Glossy tale of four supermodels was too heavy with the airbrush
Apple TV, Wednesday HHHHH Sex: A Bonkers History
Sky History/Now, Monday HHHHH
Cindy, Linda, Naomi, Christy. They don’t need surnames, which is annoying because how can I now refer to Linda as Linda ‘we don’t wake up for less than $10,000 a day’ Evangelista? I’ll have to think of working it in somehow. They’re the subjects of The Super Models, a docuseries charting their rise in the 1980s and 1990s and it does take you right back – Flex shampoo, as advertised by Cindy. I can smell it right now: where did it go? Although, if there were any justice in this world, the series would be called Linda. She’s the only one who lets down her guard and gives something of herself. That’s Linda ‘We don’t wake up for less than $10,000 a day’ Evangelista, by the way.
This series had been much anticipated. The four have a voice! Finally! It’s as if animals raised in the zoo were suddenly released from captivity into the wild. What will they do? Might they gambol recklessly? Might they dish dirt? How will they behave? Tamely, for the most part.
This is highly watchable, but for hours at a stretch it is as glossy as any of the magazines they bestrode. You learn more about Cindy Crawford’s home furniture than you do about abuses in the indusTwiggy? try, or Naomi Campbell’s phone-throwing antics.
As all four women serve as executive producers, it’s an authorised biography, you could say, and while that’s frustrating, it’s understandable, and even necessary. Across the four hours the one thing you notice is how their lives were not just controlled, but controlled by men. The agents, designers, photographers: nearly all men. Why are men in charge of women’s fashion? No one asks and it’s not even pointed out. Good job one of us is observant.
Directed by Roger Ross Williams and Larissa Bills, it is standard fare, combining archive footage with talking heads while the women are all interviewed. They are beautifully lit and still transfixingly beautiful.
The first episode covers their background and being discovered, usually by some talent scout while they’re shopping in a mall or, in Naomi’s case, while hanging out with friends in Covent Garden. The second charts how they became superstars and were the first models to ‘cross from high fashion to mass culture’ but, I don’t know. There’s a great deal of padding of the kind that has fashion experts saying ‘they are still redefining what it is to be a model’ along with other stuff that is, surely, nonsensical. (In their recent Vogue interview we’re told they ‘create shapes that don’t actually accord with their actual bodies’ and I would have liked more on the physics of that but, alas, no further information was forthcoming).
There are some interesting moments pertaining to Naomi’s battle with racism in the industry, for example, and why John Casablancas, the top agent at the time, put it around that ‘I was difficult’. And there’s a touching moment when Christy cuts her mother’s hair in her garden and you can see that Christy is going grey herself. I don’t know why I was touched but I was. Any negatives that could be aimed at them are dealt with briskly.
Clips of feminist critics such as Naomi Wolf and Camille Paglia have been and gone in seconds. I had hoped that this would address ageing, because it would be so fascinating. I find it difficult enough and I was no beauty. (Aw, thanks, but really, I wasn’t). What’s it like, when you’ve been not just a beauty, but a professional beauty? How might you cope? How much does it hurt? There is silence on that. Apart from Linda. Oh, Linda.
She’s had breast cancer and a double mastectomy and also a cosmetic procedure, CoolSculpting, that went horribly wrong. ‘I wanted to like what I saw in the mirror,’ she says, ‘and the commercial said I would like myself better.’ The results were awful and she hid herself away for many years as she entered a deep depression. She says: ‘To lose the job I loved, I’m heartbroken.’ That’s the only time I felt something and the only time this felt like it wasn’t… airbrushed?
Sex: A Bonkers History, presented by Amanda Holden and historian Dan Jones, isn’t just bonkers, it’s inexplicable. It feels as if it should be for children but, as it tours Pompeian phalluses and offers teasers like: ‘after the break Dan makes and tests spermicide from Ancient Egypt’ we can assume it isn’t. The main aim appears to be getting Amanda into a state of undress as much as possible. I know people have strong feelings about her but I will say this: she is game. And also: she never throws projects back in her agent’s face. Dan doesn’t either, presumably, but he has lived to regret it, judging from the sheepish look on his face throughout.
It appears to have been made on a budget of around £3.50. The first of the (random) items was on Spartan women, who were known for being physically strong and sporty, so do we fly off to an ancient Greek stadium? No. Instead, we get Holden running round a track in a tiny dress. She was also Cleopatra in the bath at some point, although I can’t recall if that was before or after Dan made his spermicide. (Pine nuts, honey, chilli seeds, if that’s of interest, and then smeared on a carrot.)
I’d prefer to talk about Flex again, if you don’t mind. Can you still smell it?