Guest Author - Lauren Evans

This year, I experienced crushing disappointment. After months of anticipation, Britain’s Next Top Model returned to my screen, but minus one very important ingredient. Jonathan Phang’s ability to say really unpleasant things with a smile on his face is second to none, making his insultee think he’s saying something fluffy and encouraging until he’s finished his sentence, at which point they usually burst into tears. The new BNTM series really floundered without him and even the big-lipped, self-congratulating, dodgy-accented DeVeaux/Ragnarsson judge-beast did nothing to fill in the big Jonathan-shaped gap.

So, how excited was I to find that Jonathan had another project up his sleeve for this year? Very, that’s how! This year, he took the role of mentor in the very first series of Britain’s Missing Top Model – a show in the top model format that we know and love, but featuring disabled models. Watching the first few episodes, some of my worst fears were confirmed. The panel were frightened. Frightened of delivering the damning judgements they would be more than happy to dole out to a non-disabled teenage clotheshorse, frightened of saying something career-endingly non-PC, and worst of all frightened of saying whether the models actually looked good or not.

The most important element of the “Top Model” franchise is the totally subjective “hot or not” treatment. Without it, the whole thing withers and dies. Your look is either in or out, and if you have a vintage curvy vibe when the fashion world wants Eastern European edge, then that’s your tough luck and you don’t earn. You either worked it, or you didn’t. My main area of criticism for BMTM is that this never seemed to come under consideration. The question being posed seemed to be “Who would be a good disabled role model?” rather than “Who will make a real live working disabled model?”

In the model house, the debate raged – should profoundly deaf Kelly Moody be allowed to win the competition when she doesn’t appear to have a disability upon first sight? Couldn’t she just do “normal” modelling instead? Somebody with one arm (like Debbie and Kellie Knox) or in a wheelchair (like Sophie, paralysed from the chest down) is visibly disabled, but should it make them a superior candidate for the title? I think not.

This is where Jonathan’s mentoring skills came in. Rather than letting the models get on with their catfight and make some great television, Jonathan instead arranges for the girls to spend the evening wearing noise-cancelling headphones. Once they have all experienced the disorientating and confusing world of a completely deaf person, they come to understand each others struggles, and become much more supportive.

Now while that might be great disability awareness training, as telly, it’s flaccid and boring. So too, is the assumption that disabled models can’t handle a traditional judging set-up, where the girls are picked one by one and the final girl is booted out in front of all the others. Instead, successful girls are sent away into another room, leaving the final girl to gather her dignity before leaving the judging room and going home.

These girls talk about the great adversity that they face, whether directly because of their disability or because of people’s reactions to it, and they are still all beautiful, spirited people with the drive to succeed in the very industry that created body fascism. It’s completely patronising to think these women can’t deal with other people’s spiteful comments and their peers looking on as their modelling dreams are crushed by some harsh critique. It’s likely that they are way more equipped to cope with this sort of thing than your average 16 year old model wannabe (I’m thinking emotionally frail, probable eating disorder, usually a bit thick).

While this show is a great idea in principle, it’s my opinion that BMTM is a bit confused about its own message. If it’s a model show, then they need to be concerned with the business of finding a disabled model who can crack the fashion industry - even if it causes a few tears - but if it’s Disabled Women That Other Women Can Look Up To, then that’s a completely different programme. One with a very unwieldy acronym.