I was watching TV when a commercial for "Next Top Model Latina" came on the screen. I decided to look it up to view a few of the auditions--now of course there are actual episodes. This is actually the tamest of the auditions I found.
The judges were rather harsh and focused much more on the racial appearance than the judges on the original ANTM. The judge in the middle was outright rude, telling some girls they overtweezed their eyebrows or their make up was too heavy (alluding to the "excess" theme we talked about in class). She even told one girl that she needed to wear a better bra and hinted that perhaps her butt was a little too big.
It seems interesting to me that this was one of the only girl's auditions shown in which the judges actually liked the candidate. Coincidentally, she was the one who seemed the least "Latina." As we read about in the American Images article, this girl had an olive complexion and a generic face that could pass as Latina or be ambiguous. She was also wearing the least showy clothing out of the other candidates, as most of them wore tight skirts and cleavage bearing shirts.
This show really reminded me of the article and what works for advertising, especially if you want to appeal to both the Latina and Anglo groups.
This video is really interesting. It's the first time I've seen ANTM auditioning process. What struck me most about this video was the when one of the judges asks, "did you shave your legs?" and then goes on to say "Part of being model Latina is a little bit of personality and business sense." (At least this is what I think she said). Invoking the image of model Latina shows how the show attempts to temper race/cultural attributes like 'excess' and set an example of sobriety/moderation.
ReplyDeleteThe implicit masculinaztion of Mischel serves to hyper racialize her as well. Not only is she Latina, but she's a tomboy Latina. Oh no! Hence, the comment about shaving her legs (something women do) is a way that the judges try to poke fun at and legitimate her feminity.