In this season of America’s Next Top Model, the aspiring wannabes of cycle 10 are matriculating into the school of ANTM, and it looks like we have a star pupil to watch … or do we?
More art-inspired Brooklyn hipster than North Shore surfer babe, Claire Unabia graces the screen with an updated punk do (cropped and one-third shorn) and an ebullient smile. There’s something different to her, and it isn’t just her very articulate and un-model-like sense of responsibility “to be a global warrior for the environment, because [she] can’t be a coward for [her] daughter.” A proud new mother, she explains to Tyra in an interview that “it’s so hard being apart from [her daughter], especially since she’s still breastfeeding.”
“So you’re FedEx-ing the milk?” Tyra asks.
“Well,” Claire says sheepishly, “right now, I’m actually drinking it.”
Perhaps the difference is Claire’s mild affliction of Brooklynite-osis, a common enough disease in the borough of Brooklyn. Its symptoms are to stand apart from the crowd by waving one’s freak flag and loving it, usually in order to capitalize on one’s sense of individuality in a place where everyone seems replete with quirky characteristics — which is perhaps why the show has labeled her from New York, rather than her beloved home state of Hawai‘i. There are mixed feelings about not representing Hawai‘i on Claire’s MySpace page: “I am from Hawai‘i! The North Shore, brah! The first not totally white girl from Hawai‘i on the show … ” Ahem, Renee from cycle eight.
Claire is half Filipina, yet both she and the show’s judges forget to mention it. It seems strange that Tyra, queen of cultural pride, has not brought this to light. Unlike previous Asian American contestants whose sense of self was drawn in terms of race, Claire seems to break from this holding pattern. The real difference may be that Claire doesn’t look Asian, and so her association with Asian culture may be remote to the viewer. Does the fact that her favorite food is Hawaiian-style Korean galbi mean anything? We’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, we can ponder other mysteries that make her who she is — like her decision to deliver her baby on a reality show called Runway Moms and if indeed, as reports indicate, she ate her own placenta. …
MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew is down to five with an Asian American troupe in the forefront. Last week’s episode was a showdown of who could dance a better story, and California-based Kaba Modern were the geeks and hot gals. While they turned the stereotypes around, having the girls reprogram the nerds into studs, why weren’t they given juicier roles like vampires, thieves or basketball players? Rival team Jabbawockeez, with a number of Asian American members, doesn’t seem to have this problem. Could one avoid stereotyping simply by wearing a creepy white mask? …
And Ramiele Malubay is drumming up a little buzz on the Net from a circulating photo of two females groping her breasts; this is the same girl who wanted to represent the Asian American community, but then it occurs to me that she never did say how she wanted to represent.
Ramiele Malubay
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