Cheryl Shops

America's Next Top Model recap
I'll admit, I was a little sad to see Anchal leave on last week's America's Next Top Model, especially after the ridiculousness of last week's challenge--Tyra really outdid herself on that one. Asian/Southeast Asian girls are really underrepresented on that show (as well as in the modeling world in general), and while Anchal didn't have a "runway" body, she had a totally gorgeous face and I thought she photographed pretty well. Unlike Jaeda, who finally got a long-overdue cut tonight. In this week's action-packed episode, the girls had an acting lesson, wherein we all found out that CariDee once tried to kill herself. Yikes. CariDee, however, is a fighter, and she kicked butt in the challenge, winning herself a guest spot on One Tree Hill. The girls also found out they'd be traveling to "the fashion capital of Spain," Barcelona. (And thus came my favorite part of the episode, when Tyra, grasping at straws, said Spain was home to Custo Barcelona, Balenciaga--the namesake designer, not Nicolas Ghesquiere, whose mortorcycle bag was shown in the photo illustration for our benefit--and...model Esther Canadas!) MW and I took a trip to Barcelona a few years ago, so the scenery is bringing back fond memories for me. Anyway, after dinner with some Spanish male models, the girls found out they'd be filming a Secret commercial in Catalan, the crazy-sounding weird Spanish dialect native to Barcelona. Everyone but Melrose and, strangely, Eugenia, sucked; Jaeda totally flipped out; and I don't know what happened with CariDee exactly, but she looked kind of retarded. Like, literally, she looked retarded. For dramatic tension, I'm sure, she was in the bottom two (the lesson: don't let Tyra down!), but I'm kind of over the twins and I'm now rooting for CariDee. Although, from next week's scenes, it doesn't look like that episode will be a cake walk for her either...

Next week, go-sees in the big city (is it really the fashion capital of Spain? Wouldn't that be Madrid?) and a photo shoot that's sure to anger animal-rights activists!