My preferred medium is prejudice

Ah, how I love these biannual opportunities to pass judgment on a bunch of insecure girls based on one picture, their names and loose associations from my childhood. Thank you, Internet, for being my never-ending outlet for catharsis.

My take on each girls in order from fuggest to...non-fuggest is after the jump.

Stacey-Ann

Ugh. Drag queens are still impersonating Patti LaBelle?

Anya

If Ani DiFranco and Enya had a baby, her name would be Anya, because they’re both queer enough to do something like combining their names for the sake of spawn. All of this is to say, whenever I hear Anya’s name from now till eternity, I’m going to imagine period stains on a chair in an office that has “Sail Away” piped in 24/7. It’s abrasively relaxing, which is exactly how I feel about Anya’s face. On one hand, she looks 40. On the other, she’s 19. I’m all confused: she looks like she could be pretty, but there’s something off about her. Maybe it’s the angle. Somehow, I have a feeling that there’s nothing that this show couldn’t give her that a Restalyne treatment wouldn’t take care of 10 times more effectively.

Whitney

Not falling for it this time. The Large Marges in this world are for tokenism only. We don’t get to see their eyes pop out or nothin’. It sucks, but hey, that’s life.

Katarzyna

The nose bugs. The opportunity to coin the phrase “Katarzyna arms” does not.

Aimee

You know what I see when I look at Aimee? Nothing! I have retinitis pigmentosa by proxy/recollection. Homegirl reminds me of Cycle 3’s Amanda with a mustache. Something tells me that this one’s hair down there is problematic. I can’t wait to see what shade of blonde Tyra will condemn her hair with: no-no snow or vitamin piss.

Atalya

She has the eerily dignified look of a child who a) is possessed by/actually is Satan or b) really wants a cookie but is totally over begging. Either way, I think Atalya is coming for me, waiting for a chance to peg me with her bean-bag breasts.

Marvita

She’s way too dudeish for me, which, to say the least, feels weird to type. On the up side, if they give her the makeover that I think they’re going to (i.e. shave it bald!), she’s going to have a Skunk Anansie thing going on, which will make her infinitely more endearing to me. Good old cuddly Skunk Anansie!

Lauren

I forgive that bullet Lauren’s wearing as a charm (to complete the douchiness, all she needs is a license plate that reads “SO COOL”), simply because there aren’t enough Geena Davises in the world. I’m happy that pop culture has given birth to another. I worry about being blinded when the flash reflects off of her pastiness, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Claire

Just because your name is Claire, it doesn’t mean you have to dress like you're the Claire of Claire’s Boutique. I now understand leg warmers’ practical use: they offset everything else so that even a possible harelip plays second fiddle to their atrociousness. This girl is, like, just getting into unicorns, for real. (In truth, cheesy as she obviously is, I actually think she may be ridiculously beautiful and/or ugly in person but beautiful in pictures, but god, she looks like Norelle’s afterbirth in this picture. Still, I'm interested.)

Kimberly

Obviously the Gemma Ward of the group. I like how her hypercuteness spills over into freakishness, but I do not like how her face becomes progressively elderly if you start with the fetal forehead and work your way down. By the time you get to her chin, it’s like, “Celine Dion, is that you?” That is to say: Kimberly has old-lady mouth. I also think that, like my constant point of reference Anna Nicole Smith’s cousin Shelly, she might be inbred. But I’m OK with that as long as she’s OK with that.

Dominique

This looks like a composite of Cycle 5’s Coryn, Stacey Dash and a heaping portion of estrogen. Simply put: stunning. But that look she’s giving me creeps me out: I feel like her eyes are boring into my sperm count. If I’m six years older than her, how is it that I feel that she’s a cougar? If I ever encountered, Dominique, I’d hit two sticks together to fend her off. I know that’s not real cougar repellent, but she’s a model: I have confidence that she’d fall for it.

Amis

How much you wanna bet her parents are English professors? That combined with her jawline gives me a massive boner. Or maybe it's just that if you made her hair short, she'd totally look like a Bel Ami twink. She has versatility written on her body...in more ways than one!

Allison

Finally we get to see what Jaslene would look like if she were a woman born as woman. Yay! My instinct is to jizz all over this one, as from plentiful-but-tamed eyebrow to blowjobby mouth, she is the picture of what I think of as beautiful in a woman. On closer inspection, her eyes might not be lined up properly and the ¾ view is throwing me off: her face looks like it ends at a reasonable place from this angle, but she could end up looking like Mayor McCheese when she faces us head-on. I’m staying tuned...and so is my appetite!

Fatima

I hate to be predictable (really!), but this one is clearly the keeper. Chop of one side of that hair and you’ve got an ’87 special. I wanna see her in dookie chains and baggy leather, like, now. She's got flawless bone structure and she's weird-looking enough that she’s destined to provoke, if not proclamations from the panel of “Exotic!” then at least discussions on exoticizing. I try to stay as virginal as I can about these girls before I do these pre-cycle write-ups, but a reader named Nina sent me scans of a two-page Us Weekly spread that profiles some of the girls. She mentioned Fatima’s “horrific past” in the email, so I scanned the piece for her write-up and whoa: she’s been circumcised! Just when you think ANTM has run the gamut of female affliction, genital mutilation comes along. At the very least, this means that I should probably reread Possessing the Secret of Joy, which is my second favorite Alice Walker book and not at all because of the hot-button issue, as it were. Gotta get to referencing!

