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Models of bad behaviour

NEWS REVIEW

Models of bad behaviour

1     The call from the production    the production company and de-    And presumably behind the scenes
 company came earlier in the clined its offer, for the reality isn’t the psychologist is reassuring the
 summer. How would I like to45 okay. These girls – adolescent minds tearful girl that she is not a failure,
 be the in-house psychotherapist for a in barely mature bodies – live in a80 it’s only a television programme.
5 new Channel 4 television series, culture that mercilessly looks at the9     And what are we doing watching
 Model Behaviour? female form and then stops right these girls? What, if not buying
2     The series set out to select girls there. wholesale into the notion that you
 from competing heats up and down650     The series is being shown at the are how you look, that being looked
 the country, choosing the five most moment and, while the girls were85 at is what constitutes female
10 likely to make it in the modelling eventually supplied with a resident success. Model Behaviour is not
 industry. The finalists were then to psychologist, that person’s thoughts only a television programme, it’s an
 be locked in a house together while were in the end not edited into the observation on how an industry
 we the viewers watched them bite55 programmes. grows up to reflect how a culture
 and scratch and fall apart on the way7     The programmes invite us to90 sees its girls and women: how girls
15 to one of them receiving a year’s look at girls who are vying with and women have to be to be seen.
 modelling contract with Premier, the each other to be looked at; looking10     And, be very certain, the girls in
 agency that represents Naomi at the blood on the carpet and the the show know they’re being looked
 Campbell and Claudia Schiffer.60 tears before bedtime as they at – that, after all, is why they are
3     But, the caller said, a few of compete with their rivals and are95 there – and by the end of the series
20 them might find some of this com- savaged by the judges. For reality most will also know defeat and
 petition a little tricky, and that’s television is only really interesting if rejection on the basis of their
 where I came in. I was to 
Carole Topolski, asked to be
resident psychotherapist in the
latest reality TV show, about
the modelling industry, is now
heartily relieved that she turned
the offer down
 appearance.
 counsel, support and presumably 11     “By the end,” says the series
 explain these traumatised con- 100 producer Justin Goreman, “a lot
25 testants to themselves and to the  of these girls realised that modelling
 viewing audience.  wasn’t for them. They all leave
4     I put the phone down and  the show older and wiser.” I
 called colleagues. Suppose I  bet they do.
 were able to use the programme to 12105     This, then, is what passes for
30 make some serious comments about someone gets upset, and we know entertainment in the 21st century.
 the exploitation of girls’ bodies?65 that tears and cat claws go with the We’ve moved way beyond enjoying
 Suppose I could talk about what it female like bread goes with butter. the spectacle of Christians being
 does to an individual and a gender to8     I wonder what Channel 4 was thrown to the lions on the dusty
 be construed primarily by the way hoping for. The eye of the camera110 floor of the Colosseum and now
35 they looked? Suppose I could get may pretend that it is interested in cheer ourselves with a spectacle of
 access to that 90% of the teenage70 success, but actually it revels in young girls being emotionally
 population who suffer from anxiety failure: the girl with human-sized drained, their body parts fragmented
 about the size and shape of their hips who collapses weeping when and discarded on television screens
 bodies? told she should take up hippo115 in our front rooms.
540     Nice idea, but this programme impersonation; the girl with strong13    I am relieved I had no part in it.
 was going to be what we are now75 legs whose life shatters when she’s 
 calling “reality television”. I called contrasted unfavourably to a twig. ‘The Sunday Times’