Britain's Next Top What Now???

Wow. Just...wow. I have had a quite an Internet day. Earlier today I fell in utterly horrorstruck pity-laughing-love with Chase No Face, the sadly disfigured cat who has his own blog. And now...this.



I don't even know how to respond to this, but the British have created a new reality show: "Britain's Missing Top Model." Which might at first sound like a poor attempt at plagiarism. "Missing" as a synonym for "next"? Not very smooth. But what are they missing, in fact? Limbs, mostly. That's right: This is basically Britain's Next Top Disabled Model. I laughed in disbelief when I heard this, but it's TOTALLY REAL. Ugh. There's fun Tyra-enabled camp, and then there's the truly depraved, exploitative and icky, and this is the latter. Not that being disabled is gross or horrific or laughable or any of that, but do these people need to be wheeled down the catwalk? I'd say the answer is a pretty clear no. There are far better ways to humanize the disabled rather than, uh, "making it fashion." Who'da thunk America would come out looking like the tasteful one in the reality-TV game?