For those of you who, unlike me, do not use Cosmopolitan, Us Weekly and Entertainment Weekly as your semi-Bibles or as your modified Britannicas, I have a major piece of news to share with you: The next cycle of “America’s Next Top Model” is only for — wait a second, hold your breath — short people. And by short, I mean Tyra’s standard of short, which is under 5 feet 7 inches.
I have been met with a ton of cracks about this, as I am only 4 feet 11 inches. So to anyone who has asked, I will not apply because I fear that they will find out that despite my 20 years, I have ongoing contracts with Limited Too and GapKids (I jest). But with the respective chaos stemming from this notion of finally letting short people apply — or really, just average, because if anyone who is super petite applied, I’m sure they would be cut, and the light bulb atop Tyra’s head would pop on for “America’s Next Top Midget” — I have found myself asking this question: Why does being gorgeous have to have a height limit — or better yet, a size?
Miss Tyra never fails to remind us that she is a curvaceous woman with a “fat ass.” (She said it, not me — remember when she infamously told America to kiss it?) Of course, by any normal human being’s standards, she is far from fat, and every time she reminds us how fat she is, another girl puts away the Ben and Jerry’s she had been dreaming of all day. If Tyra has made the valiant effort to remind us that beauty doesn’t have a size by letting plus-size models onto previous cycles (and even letting them win!) and by having the media kiss her “fat” ass, why is she all of a sudden saying that there was a minimum height limit — and that limit was 5 feet 8 inches — and now that limit is being broken because she’s so groundbreaking? Don’t get me wrong, she is a groundbreaking woman; anyone who can dream up a show like “Top Model” has a lot going for her, and I do confess that in middle school I watched that Disney movie “Life-Size” with her and Lindsay Lohan on instant replay. I also knew the song. If you find me, I’ll sing it for you. But I don’t need to feed Tyra Banks’ ego anymore, because as we all know, every Tuesday and Friday she reads Pipe Dream.
I’m sure a handful of us would watch “America’s Next Top Midget,” “America’s Next Top Giant,” “America’s Next Top Transsexual” and “America’s Next Top [ insert genetic variation here].” I know that I can’t wait for the cycle about cyclopes. But this whole concept of “short people finally being beautiful” isn’t so much about the petite blossoming into modelhood; it’s about normal, beautiful people finally getting their shots in front of the camera, because beauty doesn’t have a height limit. What it does have, however, is the power to make the media and the fashion industry go into premature labor. Allowing normally-sized people onto a television show about being beautiful shouldn’t be on par with the Mayans’ prediction of the apocalypse. Allowing cyclopes on television, however, should be on par with that, because I’ve never met a real one. Only a fake one.
My ninth grade Spanish teacher scared the crap out of me when he told us about the Mayans’ predictions. But maybe he was right. Maybe normal people being embraced by Tyra Banks does symbolize the end of the world as we know it (cue R.E.M. song). After all, there was a stampede documented at the auditions. But I don’t think the earth began to shake at the sound of normal people’s stilettos rushing across the ground. If anything, it was a 2.8 on the Richter scale. It’s going to take something a lot bigger than that to really shake up the planet. And that’s why I’m proposing “America’s Next Top Giant Obese Cyclops Transvestite” for national television.