Build a Better Chick Lit: Modelicious!

I'm back to recapping books, baby! I've read a couple of horrible YA/chick lit books about modeling. There's Model Student (a girl has to balance being a student at Columbia University with being a model). And there's Violet on the Runway, in which a high school girl goes from being awkward and dorky to a high fashion model when she's discovered in her small town by an agent. It's basically the training bra version of Model Student. I decided to show what stereotypes (modeling and chick lit) they fulfill, with a little help from Tyra and the good people at Cycle 8's modeling cliche photoshoot.

The Girl Who Is Here to Win, Not Make Friends.

Don't pretend you don't know who that is. Every cycle has one! In Violet, it's Veronica, the jealous roommate who shares a Zoolander esque apartment (complete with bunkbeds) with the title character. However, since our protagonist is a six foot tall Pollyanna who snorts sunshine, lollipops and rainbows instead of coke, Veronica realizes that being a bitch isn't all it's cracked up to be. The girls bond and Veronica learns that friendship is more important than a Page Six mention.

OK, I lied...Violet herself has a teeny bit of bitchery in her (though she's still only a 1.1 on the Doherty scale). This is what she says to her best guy friend when they're at a nightclub where he's MSTK-ing the whole scene:

You have no idea what this world is like...You sit at home in North Carolina scrolling through Gawker and Fishbowl and thinking that you're a part of things. Well, you're not. You're just a sad nerd of a boy who fills his time reading about other people's lives because he doesn't have one of his own. Go back to your blogs. Hey, maybe you'll even make the Post tomorrow--in the background of a photo of me.

Violet, can I please be in a Page Six photo holding your hair back?

Emily in Model Student's best bitchy moment? One day, she's walking along and she hears yet another "Daaaaaamn, you so FINE, baaby" come-on and prepares her best bitchface. Only the guy isn't paying any attention to her. Em realizes that he's looking at another girl who is, in her words, "'like, five foot two inches and not even cute." Bitch. I chortled so hard in the jewelry shoot scene where a hand model accidentally-on purpose gives Emily a bloody nose.

Dumb Models

Violet's not dumb. She's just a fresh faced ingenue who smiles on the runway instead of affecting a fierce scowl. But since she's so damned cute, the fashion world thinks she's as whimsical as Ariel combing her hair with cutlery. Making this the ultimate in escapist fiction, her agent even tells her not to perfect her walk since everyone loves her sweet, "real," unpolished image (read: yes, you too, earnest young reader, can be a model! You don't need to go on scary go-sees! You don't even have to work hard!)

As an Ivy League student, Emily does her best to shatter the dumb model stereotype. She takes a particular joy in reading Paradise Lost in between lingerie shots on the beach in the Dominican Republic. Em's "I'm a smart model!" act isn't cute as cute as she thinks, though. I'd like to put her and Sasha "My porn name is a reference to Oscar Wilde" Grey in a room together so they can have a pretention-off. (And Sasha, sweetie, Dorian spelt his surname with an "a" not an "e." Somewhere, babe, there's a picture of you getting really, really smart.)

However, Emily is SMARTMODEL FAIL when you read a scene where she feels betrayed by her first agent. Does he (A) cop a feel (B) demand sexual favors or (C) tell her to lose ten pounds within the hour? No, it turns out he receives a fee from the other agencies he's taking Emily to interview at when she first comes to New York. She's mad that he's not escorting her to agencies out of the joy of being with her. That Armani wearing Shylock!

Drugs're baaad, mmkay?

Because Violet is basically the Dawson's Creek of YA lit in terms of risque-ness, the designated bad girl has to do all the drugs and boozin''. (For those paying attention, in Dawson's, that's Jen Lindley who ends up dead in the finale, and in Violet, it's Veronica who goes to rehab.) Violet limits herself to drinking (but, to placate any parents reading or watching along), her drinking is always accompanied by her feeling horribly hungover the next day, with the requisite "head in the toilet" moment.