But really, knowing what we know: how can Fatima not win this thing?

Also, like, at least half of these girls are actually pretty. WTF? That's this cycle's twist, then?

Comments

[Leanne]

I live for this shit, I can't help it.

[Queenie]

So Fatima is going to be this cycle's "Girl With A Cause That Everyone Will Be Pulling For", and Marvita will be the cycle's Jaslene Second Time Arounder. Yay!

[BlackRaspberry]

I feel like Stacey-Ann could be Danielle's (from a few cycles ago) older sister. Or maybe brother.

maybe this cycle's twist is that it doesn't suck

[katy]

i can't freakin' wait for this cycle.

dominique is pretty--how very refreshing in a weird, unpredictable kind of way.

and of course the circumcision issue will be a focal point of the cycle; but we all know that ty ty is a ty-rant, and nobody is safe from her verbal bitch slaps.

[Solstice]

Too funny...great job, Rich
I've been waiting all week for this.
Fatima clearly looks most like a winner but ummmm....
Does the new season usually start this soon after the old one?
I mean it was just last month that Shaleshia won.

[Colleen]

Anya reminds me of Anne from Cycle 3. As for Fatima, I have a feelnig she's going to be the one the other girls accuse of having an eating disorder.

[doughgirl]

Banging sticks together to fight of cougars? Is that a Parent Trap reference? The Lohan version?!?

[Leanne]

Doughgirl, I believe it is. That is how magical Rich is :-)

I wonder if the vag arms have gotten more pronounced......

[Solstice]

And why do they ALL (and I mean ALL) look like girls from previous seasons???

[Stephanie]

Does Claire remind anyone else of Bebe Neuwirth? Now THAT's hot.

[bigpikchur.blogspot.com]

Something is "amiss" about Amis. Dude looks like a lady in those shots, and I predict a lot of talk on how she can keep her jawline from looking masculine.
Jules
House of Jules

[liking It!]

Fatima, Allison and Kimberly talk about some Hot Mama's!

Saliesha is still #1, love her!

[Eener]

I must say, your assessments are spot on! hahaha

Kimberly really scares me though. I think it's her 11-year-old face. F-R-E-A-K-Y. Can Tyra fix that?

[Paddy]

"Norelle's afterbirth" - Rich, marry me now.

[Mac]

Why is Slutty cycle 4 Brittany in one of the adverts on the right of the screen? She needs to accept that she's old news. Look at all our lovely new bitches. Amis looks like a French exchange student and that's okay by me.

[duane]

I love the "hitting two sticks together" remark. You are a genius Rich.

[Brandy]

Fatima has a very Iman look to her.

I'm pretty sure Stacey Ann won this a couple cycles back as Danielle.

Katarzyna and Anya just have weird noses, maybe it's the angle but Anya's nose looks like it's in the wrong place for the angle her head is at.

[Liz K]

I bet Fatima's hacked off ladybits makes CoverGirl of the week. You know Tyra would give it a weave if she could.

[always answer b]

I love slutty Cycle 4 Brittany! Glad to see she's getting "work" [gigglesnort]

[Linda]

Ok fine. I accept that they brought Jaslene back after she didn't make the cut, and then she went on to win. Yay second chances or whatever. But this Marvita chick is really making me question the politics behind the casting. Is there really not a large enough pool of non-alien-looking girls in the United States that we need to recycle girls? And it's obvious they're not even adhering to the whole "non-alien-looking" thing. I see more interesting-looking, attractive women in New York every day (and that's just among the homeless ones). If she didn't make the cut the first time, the other girls were deemed better. Logically (or my version of logic), keeping her on this time implies that the girls aren't as good as the previous season. I've confused myself...

Sorry for the unimportant rant. I think I still may be annoyed about the use of Meghan on Rock of Love. I mean, she WON another reality show. It's not even like she was flying under the radar on her last show. At least let's pretend that all of these reality show contestants aren't just wannabe actors looking for a break, since that always seems to be the offense that gets them kicked off.

[Brook]

Mac, if she swiped Claire's outfit, she'd be straight out of 'Better Off Dead.'

[mariaaaaa]

"At the very least, this means that I should probably reread Possessing the Secret of Joy, which is my second favorite Alice Walker book and not at all because of the hot-button issue, as it were. Gotta get to referencing!"

Okay why did this sentence make me think of Sassafrass "Sassy" Cypress Indigo? FOR THE SECOND TIME THIS WEEK? Sassy's magical tarantulaism is haunting me. Much like the rooster in Possessing the Secret of Joy??? Something synchronicycal is a-brewin'!

[Lucky]

I'm just waiting til the show debuts so I can figure out how some of these names are pronounced.

[swarley]

Stacey-Ann looks like a muppet. Specifically, this one: http://www.fxdeco.com/masque/muppet.jpg