producers actually paid you to do this, because Sondra was creating disappointingly little tension in the house and they knew Talia was the new cash cow, well I hope you got paid. And thank god Kortnie's gone, right? She reminded me of a member of Heart.