Emily does drugs. This doesn't bother me. What does bother me is the scene where feeling alienated from her friends, Emily runs in desperation to Washington Square Park where drug dealers surround her hissing, "'Smoke, smoke'" and, "Tell me what a pretty girl needs!" It's as if the producers of Les Miz directed an anti drug PSA.

A is for Anorexia, B is for Bulimia...

Violet is as PG-13 with eating disorders as it is with drugs. In fact, Violet even makes a point of chowing down on some mixed veggies from the Chinese place when someone points out that she's losing a lot of weight. Realistically, this is the model world equivalent of sticking a straw straight into a goose and sucking, and Violet is the Adam Richman of fashionistas. But hey, it keeps Kate Harding off the editors' backs. Once again, Veronica is the designated bad girl and vomits herself into celebrity rehab.

Emily, however, does engage in Extreme Dieting to lose weight even though she never actually becomes anorexic, making her the Bill Clinton of YA lit ("I counted calories"/"I smoked" but I never "lost my period"/"inhaled"). She also attempts to go bulimic but can't vomit on command.

Less than ten thou a day? As if.

Somehow Emily manages to be this girl even though she never really achieves supermodel status. She gets huffy at wearing a tiny jumpsuit to an industry event. Doing a shoot dressed as a chorus girl on the West Side Highway almost sends her to the Rape Crisis Center. She's cast in a music video and is horrified when she has to make out with a guy dressed as a sailor. (She recoils as if asked to join in the 120 days of Sodomy when she finds out he's gay.)

Violet, on the other hand, is NOT this girl. She's more, "Gee whillickers, I get to wear purty clothes and you pay ME?" it's a wonder she never accidentally wanders into an American Apparel warehouse to be trapped in there for years until someone does a raid.

I'd love to see these girls react to shoots that a lot of people would consider quite a bit creepier.

Casting couch

Violet is way too escapist chick lit for something as crass as the casting couch mentality to even exist in this world. After all, Violet gets driven from go-see to go-see by a supportive chauffeur. She lands runway gigs and campaigns without ever having interviewed with anyone. Violet's idea of a casting couch would probably be a designer asking to see her book.

When Emily goes to Italy, part of schmoozing means dealing with guys who like to drug models at parties and then screw them. The scene is intense, with leering Italians on Vespas and broken English and girls passing out right and left and it's all very What if Tom Wolfe had ghostwritten a model memoir.

Going nude

Yes, nudity. We all know that the nice girl from the boonies who loves Jesus and won't do nudity and just isn't edgy enough for couture (sorry, cycle one's Shannon!). In Violet's world, nudity means changing clothes behind a screen but in front of an open window. She somehow manages to do a runway show without flashing anyone, though.

Emily manages to make a hjiab wearer look debauched, when she mentions that initially, her idea of nudity was having scarves draped over her chest for head shots where her shoulders were bare. She also decides she needs cocaine to get through a music video shoot where she and another girl make out naked in a bathtub.

Okay! Since these books are also steeped in the traditions of chick lit, there are some other requirements, as those of you following the syllabus know. Yes, there is brand and clothing worship (with a devotion that would creep out a Moonie) and the fetishization of boys (no one here passes the Bedchel test, ever). What else?

Self deprecating narrator

How do books where the narrator is a model manage to do this? In Violet's case, before she became a model, she was "awkward." (Read: wore glasses and was constantly complaining about being too tall and thin. Violet, you and every Francesca Lia Block character who moans about having a nose that's too small and eyes that are too big with breasts too small for her tiny frame are cruisin' for a brusin'.)

In Emily's case, it's Don't hate me because I'm beautiful. On Emily's first day at orientation, she wears a minidress and high heeled boots (fresh from agency seeing) and the Columbia students react like she's a woman baring her ankles in Warren Jeff's fundamentalist Utah. Guys are also lining up to date her, random men give her bouquets of roses on the street, and girls eye her jealously. What costumes shall the supermodel wear to all tomorrow's seminars? Poor Emily. She has to resort to bulky stained apparel to gain the respect of her fellow students (one girl approvingly says, "I had completely the wrong idea about you--completely," when she sees Emily in "untied sneakers, untucked button down shirt, and stained Columbia sweatpants").

