JOB SWAP?: Kelly Rowland
Fire your publicist and toss your ugly employees to the curb. The new way to garner unprecedented attention for your company is to get a reality show.
Even though most people hate going to work, we seem to have a fascination with watching other people at work. There are Dumpster divers, bakers, pawn-shop guys, car repossessors, bounty hunters and psychics to name a handful.
But the world of modeling has, for the most part, been restricted to terrible, short-lived dramas and competition shows where the winner gets a modeling contract and a one-way ticket to obscurity.
Enter E!’s “Scouted,” a show where each week a girl is plucked out of her everyday life — either by a modeling scout for New York’s One Model Management or by being picked at a company cattle call.
What makes this show different from other reality workplace shows is that, for one thing, it features only genetic lottery winners — gorgeous, tall, cellulite-free girls who look like they come from another planet.
As you know, for the last 2,000 years, the fashion industry has sold clothes by putting them on women who look nothing like the rest of us. And, somehow, it makes the rest of us think we’ll look like that by wearing the same clothes. Right.
At any rate, this new series focuses each week on two magnificent creatures, who have been scouted by the agency at malls, restaurants, fast-food joints, sporting events and every other place where normal folk and tall, gorgeous girls gather.
The episodes follow the two different girls each week from the time they are scouted or picked from the cattle call to the time they are either accepted or rejected by the agency.
This means that the pros take them through the paces of makeovers, haircuts and a trial shoot. And you will be surprised who makes it and who doesn’t.
What I discovered when I was a beauty editor for both Elle and Cosmopolitan is that the camera does not always see what the eye sees. The plainest women can be knockouts on camera, and the most gorgeous girls can look like nothing in pictures.
The regulars are a group from One who work to develop the new girls and then decide at the end of each episode whether or not to sign them.
Interestingly, on the premiere, the two girls are actually lovely kids who are close with their families — not the usual reality show egomaniacs.
Too bad one gets picked. In real life — as opposed to reality TV — runways are no place for kids.