We’re looking at recaps from the Jealous Patrons Book Club’s read of Tyra Banks’s Modelland. We read this in 2023, so some references to current events might not be as current anymore.
[Ed. After several delays due to health issues, I began this recap by asking if the universe could give me a “small break.”] A small break like the sequel to Modelland coming out even though it’s been over a decade since the last one? Look, I’m waiting on The Winds of Winter, I can wait on Modelland 2.
You know who’s not getting a small break? You know who’s getting a big giant one? Our girl Tookie, who has just been selected by a Scout at T-DOD.
Obviously, Creamy realizes what’s happening. There’s been a horrible mistake. She tries to correct this by telling the Scout she grabbed the wrong girl, but the Scout isn’t very interested in anything Creamy has to say.
A sparkling slip of paper appeared in the Scout’s hand. Studying it, she first eyed Myrracle, arching her body toward the girl so that mere millimeters separated their faces. Then, in a flash, the Scout turned to look at Tookie. She returned to Myrracle, triggering a hopeful smile on Mrs. De La Créme’s quivering lips. Then she scrutinized the paper in her hand again.
“What’s taking you so long?” Myrracle blurted out. “You want me! I’m the Myrracle! I’m wearing the SMIZE! I’m on that list, right?”
Ohhhh shit, yous all. Myrracle is wearing the SMIZE, but Tookie is the one who found it.
That’s not specifically noted in the text, but we all know that’s what’s going on. [Ed. I forgot all about the fact that the Scout had Tookie’s name on a piece of paper! This is definitely pertinent information later on.]
Myrracle tries to take the paper from the Scout to double check it, but the Scout jerks away and her necklace hits Myrracle.
Mrs. De La Créme squared her shoulders. “Oh no, you did not just whack my Myrracle. I may not know who the hell you are, but I do know you have lost your diamond-encrusted mind!”
Before I die, I will tell someone that they’ve lost their diamond encrusted mind. I will hold that phrase in my heart and if I am on my deathbed and I haven’t yet deployed it, oh, that hospice nurse will go home crying that night.
Wait, maybe that’s not a great thing to say about a hospice nurse. I assume they already cry a lot.
I’ll do it to my grieving family.
The Scout’s body tensed, and in the blink of an eye, Mrs. De La Créme changed her tune. “But, I mean, lovely bejeweled goddess, you do indeed know best. You can whack, slap, smack, clobber, knock out, even give my Myrracle a black eye. Do as you wish. Just choose her!”
I guarantee this line was either written by Tyra Banks herself or was pulled directly from information provided to the ghost writer by Tyra Banks herself because this sounds authentically from the trenches of model calls. This is such an authentic “stage mom” vibe.
Myrracle tells the Scout that Tookie doesn’t even care about Modelland, to which Tookie replies that yeah, she actually does, but nobody has ever asked her about it. The clock chimes and the T-DOD walk is over. It’s shit or get off the pot time for Tookie.
It felt like she was in a dream as she reached for the Scout. But just before they touched, two strong hands shoved her from the side. She tumbled off the car, falling straight into Mr. De La Créme’s arms.
He quickly pushed Tookie back up on the roof. “Creamy, what are you trying to do, kill the girl? They want one of our daughters—isn’t that good enough? If she wants Tookie, let her take Tookie!”
Her mother shoved her down to keep her from getting this incredible opportunity. Look, Modelland doesn’t sound that great, okay? I’ve read ahead. But let me tell you, it’s a much healthier environment than living with these people. What the fuck.
Creamy points out that before, Mr. De La Créme was denying Tookie’s paternity. And by before, like… the night before.
“Tookie, don’t listen to her. You know I love you, right? Always have, always will. You’re Daddy’s special baby girl.”
Tookie’s chest burned. Daddy? Special? Love? She had a strong feeling he didn’t mean it, but she couldn’t help letting his warm words affect her anyway.
The Scout needs to smack the shit out of you, too, Chris.
“Just go,” Mr. De La Créme told Tookie. “For all of us.”
Oh, yeah, now you mean it in a positive way. Stupid fucker. I hope you fall down and poke out your other eye.
Did he want her to go because he just wanted to be rid of her? Was he truly proud of her and thought she really deserved this? Or was he now willing to be her daddy because she was the Scout’s choice?
He wants the money. Don’t you let those vultures get a cent of your success, Tookie.
I am emotionally invested here. Can yous all tell?