There's No Place Like Home

Any time a girl goes on a wild adventure, she has to learn that a career in the fashion world is the chick lit equivalent of becoming Tony Montana. You either quit the life or go out in a blaze of white powder (see also Andie in Devil Wears Prada). After a talk with her wise old vegan aunt who lives in Brooklyn, Violet learns that Dolce & Gabbana can't compare with Mom, apple pie, and going to prom (until the author gets the option of a sequel and Violet's back on the runway).

And Emily decides that she's not going to be anyone's clothes hanger anymore. However my personal theory is that Em's decision has zip to do with integrity and is more about that time a guy wolf whistled at a short uncute girl instead of her. I guess dieting to fit the sample sizes is less important than pleasing the Sir Mix-a-Lots of the world.

Based on the book covers, I think both Violet and Emily need prosthetic legs. And for Emily, an extra parting gift:

Build a Better Chick Lit: College Life

I'm starting a new blog feature--posts where I break down the cliches that I love to hate about certain books/movies/TV shows. I call it: Build a better chick lit. Here's the college edition.

I used to love reading books and watching TV shows and movies about the college experience. It's so...collegiate. It's a world unto itself. Where it's always fall and professors are always throwing intimate parties at their houses and the lessons we learn in books somehow always reflect upon real life. Where there are mixers and box socials galore. As may be obvious, I'm telling this from the POV of the female protagonist since the whole Animal House frat boy thing has been done to death. Here are the staples of college life as told through fiction:

Bitchy roommate. If you're a freshman, you get usually stuck with a roommate, and she's not just a bitch. She's a rich bitch. She spends her time analyzing the different levels of sarcasm ("I love your new top!" versus "I love your new top--I wish I could get away with shopping at the Salvation Army"). She's got a thousand pictures on her wall of her and her blonde cute female friends in a variety of places from St. Tropez to Asspen. And, as I learned from Prep, she's got the perfect cute flowered bedspread which marks her as part of the upper echelon of society.

World weary 21 year olds. Our main character, if she's a senior, spends the bulk of her time talking about keggers of years past in a world weary tone of voice that suggests that she's been there, done that, and had the hangover to boot. Like Chloe (she of the novel Chloe Does Yale written by Yale's real life former sex columnist, and yes, I can think of at least two things wrong with that title, too) who regales us with stories of how as a freshman, she was declasse enough to go to a dive bar in four inch heels and a tight pair of jeans in the same tone of voice that Kanye probably uses to describe how he wore an off-white vest his first time at P. Diddy's White Party.

What, me study? No one ever studies unless a test or paper is impending and it's 85% of your grade and you're going to flunk out unless you make haste to the library. Anybody who so much as glances at a syllabus early in the semester may as well move into the Lamba Lamba Lamba house, stat. No normal student has time to study in advance.

Like Charlotte Simmons (of Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons, a screed against college students who dare to have fun), who was too busy spending the weekend shedding her hymen all over a hotel's posh sheets after the fall formal to bother with writing an essay until the morning it was due. And of course, there's always a mad dash at the last minute because no else seems to have perfected the time-out that Zach Morris made famous (maybe he had it copyrighted).

I used to think this was just something to be found in the annals of fiction. But one of my suitemates senior year left off her entire thesis till the last few weeks of the semester and as a result subsisted on Pilsbury ready made cookies every night so she'd have time to work on her paper. As soon as you see that detail in a movie somewhere, you'll know I'll have sold my screenplay.

