“America’s Next Top Model”: Chiquita b-a-n-a-n-a-s!

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The nice thing about this season is that there always seems to be someone new to find irritating, and if she’s not kicked off, it’s possible that she’ll redeem herself and fall back in line. Like how Aminat Ayinde recovered from losing her cool earlier in the season in front of Natalie Pack and Celia Ammerman. Now she’s endearing, if not just less annoying than Natalie and now Fo Porter.

Natalie has come off as entitled, and worse, boring, since the season began, but Fo, except for her post-haircut hissy fit, has always seemed spunky and cute. But since last week, she’s come off simply as immature. She decided that Teyona Anderson was her enemy for not choosing her to go with Teyona on her Seventeenmagazine shoot. Instead, Teyona chose Aminat and Celia, who was her model. It’s professional and makes sense, but Fo could only take it personally and complain about it.

The girls couldn’t harbor resentment for too long however: They were off to Brazil, home to the famed Brazil nut! Once there, they met model and host of ‘Brazil’s Next Top Model’ Fernanda Motta, who gave them a mind-numbingly stupid challenge. They were to take cabs to a flower shop, buy birds of paradise and race back to a designated point in the botanical gardens where they met Helô Pinheiro, the inspiration for the song ‘The Girl from Ipanema.’ The value of this lesson was that the girls would have to move gracefully, like her. Do real models go through this type of thing? For winning, Fo won a pair of $500 flip-flops.

The girls then went to their Brazil home where Natalie groused about having to share a bed and how she wanted to get a tan while she was in Brazil. But Natalie, there are much more important things to do in Brazil, like eat Brazil nuts and listen to ‘The Girl from Ipanema’!

The girls then learned the Capoeira fighting technique so they could use it in a challenge, i.e. fighting while posing. Celia and Aminat both seemed to pull it off, initially, despite Celia kicking Aminat in the eye, but Fo won the challenge, the prize being extra frames during the photo shoot. She could also take them away from one girl, which she did gleefully from Teyona. Fo just fell into a petty downward spiral all episode, to the extent where I was glad when she fumbled during the photo shoot.

The photo shoot was a little confusing: The girls were supposed to dress up as and channel Carmen Miranda, but in a high-fashion way while being shot in a shanty town. I’m not clear what about this concept screams ‘sex appeal,’ but Natalie assumed that that’s what it entailed and that she’d be able to nail it. Fortunately, the makeup artist Sutan filled them in on Miranda, and just for those of you who wondered about her ‘horrible death,’ she did die in an interesting, but not necessarily horrible, way, which you can read about here. Incidentally, I love Sutan.

During judging, Allison Harvard got called first for once while Aminat and Natalie were the bottom two. It wasn’t hard to predict that Natalie would be the one sent home as she blamed Jay Manuel for her lackluster shoot and everyone knows you don’t blame the Jays, ever.

I am concerned about Celia, however. I like her personal style and that she seems rather intelligent and mature for ‘ANTM,’ but for the first time, the judges seemed to sour on her, calling her ‘not fresh.’ We have go-sees next week, however, so maybe Celia will make a good impression there.

--Claire Zulkey

(image: the CW)