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May 19, 2005
A Lesson From America's Next Top Model
Well, Naima won America’s Next Top Model Wednesday night. Now that I’ve seen the finale, I can cancel my satellite TV subscription for the summer. Is there really anything else worth watching?
It seems to me that there’s a lot we can learn from ANTM. For one thing, we learn that the underdog wins. The last two cycles, it has been the “tough girl” that’s won over the more mainstream candidate (Naima over the blond “girl next door” and Eva over the college-educated dancer; note that “mainstream” is a relative term in the world of modeling). The judges, especially Tyra Banks, like seeing a candidate “evolve” from rough beginnings, self-doubt and bitter toughness into a confident superstar. There’s a meta-narrative going on that’s as much about self-acceptance as it is about winning. There’s a lot of “lesson learning,” in terms of the school of hard knocks, from week to week.
In fact, it’s beginning to seem that candidates have to have had a really rough life in order to succeed on ANTM. They have to have hated themselves or been raised in poverty or have had a bad family situation. They have to overcome. That’s good, that the judges reward overcoming, but it raises a few questions. In particular, what happens to the “good girl” that does consistently well and has less to overcome?
Wednesday night, the judges compared the two finalists,’ Naima’s and Kahlen’s, portfolios. Kahlen’s pictures were consistently rated better. From the beginning, she took outstanding pictures and she kept it up from week to week. She also did well in the final competition (the “final exam,” Tyra called it). The only criticism was that she might have held her neck a bit stiffly on the runway.
Naima, on the other hand, had a “solid” but not stellar portfolio. Some pictures were good, some not so great. Yet the judges, Tyra in particular, felt that she “rocked” on her final exam, both the fashion show and the commercial that all three finalists shot together.
“What do we do?” Tyra asked on Wednesday. Do we choose the candidate that’s had the consistently good performance, or the one that’s had the solid performance but skyrocketed on the finals?
I recall having a similar dilemma when I taught undergraduates. There were the students that plodded along, doing consistently well all the time, and then there were the students that either dramatically improved at the end of the semester or that showed occasional flashes of brilliance throughout an otherwise unexceptional performance. How do you grade such students? Do you reward improvement? If you do, you’re going to have to either fudge the grading scale or give a lot more weight to later assignments. If you didn’t decide to give more weight to later assignments *before* the semester begins, you’re screwed, because you’ve already announced the grading scale and you have to stick to it—or secretly fudge it.
That’s essentially what Tyra and the judges did Wednesday evening. They fudged the grading scale. They rewarded the student who came up from behind, even though they made a show of evaluating the entire “semester’s” work. Also note that both Naima and last cycle’s winner, Eva, are more exotic looking than most of the candidates. They stand out without having to do a single thing.
As a professor, I, too, always wanted to reward the Naimas of the world, and I agonized over trying to figure out how to make their final grade reflect their improvement, their flashes of chaotic brilliance.
But where does that leave Kahlen? Where does it leave the good girl that always does well? I myself sometimes had trouble with students like her. Indeed, the problem with rewarding consistent performers is that you sometimes feel as though they aren’t trying very hard. You miss the flashes of brilliance that come out of nowhere.
Yet for most of my life, I was like Kahlen. I was the consistent, reliable and commendable performer. I wasn’t ever exotic (although I was smart); I just plodded along. That part of me thinks it’s grossly unfair that Kahlen lost on Wednesday night.
Now, however, I may be more like Naima, at least in my newly chosen field of writing. In this field, I have little training, a lot of self-doubt and sometimes that bitter toughness that we initially saw in Naima and Eva.
Their success tells me that I can—and will!—come up from behind and sweep the competition away.
I’m ready to leave the good girl behind. Fair or not, it’s the underdog that wins.
Posted by Lisa at May 19, 2005 03:30 PM
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