Always a Mary Anne, never a Ginger. This one's mainly related to books. The main character's never drop dead gorgeous. Sure, they'll get Scarlett Johansson or Amanda Seyfreid or Julia Stiles to play her in the film and the girl on the cover will always have a bitchin' bod. And she's never ugly (in fact, she's usually pretty cute), but she's meant to be an Every Woman type and she knows it. She'll drop so many lines about being self-conscious about her body that the woman settling in to read will feel justified turning off the treadmill and picking up a pint of the chocolate swirl strawberry ice cream. So we have Chloe, despite her charming silhouette on the cover, angsting over her excess fifteen pounds at Yale's Exotic Erotic (aka, the Ivy League's answer to Hefner's scantily clad Valentine's Day party), or internally sighing over having to go to the gym to compete with the anorexic automatons.

Of course, when it comes down to the big date or the important formal, the protagonist always pulls out all the stops to look incredible. But at 9 am when she's late for her English discussion group, she's a sweat pants wearing, flat-haired, bleary eyed hot mess.

Star pupil. Somehow, professors will be in awe of our heroine's shining intellect based on the fact that she did the assigned reading. (Hey, every other student on campus is busy sexually servicing barnyard animals.) If she not only did the required reading but read a couple of articles on the syllabus that were just "recommended", well, expect stars to fall from the sky, along with coveted research positions that most grad students are giving their eye teeth for. If Charlotte Simmons and little Joey Potter had been real freshmen given such coveted job offers, they would have been found on campus so badly mutilated by jealous overworked TAs that no amount of candlelight vigils and Take Back the Night marches would bring them back.

Orgy porgy, orgy porgy! When they're not pulling all nighters and studying under trees, college students enjoy a non-stop orgy lifestyle. Nowhere is that true more at The Rules of Attraction's college, Camden, where the semi conscious sex with townies is the average loss of virginity scenario, where smeared ketchup at the dining hall reminds them of the weekly abortion being procured by someone somewhere on campus, and where everyone's bi because it's just easier that way.

I have to admire Tom Wolfe for managing to make his book something more than Animal House lite. I have a feeling that when he prepared for Charlotte Simmons, he knew he'd have a hard time making his fictional DuPont seem more depraved than anything Bret Easton Ellis cooked up. So while I might ordinarily have responded to the detail about the drugged girl being carried off on frat boy's shoulder while feces trickles out of the leg of her pants with "Ewww, Tom, why couldn't you have written about a girl who was fed roofies laced with Pepto!" I suppose I have to give him his dues.

Culture clash. Because college is so debauched it would make Caligula, Hunter S. Thompson, and Hedonism-bot all cluck their tongues and say, "In MY day..." most writers rely on the innocent outsider who's supposed to gape at the horror of it all. Tom Wolfe once again wins because you can't get much more horrified than Charlotte Simmons' indignity at seeing a scantily clad actress on the cover of a Cosmo magazine left in the common room.

Here I have to give Prep (boarding school, not college, but still) some love because while it's all too easy to make your heroine head for the fainting couch every five minutes, the protagonist here felt some major culture clash for a pretty good reason--they're all east coast summer home owning types and she knows it.

That's sexual harassment, and I can take it. No girl seems to get out of college without at least one rape attempt on her resume, if she's halfway decent looking, three if she's a real looker, and one per season if she's Kelly Taylor. And professorial misconduct is absolutely de rigeur. Charlotte Simmons shocked me by getting quite bit of unwanted male attention from students but never from a prof. Joey Potter and her English professor made out a little, but that was okay because he was cute and so beloved by students that he often had to pull a Dr. Jones to get away from all his adoring fans during office hours. (Yes, I'm serious.) Topanga got a creepy come on in her dorm room from a prof played by Fred Savage (hey, that's what you get for passing up Yale--you could have been Harold Bloom's lovething, but no, you had to settle for sexual harassment from Kevin Arnold, Ph.D.).

These professors make Clarence Thomas look like a choirboy. After a steady diet of sitcoms and chick lit, I assumed that I'd have to show up to my first college lecture with RapeX and mace.

