Welcome to my Patreon recaps of Modelland by Tyra Banks. The Patrons and I read this book in 2023, so if some references in this post feel out dated, that’s because Trout Nation is secretly a time machine and you’ve been transported back to better world than this.
It’s time. It’s T-DOD.
Thousands of girls stampeded to the square all at once. Heels clacked. Dresses swished. Hairdos wobbled. The T-DOD theme song boomed a pulsating beat.
I’m assuming that the T-DOD theme song is the America’s Next Top Model theme song.
There was one rule and one rule only: a girl must be walking in order to be chosen.
Sounds like a pretty ableist rule. Also, pretty accurate for the fashion industry overall.
Other than that, there was no prearranged runway on which the girls could walk, so everyone created invisible ones wherever they were standing.
Yaaaaasss queens. No blocking. No organization. It’s giving season one American Idol auditions. It’s serving Pamplona. Slaaaaaay.
[Ed. The more I think about this, the more a prearranged runway sounds like it would be the most dangerous part of T-DOD. The trampling to clamber up on top of it, people pushing each other off…]
If this shit sounds chaotic and disorganized, well, just you wait.
Violence was not encouraged nor was it condemned, and some girls’ parents insisted on adding martial arts training to their walking lessons in preparation for the big day.
They’re not just out there walking like runway models with no sense of direction. They’re also doing karate. I can see why this would draw spectators.
Crash. The De La Créme white and cream blow-up tent went down as two brawling girls entered it. Oof. A girl who looked as if she had never walked in heels before stumbled, breaking the tips of both stilettos. Two girls got into a fight at the end of their makeshift catwalk, rolling to the ground. “Kenya, use the Gyaku Zuki move!” her mother screamed. “Reverse-punch the hairy hag! But watch your hair, sweetie!”
I’m really upset that the classic 1960s Batman sound effects didn’t pull off a hat trick. But we need to know more about why this girl chose the most important day of her life to wear heels for the first time. But the important thing to know is that the hairy hag is Abigail, the girl who is against shaving. I like that she’s anti-shaving but still like, nah, everyone is participating in this cultural moment, so I’m still gonna do it. I’m just not going to compromise my personal values when I do it.
But seeing Abigail walking makes Tookie feel jealous, because it’s this thing everyone is doing and she’s being left out. Even people who aren’t eligible, like an old man and:
Two down-on-their-luck women dressed in trash-bag dresses and beat-up sweat suits walked while pushing everything they owned in shopping carts, heckling every girl who passed. “Honey, you wish you had it like I do.”
If you think about it, those women probably walked on T-DOD, themselves, and then didn’t succumb to the rejection sickness or whatever, and now they’re living their best lives even though they’re homeless. They have self-confidence and a good time mocking the status quo. Good for them.
Myrracle is the only person not walking, because she’s so overwhelmed by all the chaos.
“Yeah, Myrracle. You can do this. Come on!” Tookie urged, holding her sister by her arms and staring into her eyes, trying to spark a connection. “Dance in your spirit, but not with your body,” she repeated over and over. Then she turned Myrracle around, placed Myrracle’s hands on her hips, and whispered in her ear: “Left, then right, then left, then right…”
And that helps Tookie. Much more than Creamy shouting about the physical violence she’s going to inflict on Myrracle if she doesn’t walk.
Myrracle starts her walk and she’s really good, which makes sense because she’s a dancer, so she knows her body.
She reached the end of her catwalk and came face to face with Abigail Goode. Both girls vied for the same spot to pose. Myrracle stuck out her pointy elbows, bumped her hip, and shoved Abigail hard out of the space. Abigail teetered over in her high shoes, hit her head on the footrest of the old man’s motorized scooter, and passed out cold.
Yikes, sorry about that, Abigail. But I have to cheer for Myrracle here, because Tookie believes in her and in this house, we stan Tookie.
Myrracle posed for a long three seconds, then raised a shoulder and swirled back around. There was a don’t mess with me girl unless you want to get hurt expression on her face as she strutted back toward Tookie and her family.
Book, you need hyphens between those words, not italics all over the place. This is not amateur hour.
