America’s Next Top Model C23E02 Recap

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SOME SPOILERS AHEAD.

We got our first and second runway challenges this week. I was a little disappointed that Benny Ninja didn’t come on to coach the girls along with Stacey Mackenzie in the first one, but voguing was involved so that softened the blow. The best performer in the first challenge for me was Binta (who proved her prowess on the runway last week) and the worst was Justine.

Kyle is not as bad as she thinks she is. Even before she did the coaching with Stacey (and it did help that she went up against Justine in the first challenge). She was actually worst during the coaching, but not by much, because she was so stiff. That lack of confidence likely hampered her performance when she was being coached. Like Stacey said, you need to believe in yourself, and perhaps if Kyle had she would have been more relaxed and done better there.

But it all paid off in the end because Kyle ended up winning the second challenge. She brought her own style and personality to her walk, much like she had in the first challenge and that is what Law and Zendaya loved. She may not be the best walker in the house – and again, she’s not even particularly bad to begin with – but she just needs to bring that confidence and put her own stamp on it and she will do fine.

I was surprised she was so low down in the rankings for the photo shoot. She was one of two people who were told that all of her photos were perfection. So that confused me. She, Binta, Tash, Cody, Tatiana and Courtney had the best pictures in my opinion. I did not like Marissa’s as much as the judges did.

I felt so bad for Cody when she went up for judging and just broke down crying before anyone said anything to her. She was incredibly nervous and scared. I can sympathise with that, but if she is going to continue on in the competition and work in this industry, she needs to toughen up. The fashion industry is notoriously brutal.

I’m glad that Tash or Cody – I don’t know which one it was despite the lower thirds and I can’t tell them apart yet – felt good about doing something on her own. They seem to not do anything without the other, which is cute and it’s nice to have someone there supporting you and going through it with you, but they need to learn to lead independent lives and I hope – and believe – that this competition will do that for them.

Back tracking a little to earlier in the episode, Paige’s whole “I want to use the privilege I was born with as a white [American] woman to change the world” speech, while admirable, felt fairly disingenuous. To me it came off like she was trying to score points with the Black girls. I would even go so far as to say it was a little white saviour complex-ish. As some of the others said later, she was being too extra. She was “passionate” in a way that was almost forceful and aggressive. Like she was trying to prove herself or win likes or something.

And Binta was having none of it.

Although I don’t agree with how confrontational she was in this episode, there I can side with her. As well as calling Paige unprofessional for how she conducted herself backstage at the runway challenge. She should not have been messing around with the clothes on the rack at all. And Paige’s rebuttal of “This is who I am” was the poorest excuse she could ever have come up with; who she is is unprofessional? She didn’t even realise she was being inappropriate.

I know the show is edited and she probably didn’t say it as much as the show has made it look, but I am starting to get tried of hearing Coryanne talking about her supermodel mother and now she is bringing in her supermodel friends. Being in the vicinity of supermodels does not make her one and she proved that this week with her performance. I wanted her to go home and Justine to stay. Not because I dislike her or anything, but because I just liked Justine more.