O Captain, my Captain. There's always that professor who mentors the main character(s), inspiring them to do lame but camera-friendly stunts when said teacher leaves, like rising on their desks screaming "O Captain!" or riding their bicycles after their teacher's departing car (that's Mona Lisa Smile, for those of you who had better things to do than go to the movies in 2004). For those of you wondering how you make that kind of effort if the teacher doesn't get kicked out, you're not paying attention. Good teaching means getting fired by a square administration who just doesn't get it. Anybody who actually stays and teaches clearly has never asked themselves the question, "How do I reach these keedz?"

Once again, much love to Prep for having a teacher character whom the rich bitch set mocks for her poor fashion sense and who clearly is trying to be that kind of mentor to protagonist Lee Fiora but pretty much just makes her life miserable.

One book to rule them all.

So, which of my favorite books/shows make the cut in terms of being the most cliched of all? We can rule out Chloe Does Yale. It fails at portraying college as anything close to depraved on the first page when the campus sex columnist won't even flash a freshman a single breast for free admission to the naked party (damn you, glossy pink cover, for promising something you failed to deliver!).

Bret Easton Ellis's The Rules of Attraction rocks the debauched, world weary characters, but fails on the teacher/class front because everyone's too jaded to care about GPAs or mentors.

I Am Charlotte Simmons comes close but it's ultimately College FAIL because Charlotte Simmons' self deprecating quotient is lacking. Charlotte is quite attractive and knows it. In fact, in one chapter when she and another character are commiserating over not having boyfriends and being on the fringes of the college scene, Charlotte's new friend mentions that she wouldn't mind trading legs with the dumb bimbo flirting with the stupid jock. Charlotte thinks to herself, "Wait till you see my legs"--sorry, babe, you haven't learned to internally either deprecate the paucity of your tits or the overabundance of your thighs.

Sadly, I think Dawson's Creek comes closest--we've got the debauched school party scene from the POV of the sheltered smart girl (consisting mostly of Joey at a party staring disdainfully at the cleanest, most candle/incest lit frat bathroom in the entire world while sighing over erstwhile lover Dawson at a "wild party"), the smart girl acing every hurdle in her path, the vaguely inappropriate professorial relationship, and the rich roommate. Though Joey is clearly a hottie, she still gets all her self deprecating points because, as people are always telling her, "...you're beautiful, and you don't know it...you're smart and you don't believe it...you're the kind of girl that other girls get compared to."

Build a Better Chick Lit: The Nanny Diaries

The Nanny Diaries is a timeless tale of chick lit...ery. Our protagonist, an NYU psych major, goes to work for an Upper East Side (read: insane) family and learns a lesson...the lesson being that rich people with hired childcare are obnoxious snots. Which I already knew. (Hey, one of my high school yearbook jokes was "You know you're from _____ton if you fondly remember your darky nanny.")

Let's meet the cast of characters. FYI--this book is so incredibly paint by numbers. I see it less as fun lite poolside reading, and more as the template I'd suggest to anyone writing a chick lit book about a pretty, spunky everygirl who takes a job she hates while trying to woo the guy she likes with a hefty side of what passes for wit nowadays. First off, the characters aren't fleshed out people--they're archetypes. Most of them don't even have real names.

Meet the cast

We have Mrs. X, an uptight sour puss. She's a stay at home mom obsessed with getting her five year old son into the right kindergarten, into the right afterschool activities, and on the right playdates, yet who somehow spends less time with her kid than workaholics Miranda Hobbes or Murphy Brown. And she takes out all her frustrations--sexual and otherwise--on the help.

(Except Stepfordier.)

Our protagonist, Nanny. Yes, her name is actually Nanny. No, it doesn't make it better that her friends occasionally call her Nan.



The token love interest: Harvard Hottie. He's from Harvard. He's hot. What more could any woman want? Nanny meets him in the X's building. And yes, that's what Nanny refers to him as. H.H. for short.




Mr. X. Workaholic extreme, goes to any length not to hang out with family. See also: philandering douchebag.



