Germany's Next Topmodel

Eventually grown too old for the model business, heidi klum found a effective way to stay present in the mass media: the search for "Germany's next Topmodel", her version of Tyra Bank's "Castingshow". It's repeated success in Germany proves that the format has a incontestable strength: The conjunction of a "castingshow" and "reality television". During the two months the candidates spend within the production, they always are surrounded by cameras. The adept triage of footage gives one the feeling to be very close to the candidates. Of course some set-tos may be contrived, of course the only thing the winner can possibly get is a short period of artificial "stardom" and of course the real winner of her own show is Heidi Klum. One could argue now that the show is fooling both viewers and candidates, but I think that both know the facts given above. What is it then that induces them to support the format ? "Germany's next Topmodel" makes people dream and this is the primal aim of the medium of moving pictures and it still is it's most important one.

"DOG - The Bounty-Hunter", "Flavor Of Love" and ... "Germany's Next Topmodel presented by Heidi Klum" - the axis of evil is complete.

It's now the 4th season or so that Heidi Klum -German fashion-model and wife of British pop-star Seal-, accompanied by varying cliché-role-models, blindfolds and teases young women and girls with false promises to enter the grind-house of fashion, then tearing them to pieces.

The arrogance and the lack of respect and sensitivity (not to mention constructive ways to criticize) Heidi & Co display to that poor girls is hard to cope with; nevertheless it's a successful format in Germany. We really eat sh!t here. But to regard the initial line-of-comment again: others do too.

Entertainment? With our brains running on auxiliary-power maybe. Dignity? Dictionary please! Content? Women, exploited.

Heidi Klum, time for a lash-back: in German teletext a couple of months ago, German fashion-designer Wolfgang Joop stated that you simply aren't an international Champion's-League supermodel, no big name at all and I'm sure the man knows what he's saying. As far as I'm concerned: compared to a real catwalk-icon such as Tatjana Patiz, you are merely an unerotic minor-league-model. Tatjana had (and still has) truly style, character, sex-appeal, an adorable face and brains. You? Zippo. Not that you look bad, but it's just mediocre. But the lack of character and dignity you admit here in your show makes you ... not an option!

Therefore I can hardly understand why all those young women give anything on your comments or that of your profile-neurotic fellows. Where are the parents? Is there a contact-ban between them and the candidates during production?

Aside the whole ethical problem this show piles up, there are numerous simple things to rate-low: for instance it's obvious that all of your comments have been written before but you failed to learn your text properly, you don't (and surely can't) perform them credible at all. You pause that often, that it's easy to see it's not meant a dramatic break but you need time to recall your "dialog". Anytime you try to stare one of the girls down I recall that mysterious (but meaningless) dog at the end of that "Simpsons"-episode - Hrm-hrm-hmmmm. If you demand credible performances from the candidates, start with yourself first!

I get back to Tatjana briefly just to send one more torpedo: in "Rising Sun" she performed a corpse, I must assume you couldn't even do that! You demand a sexy walks from the girls, but then your own attempts to show them remind me more of a heavily damaged AT-AT.

I also have to state and criticize, that you still serve that "Hungerhaken"*-body-ideal that the fashion-scene pretended to ban a couple years ago to tame the brief public outrage about the issue. As far as I watch this alienated universe I can't see that accomplished at all so far.

I wanna hope that most girls left in this season will get a chance to work as models, not because I support this business, but because they wish it so much, they all look nice, they earned it and suffered already enough under your provincial reign. And to proof you wrong.

To all young women in Germany: before you start getting anorectic in order to join this idiotic hypocritical format or for other reasons, please take a look at Barbara Schöneberger or Jennifer Hudson - those look great!

In the meantime I recommend to watch "Zoolander", a brilliant movie made exactly to unveil this narrow-minded misanthropic business.

* German gossip roughly translated with "starvin' hook"; a male or female, that thin that you can count all the bones.

This adaptation of a concept born in the U. S. but taken up internationally is basically just as bad and superficial as the original and its numerous other spin-offs. But what makes this German show particularly bad is the ice-cold, self-promoting, phony persona of Heidi Klum. The show is run by the vicious ice queen of the inhumane top model business and this drives the spikes, the madness, the lack of empathy and the irresponsibility of the show concept to unimagined heights. In addition, behavior is promoted and publicly advertised here among the participants, which would wreck a moral, democratic and humanistic solidarity society in further expansion. Not infrequently, the antisocial behavior, the decadence of the celebrated superficiality and the dead, soulless-looking eyes of the moderator appear worse than anything a horror movie could accomplish. Horrifying.