The Cutprice Guignol

Yes, my loves, it’s time to dip back in to the awful, dreadful, no-good-very-bad-but-also-slightly-excellent world of ANTM once more. I snapped a make-up case closed too aggressively a couple of days ago, and ever since, I’ve been thinking about the iconic commercials the show has given us – none actually good, but some so bad they’ve earned a different place in the cultural lexicon. Let us deep-dive into some God-tier reality TV cringe together!

1. Lauren – Season 10 Lipstick Commercial

There’s something Fellini-esque about this commercial that always puts me through the fucking roof. Lauren walking in there, stiff as an oak sideboard, and starting the ad with “is is the way I move my hips?”, the hideous dress, her being directed to re-apply make-up on what is clearly an immaculate red lip, with the music which turns mournful underneath her defeated Italian monologue…I would expect this in a Tarkovsky film or something, it’s so depressing in such an utterly unique way. Bonus points for my wife and queen Paulina Poriskova responding to it with “I was worried you’d do something like this” and Katarzyna visibly gasping for air as she cackles at how bad this advert is in the background.

2. Brittany – Season 8 Australian Commercial

Yeah, this is a terrible advert. Obviously it is. Brittany is frustrated (though literally so beautiful it makes my heart hurt) because her short-term memory problems make it hard to remember her lines. But it’s not that which makes this stand out to me as one of the worst – no, it’s the nerve of the judging panel to respond to this with an attempt to appeal to the “reality” of the fashion industry. This advert, may I remind you, features the models selling make-up with fake Australian accents and the most insultingly comical Simpsons-tier comedy understanding of Australia, an obvious attempt to throw off contestants just for the hell of it while they chirp about being the “prettiest Sheila in the bush” or what the fuck ever, as far removed from the reality of the fashion industry as humanly possible. But, yeah, now’s the time to invoke “the industry doesn’t have any empathy, sorry for the staples you had to get in your skull when you were a teenager”. If there’s one thing this show is dedicated to, it’s reality, dammit.

3. Ann – Season 15

When I am having a bad day with my anxiety, this advert, word-for-word, exact intonation, plays on a loop in my head. Watching the light slowly die behind Ann’s eyes as she tries to stay upright on rollerskates and pronounces “acai” wrong to this day is one of the purest moments of comedy this show has ever had for me. Ann Ward was doing us all a favour, to be honest, by making sure we understood that there were at least a few things she couldn’t do, and advertising in rollerskates is one of them.

4. Brooke – Cycle 6

“I just love wearing CoverGirl,” I murmur to myself, as I put on my foundation every morning. “It’s just so nice to wear!”. The Cycle Six commercial episode is one of the greatest of the show’s entire run (the rap battle challenge? I mean, come on), and I could have picked any single one of these ads for this list, but there’s something about Brooke’s punishingly awful mixture of insincerity and complete incompetence that really does it for me. Throw in the hideous mismatching lipliner and a dress made of purple bako-foil and it’s fully giving “me pretending to want to dance with a boy I don’t like at a 2000s school disco”.

5. Marjorie – Cycle 11

Finally, I couldn’t do this list without talking about Marjorie’s gangling commercial for COLOUR BLAST LASH CLASH COVERGIRL or whatever this product is actually called. Every time I watch this advert, with Marjorie almost speed-rapping the dialogue in her eagerness to get off-camera, I fully expect her to finish it by flinging herself down the stairs behind her. It’s got the frantic, paranoid energy of a conspiracy theorist’s rant on some niche corner of YouTube, but against the backdrop of every teen girl magazine that ever existed.

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