Grayer Addison X. (Yay, a real name! I guess Emma and Nicola's editors thought naming him Baby Boy Doe was a bad idea.) He's five. His mom would probably sell him to the circus if Parenting magazine said it was a good idea, and his father has barely any idea he exists. I actually feel pretty sorry for him.



So, what else makes this book Chick Lit by Numbers? You can tell that the two authors (themselves former nannies and first time book writers) broke down what makes a book chick lit, diligently filled in scenes and characters, and voila--insta book. Here we go:

A hilariously embarrassing scene. Our heroine has to undergo some indignity. Bonus points if the sexy guy sees her. Think Bridget Jones's cellulite ridden ass bouncing up and down the fireman pole on TV for all to see. Or Jane Eyre's skirts blowing out in the wind exposing her petticoats while Mr. Rochester takes his daily constitutional in the garden. (What? You didn't read the unexpurgated Eyre?) In this case, Nanny has to accompany the X's to a work-related Halloween party to watch Greyer. Nanny and Greyer are both dressed as Teletubbies. Horror of horrors, Harvard Hottie sees Nanny in the elevator dressed as Tinky Winky.

A healthy dose of self deprecation. Chick lit chicks have made an art out of being confidently self-deprecating. Of course they're still white chicks with loving families, so a line like "I went back to my cardboard box under a bridge to whore myself out for a sandwich" is too deprecating. "I scanned the wardrobe of my three bedroom apartment wishing I didn't have so many cute outfits" is too confident. Nanny has rich parents, a grandmother who spoils her rotten, but lives in a sixth floor walk-up studio apartment that she shares with a bitchy flight attendant.

Of course, in my experience, the best way to make a girl likable but not too intimidating (at least according to my dear two dimensional friends) is her dress size. A size zero and she's too intimidating. Anything in the double digits and the reader feels too superior. But make her a pretty girl who's carrying a teensy bit too much fat (and who bitches about how orgasmic chocolate chocolate surprise is and how masochistic anyone who voluntarily uses the Stairmaster is) and she's every woman! And that is why they call it a perfect size six.

Evil employer. Employers in chick lit books about work are ruthless castrating bitch goddesses. For example, Mrs. X cares about getting her son into the perfect kindergarten, but has no idea he's even had the croup. The spunky heroine still goes to great lengths to defend her when push comes to shove. Whether it means hunting down lingerie that her boss's husband's left in the bedroom (yeah, I know, awkward), or running clear across Paris to let Nuclear Wintour know about a buy-out she's already aware of, our heroine endears herself to the reader by licking the hand that smacks her.

Protracted romance. There's got to be something inane keeping chick lit girl from the boy of her dreams. Anything from, "Um, I have to find myself, and get involved with art, and make out with the homosexual spaz who just came to town with his neurotic schizoid sister," or the fact that he thinks you wear snowman sweaters as a matter of course. In this case, it's H.H.'s idiot friends. After work one night, Nanny shows up at a bar to down a martini and internally kvetch, and winds up meeting H.H.'s high school friends who hit on her and ask her if being a nanny means she sleeps with her boss's husband.

Our angel wears Prada. Bourgeois sensibilities are the name of the game here. Whether she's Emma Bovary or Carrie Bradshaw, there's no ill (AIDS, ennui, a broken engagement) that an expensive garment won't cure. No matter how hideous the article of clothing, as long as it's stamped with a designer label, all is good. Even if she's a self professed smart girl who doesn't know an eyelash curler from a hole in the ground, when Pat Field breaks out the Chanel mink pashmina or the Burberry jumpsuit, it's on. And Nanny is no exception. When Mrs. X, the original Louis Vuitton mom, says she doesn't want a pair of silk lavender Prada heels, and tells Nanny she can have them, our little minx explodes: "PRADA! As in Madonna. As in Vogue. As in, watch me walk off in style..."

If you'd like to read this for yourself...well, clearly you haven't been paying close attention to this blog post. But hey, maybe you'll be able to churn out a book for yourself.