There on one of the huge screens was her face. Her six-head. Her multiple-personality-disorder hair. Her mismatched eyes. This image was projected all over Metopia—all over the world. Hundreds of bewildered spectators in LaDorno Square stared at the screen. Thousands of hopeful girls wailed to their mothers, Why does she get to go? She’s crazy-looking! Millions of people all over the world saw Tookie’s image right now and thought, What the…?
My assumption is that this is what Tookie imagines people are saying about her, not what’s actually being said. It’s not super clear.
Tookie takes the Scout’s hand.
A flash of golden yellow light surrounded them. A strong sucking sensation pulled at Tookie’s feet, then her legs, and then her stomach and back. Her body tumbled into a brilliant, sheer fabric that spewed from the Scout’s fingers. More fabric surrounded her, enveloping her bottom and legs, and the force of a billion hands lifted her up and buoyed her into the air. Suddenly, Tookie was in some kind of translucent mesh pouch.
The billion hands thing seems like overkill. Like it would maybe just shoot a person straight into the air and all the way up into space. But I’m not a physicist, I’m a picky reader.
The Scout takes flight, and Tookie can see through the fabric, so she gets to see her mother screaming at the Scout and Myrracle throwing a tantrum, and then all of the buildings and things below them as they sail through the sky.
But then Tookie noticed a red flash—a figure darting down a dark alleyway.
Tookie pressed her face hard against the translucent fabric. The figure ran crookedly down the alley, arms spread wide. Then the person abruptly stopped and looked straight at the pouch.
“Lizzie!” Tookie’s jaw dropped. “We have to stop!” she yelled to the Scout. But the Scout kept flying.
Tookie grabbed a handful of the pouch’s fabric and pulled with all her might, trying to tear a hole in the side.
Tookie has just been giving the opportunity of a lifetime, and she’s like, fuck it, I’ll plummet to my death but I’m not leaving my friend. Because:
What if Lizzie saw my face on those humongous screens? What if Lizzie saw me willingly take the Scout’s hand? What if she thought I skipped out of Exodus because I wanted Modelland more?
I’m sorry, I don’t know how to react to a Jealous Haters/Patrons Book Club heroine who considers the thoughts and feelings of other people. This is totally alien territory for us.
[Ed. This has never happened again.]
[Ed. Okay. Once. Violet Sorrengail. But we have a complicated relationship, okay?]
The Scout flies them straight at the Obelisks and then dives down, so Tookie thinks they’re going to splat. Instead, they go through the ground, into a tunnel, and the fabric turns black.
Muffled music filled the air, growing louder and louder, until Tookie recognized it as the T-DOD theme song, set to banjos.
Does anybody watch the Marble City Pizza TikToks? If you do, you will understand the vibe of this and, frankly, the next several, chapters. If you don’t, I encourage you to look them up. Because I heartily expected Corn Turtle to show up at some point.
[Ed. I totally forgot about Marble City Pizza. I wonder if they were like, early-stage AI?]
Now, are you ready for some Grade A dystopian capitalism?
A green-tinged fluorescent light appeared at the end of a tunnel. It grew brighter and brighter, and soon Tookie found herself face to face with cash registers, credit card machines, Modelland magazines, and hundreds of checkout lines.
This time, Tookie’s Scout takes the form of a check-out conveyor belt, and Tookie realizes where they are: Bou-Big-Tique Nation.
She’d read all about the place—it was the most convenient of convenience stores, for everyone lived inside the giant store! Small houses peppered the perimeter as far as Tookie could see, and a wide upper-level balcony filled with larger houses encircled the entire place.
There are miles of merchandise aisles, and yup, people just live there like it’s the Buy N’ Large spaceship from Wall-E.
Everywhere Tookie looked, girls were walking.
They were in a different part of the country, in a different time zone. It’s still T-DOD here, Tookie thought.
Wait, wait, wait. There were screens set up in LaDorna showing T-DOD in other time zones. It was all happening at the same time, I thought? But then again, I’m still shocked that Metopia is not the entire world, let alone not its own country.
The girls in Bou-Big-Tique Nation are all dressed in single colors for their walks, which take place in the aisles.
Then the Scout homed in on a girl about an eighth of a mile away. It was weird—whatever the Scout saw and heard, Tookie could see and hear too. LIke the tiny ticks in the tick farm display way down aisle 135 and the tapping of a girl’s foot at a messy counter marked THE NATION’S CUSTOMER SERVICE, which was clear across the store.
Couple things.
WHO THE FUCK FARMS TICKS? WHO NEEDS MORE OF THEM? FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY WHY IS THERE A TICK FARM?
