Fat Chance

I'm not sure whether it is supposed to be some kind of social experiment, but you don't need a scientist to tell you that when you get a group of hungry, stressed, insecure and lonely teenage girls in a room and have cameras on them 18 hours in the day, some of them are going to break down in tears. Some of them are going to act like prima donnas. One or two are going to hate each other on sight. And at least one will give a spectacularly good attention-grabbing performace of an anxiety attack.

I felt a bit squeamish last night watching the first episode of the the third series of Australia's Next Top Model because of the intense voyeurism associated with the brand. Last night, in the first episode, the camera fixed for far too long on poor Jaime's teary arguments with her boyfriend, which led to her bailing out of the program after barely a week of competition. Yes, yes, we know modelling is a tough profession, but these intrusive expeditions into teenage girls' personal lives are nothing to do with modelling and all about great grabs for the program's promos. In signing up for "an opportunity of a lifetime", young girls who are extremely unsophisticated in the ways of the media (as often are their families) have signed away their rights to any dignity and privacy. It's mandatory for participants in reality TV programs to do this, but I think a little more caution should be taken with tender young girls who, after all, are competing for a professional prize, not just to prove they are Australia's Next Best Exhibitionist, as with Big Brother. How humiliated do they feel when they watch themselves afterwards? Is this an embarrassment they carry with them for life?

And another thing - while I totally applaud the fact that the judges (a decent bunch of fashion professionals) are delicate about the issue of weight and size, gently telling only one or two girls that they should, in Alex Perry's words, drop "a couple of Ks", the reality is that only ethereal, waif-like Alice of the sharp hipbones is likely to have a big career on the international modelling circuit. This is a serious problem, endemic in the fashion business, that everyone is tippy-toeing around. It would hardly be responsible television to tell any of these girls that they are too fat, and I think it's wise to point out concerns with Alice's health, but the minute the girls go on a real life go-see, the heavier ones will be told in no uncertain terms, by people who are less kind, they need to drop a lot of weight. This is a serious conundrum for concerned people in the fashion business - do we change the culture from the inside-out by convincing designers to make their sample sizes larger and modifying fashion editors' tastes for the skeletal and macabre (fat chance, I'd say) or do we change it from the outside-in by altering young women's perceptions of what is beautiful and fashionable? Remember, it was only fifteen years ago that the Supermodels reigned - and they were a far more bodacious bunch than the current crop of X-rays. It will be fascinating to see how this year's judges handle the issue.