When this week's episode of America's Next Top Model opened with a Whitney confessional, I actually moaned out loud. Esteban, who was fleeing the room in a Pavlovian response to the question "You Wanna Be On Top?" replied, "Oh come on, now, just because she's the first one doesn't mean she's going home." "Yes it doooooooooooes!" I wailed. Ever since the Top Editors started repetitively reminding us that Whitney is a plus-sized model and also, a plus-sized model, I've been cringing that the token thick girl's exit strategy was approaching. And now that her body is mostly uncovered on the final fade-out collage, it's only a matter of time until she's outtie. Especially when the pre-models travel to Roma and immediately Whitney is faced yet again with the disaster that is a designer's sample size rack. Sample sizes are 2, and from a previous episode, we know that this girl they call a "plus-sized" model is wearing a size 10.They do eventually find something for her (I suspect it was a designer throw pulled from the designer's fainting couch) and when Gai Mattiolo tells Whitney that she has a very pretty face, you could hear every fat girl in the viewing audience shudder in unison.

It sounds so much like a compliment, it really does. I understand that a person's heart might be in the right place, but when they specifically call out a pretty "face," they're implying that the rest of the person in question? Not so much. Or there's the unspoken, "If only the rest of you...". Or the slight tinge of regret as though your pretty face? You're wasting it by carting around all that ugly ass. It's as obvious an implication as Gai's comment that Dominique didn't look fresh. We all know that it means Dominique looks like she was rode hard and put away wet a few too many times. And also, you'd think with the makeovers, Miss Tyra would pay to get her grill fixed.

I was the classic "such a pretty face" girl. When I was in my early 20s, I was always getting calls from the local plus-size stores to do runway in their cut rate Fashion Shows, which I did, because the stores would give me an employee discount as compensation. They would dress me up like a bank teller or in a flowered church dress, clothes I'd never ever wear, paired with enormous and expensive costume jewelry. Seeing a girl who looked 17 in the clothes they preferred, it gave the mothers and grandmothers in the audience some hope that they were actually hip. And the manager at Maurices always pseudo-kvetched to the manager at Lane Bryant when we were lining up that it must be nice to actually have TALL girls, unlike her little cheerleaders. Then she'd look over at me--6 feet tall in heels that I would only tolerate for the 60 feet of runway--and say, "You slim down and I'll give you a spot in my show!" Which was, you know, the same show I was walking in right at that moment, so I wasn't sure what the deal was there, but ok, Ms. Maurices lady, I'll get right on that. But I digress.

My prediction at the beginning of the episode was partially accurate. Whitney and Lauren were the bottom two. Whitney was chastised for being too fakey, while Lauren's sin was not being fake enough. In the end, Lauren, who ON CAMERA stated that she had no interest in being a Cover Girl (which is the thing the pre-models are competing for...uh, who what now?), was Auf'd, leaving Whitney with a giant plus-sized target on her back. But at least she has a pretty face. Whatevs.