Oh, America’s Next Top Model, how I love thee. Now that the show is in its eleventh season, the show is one part self-esteem booster for teenage girls (“No smoking, even though you’re all models! It’s okay not to be a size zero; we’ll even let one of you win a season!”) and one part trainwreck circus. Which isn’t so great for the modeling industry, but an absolute joy for anyone keeping up with the season. And by anyone, I mean me, and by “keeping up,” I mean reading the episode recaps on fourfour.
Asians on America’s Next Top Model have always been hit or miss: There’s been Anchal, the doe-eyed South Asian girl who wore blue contact lenses and got called out by Tyra. (Oh Tyra, always calling out Asians.) There was Julie, the refreshingly down-to-earth girl that had, like, 90 seconds of screentime before promptly eliminated. And who could forget the trainwreck that was Gina?
This season, there’s Half-Japanese Half-Korean Sheena, the girl from Harlem:
What’s definitely going to give me an advantage in this competition is that I’m the only Asian female and I’m not like the other Asian females that was representin in the past couple of cycles. I’m definitely a bit more outspoken, a bit more edgier and confident, and I’m just…
… just hella ghetto. But damn girl, I think you just won me over. If you believe YouTube commenters — really, why wouldn’t you — Sheena is “a stripper … turned go-go dancer, turned wanna-be model,” only living in Harlem from a year from Hawaii. To which I say: if it is true, fucking awesome. This is after all, America’s Next Top Model, not America’s Next Two-Term President, and she rocks a lovely bikini photo without making me hate myself. All she has to do now is out-fierce the actual transgendered contestant and we’ll be good to go.