But good for Myrracle.
While Tookie is watching Myrracle walk, Theophilus shows up behind her and is like, I know you. He tries to talk to her, but she can’t really answer him. And that’s okay, I guess, because he just does a whole conversation by himself and assumes she’s giving him answers that he wants to hear? Like, he asks if she’s walking, and when she doesn’t answer he’s like, oh, that’s good because this is silly.
IDK if you want to be in love with this guy, Tookie.
Zarpessa, of course, is walking, and she’s so beautiful that Tookie says:
“She even makes trash look beautiful,” […]
Theophilus asks her what she means. It’s the perfect opportunity for Tookie to be like, yeah, your fancy girlfriend is a dumpster diver.
Come on. We all know Tookie better than that, by now.
She considered telling Theophilus about Zarpessa’s Dumpster digging, but then she clamped her mouth shut. No matter how much she envied Zarpessa, exposing something that awful was just too mean.
I wish there was official Modelland merch I could deck myself out in. I really do.
Everybody made fun of this book when it came out. I mean, people still make fun of it. This baffles me. Is there truly weird stuff in it? Yes, and you don’t even know how weird it’s gonna get, starting in this chapter. Like, deeply, deeply weird. In like, literally the next excerpt. But it does not deserve the mockery it gets. And it deserved better sales and press than it got.
In the world of ’10s YA fantasy fiction, this is genre-breaking. This is expectation-exceeding. This raised the bar too high, so it had to be taken down a peg. Probably because if a girl picked up this book and saw a heroine being supportive of other women, adult women and men couldn’t mock and dismiss the YA demographic and the literature aimed at them.
[Ed. Imagine if this book would have kicked off a craze of YA books where the FMC liked and supported other women. Imagine the think pieces that could have been written, struggling to reconcile the source material with its origins in reality TV. Are we better or worse off for this book flopping?]
Remember how I said it would get weird starting in the next excerpt? This is where we go full, high-concept Dystopian Fantasy. With seven minutes left to walk and be chosen, the scouts show up. Modeling scouts who are going to just wander around, clipboards in hand, judging girls and tapping them on the shoulder to eliminate them, like in a dance contest, right?
NO. HAVE YOU EVEN BEEN PAYING ATTENTION? OF COURSE THAT’S NOT HOW IT’S GOING TO HAPPEN, BECAUSE IT HAPPENS LIKE THIS:
People stepped back from a nearby lamppost that had started to vibrate, staring at it with a mix of wonder and terror. The lamppost began to lengthen, like a long telescoping pole. Snap! It broke apart and reassembled as a slender, mysterious-looking woman in a black metallic jumpsuit. Her head glowed as if it contained a lightbulb.
I wish I could project an image of what I’m imagining right into your brains, but I assume we’re all imagining a giant woman with the build of Jack Skellington and a lightbulb for a head, right? That’s where we all are with this?
The Scout’s head began to blink, as if warning people that something amazing was about to happen.
ABOUT to happen?!
Then the woman marched to a thin girl with cheekbones so sharp they could slice a melon in half, and tapped her arm. The girl clutched her chest in disbelief. The Scout took her hand, and the bright light of her cranium flashed like lightning. And then…poof! they were gone, and the lamppost was back where it had always been.
This is incredible. I’m sorry, I’m just stunned. When I read this chapter the first time, I was like, there is no way I’m not reading ahead. Zero chance that I am not reading ahead.
This book has me in its clutches, okay? I’m going to say that right now. Like, to the point that I have to hide it under something in my office because I am distracted by the siren song of its cover.
Suddenly, Scouts from Modelland were everywhere. An asteroid rocketed to earth, throwing up chunks of marble all around the square and causing nearby runway walkers to flee in hysterics. A stunning Scout emerged from the rubble, with skin that seemed to be made of rough stone.
The thing is, not every girl wants to go off to Modelland. The rock Scout picks a girl who begs not to be chosen, but her mother is like, we can’t afford to feed her anymore, so she’s gotta go, and the Scout just takes her.
