‘America’s Next Top Model’: No more Clay-ah

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Poor Claire. Not many ‘Top Model’ contestants experience the minor lift and the major fall as quickly as she did. What happened? At the beginning of the cycle she was Tyra’s golden girl, edgy, personable, and perhaps most valuable, able to pull off an extreme haircut. But the last couple weeks of the competition she fell apart dramatically. In her previous photo shoot, she failed to emulate country music, and in this one, she got on Mr. Jay’s bad side by literally diving head-first into her watery shoot, causing herself some injury and a delay in the proceedings. Perhaps, coincidentally, the downfall coincided with some less graceful aspects of her personality captured by the cameras; for instance, declaring that the reason she was good friends with Whitney and Lauren was because they all disliked Dominique together (but how quickly the worm turns, as Lauren as well as Stacy-Ann started complaining about Claire off-camera.) Some of the girls didn’t care for Claire’s joyous reaction at the end of last week’s episode that Aimee, not she, would be going home, and during the go-sees, some of the bookers declared that she had too much personality (maybe she should have given some to Katarzyna, who has done nothing wrong this cycle except fail to be ingratiating and obnoxious.)

Even with the absence of Claire, the bickering obviously won’t stop as the cycle continues. Lauren, in a frightening display, went off her rocker on Fatima last night and Dominique continued to declare that Whitney, along with everyone else on the planet, was intimidated by her can-do attitude. At this rate, the Top Model crown should go to Katarzyna, as she’s the only model thus far who has demonstrated that she can get along with anyone.

-- Claire Zulkey