After that, I just gotta point out that someone asked in an early read, “This is Tookie’s POV, so why can she tell what the Scout is looking at?” and then the writer went, “Oh, I’ll just say that she can see and hear it all, no explanation of why, problem solved.”
Dylan, the girl the Scout is looking at isn’t even walking. She’s just standing at the counter. Her little sister, who is only five, wants to walk, so Dylan lets the kid stand on her feet to pretend to walk, noting that their mom would be furious if she saw the kid there.
And like, I can see why:
As if on cue, a crash sounded down an aisle. “You stole my walking style!” a girl in an ivory outfit screamed to the strawberry blonde, lurching for her and knocking over a display of motor oil. Gallons of slick ooze were now creeping across the tile floor.
“Strawberries and Cream are mixing it up in a blender on aisle number one ninety-seven,” cackled a voice over the loudspeaker. “I wonder what that juicy smoothie is gonna taste like.”
Probably like motor oil, you fucking pervert.
I’m a little grossed out to know that an adult man did ghostwriting work on this, because some of the descriptions of what’s happening with these young girls are… you know, I’m just saying, Chris Hansen is still working, so maybe tone it down.
[Ed. Chris Hansen is still working.]
On the other hand, young girls sexualized in modelling is something that does happen, so it could be a nod to how skeevy that is.
Everything falls disastrously to shit at this point, with the T-DOD hopefuls descending into a full-on fist-fight with a security guard, and Dylan (described as looking “graceful and very sexy even as she slid in the oil spill”) moves in.
Dylan’s mere presence seemed to calm Strawberry. Dylan put her hands on her hips, cleared her throat, and spoke like a referee. “Okay, so since the day you were born here in the Bou-Big-Tique hospital, nursed on wombat milk, you’ve dreamed of going to Modelland, am I correct?”
The girls nodded.
“And has Modelland magazine ever mentioned that it prefers girls with high hopes of bein’ the next welterweight champion of the BBT Nation?” Dylan asked.
I have questions. About the wombat milk. That was mentioned just a little too casually.
“Then let’s get back to fulfillin’ ya dreams, ladies. Y’all are all busted-lookin’ now from your championship fight, but pull your confidence from your insides. That’s gotta count for somethin’.” And then under breath she muttered, “Cuz whoo, chile, y’all look cuh-ray-zee.”
If that sentence was not written by Tyra or a Black ghostwriter, we’re about to get in a fight with a cis gay white man.
Dylan starts coaching the formerly fighting girls on how to walk, and starts an encouraging chant about how they’re not going to care if they don’t get chosen. That’s when the Scout makes her move.
All the girls saw her at once. “It’s happening! Pick me! Pick me!”
But the Scout swept past all of them and stopped at Dylan. Dylan froze in her tracks, looking confused. The Scout extended her neck, pushing her face within a millimeter of Dylan’s just as she had done with Myrracle and Tookie. Satisfied, the Scout stepped back and reached toward Dylan.
I’m noticing what I hope is a theme here. Tookie got picked after giving her sister this big peptalk and being genuinely supportive. Now, Dylan is propping up her fellow girls and she gets picked. I’m hoping that all the tests and stuff that come later are dependent upon women supporting women.
[Ed. Not so much, unfortunately.]
Dylan doesn’t want to go, though, because she has brothers and sisters to support in—I shit you not—the dental and feminine hygiene aisles. Then her mother appears and is like, you have to do this, because it’s your big shot.
And here’s the thing about Bou-Big-Tique Nation: the people surrounding Dylan and the Scout are nowhere near as desperate as the crowd in LaDorno. They’re happy that Dylan is being chosen.
The the golden light that Tookie had seen in LaDorno appeared again. Suddenly, a foot rammed into Tookie’s waist. Dylan was in the pouch next to her, just like that.
The blonde jumped when she saw Tookie. “Hey, girl! I’m Dylan! Whoa! I never seen eyes like that before. Interestin’. Who are you?”
When the Scout picks them up and takes them, I guess she just tosses the girls in her purse?
Tookie introduces herself and the Scout takes off again, just as they hear:
“All right, little losers…,” the announcer resumed. “Tissues for your boo-hoos and bandages for your boo-boos can be found in aisle two twenty-twos!”
The next two chapters are really short, so I’ll be getting those to you in one post. I’m glad to be rid of the De La Crémes, the Aunt Sponger and Aunt Spiker of this particular book.