When there’s only five minutes left to go, another Scout shows up:
The shopping cart of one of the homeless women flew from her hands and rolled wildly around the square. Girls near the cart ran away screaming. The cart flipped forward, and old food and tattered clothes spilled to the ground. A Scout in a dress with rips in all the right places materialized from beneath the decrepit belongings.
I’m sorry, all I can think about is the Derelicte collection from Zoolander. But I’m also worried about that lady’s cart getting transformed into a modeling Scout. Like, does the lady get paid for that? Does she get her shit back? Was she in on it the whole time? What’s going on here?
Time is running out, and so is space, because everything is descending into chaos. Mr. De La Créme tells Tookie to climb up on the roof of a car so that Myrracle has more room to walk.
Tookie turned and saw her parents and Brian standing on the roof of the wildest car she had ever seen: a blinged-out golden low-rider with a pavé roof and hubcaps that spun in place, even when the car wasn’t moving. The gaudy and glam automobile was parked on a piece of marble that had a huge crack down the middle that looked, strangely, like a question mark.
Okay, not to spoiler the rest of the recap here, but how the fuck do they not realize they’re standing on a Scout? The first fucking thing I thought when I read that description was, oh, that’s a Scout.
When one minute is left and Myrracle still hasn’t been chosen, the car starts to vibrate and and a piece of the roof turns into fabric.
Thousands of crowd members were now counting down the seconds.
Forty-five, forty-four…
Their dad grabs Myrracle out of the crowd and they fight their way back toward the car, which is now surrounded by desperate girls.
Thirty-nine, thirty-eight…
Tons of girls fran for the gaudy car, clamoring for the attention of the soon-to-appear Scout. Tookie surveyed the crowd, noticing how many people were watching the De La Créme family on the roof. Jealous girls, rabid mothers…even Theophilus was in the back of the crowd, looking amused. But strangely, he wasn’t staring at Myrracle, as most of the mob was. His eyes were locked on Tookie. Her stomach flipped over.
You know…I’m not super invested in the Theophilus thing. Since this was a planned series that never panned out (and since Tookie is about to chosen to go to Modelland), I’m pretty sure we don’t get a resolution on that budding romance. Also, all of the other elements are so fascinating, a love story just feels boring.
[Ed. We don’t get a resolution on the romance, as I predicted, and the love story that does eventually happen just distracts from the more interesting parts of the plot. It feels like it’s there as a marketing decision.]
Tookie’s family shouts for her to get down from the hood of the car so that Myrracle can get closer to the Scout, but Tookie sees that there’s no way Myrracle can actually get back up due to the crush of the crowd. She yells to Myrracle to take her hand and pulls her up onto the car. Creamy tells Tookie to get down:
But Tookie didn’t want to move. She wanted to see this happen to Myrracle firsthand.
Like, she is fully invested in her sister getting this new and amazing life, even though it means that her life is about to get suckier. She wants to see her sister have this moment of unattainable glory. Plus, even with all the other girls around, Tookie is sure that Myrracle is going to be selected.
But when the Scout finally emerges, she knocks Myrracle off the car again.
Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen…
The tear in the fabric grew wider, until a human-sized hole appeared. And then a nearly naked woman emerged from the center of the tear and rose into the sky. She had long limbs and golden skin and wore shiny necklaces strategically placed over her chest and lower half. A gem-encrusted veil covered her face.
Fireworks go off. Everyone is in a frenzy.
“Please take her!” Mrs. De La Créme gushed.
“We would be honored!” Mr. De La Créme cried.
Three, two…
And then the Scout reached out her long, slender, radiantly decorated hand and beckoned.
To Tookie.
YES! YES YES YES! Our girl did it! She’s going to Modelland!
I mean, we already knew that was going to happen because she’s the main character of the book but the suspense was incredible. [Ed. I liken this scene to the part in Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory where, even though most people have seen the original film and know that Charlie will get the golden ticket, Burton still managed to build suspense and elation when it finally happens.]
I am so mad at myself that I wrote this book off as a cheap and easy target every time someone recommended it for recaps. It’s good! Not just, “not as bad as the others.” Not just “slightly better than I expected.” It’s just delightful.
