Janice Dickinson: Model Behavior? Ha!

 

“I am still the world’s FIRST working supermodel,” announces Janice Dickinson in the Season 3 opener of The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agencyon Oxygen.

 

That might surprise Twiggy, still working on America’s Next Top Model (as a judge).

 

Janice, 52, is a legend in her own mind. She’s spent three decades in front of and behind the camera and never stops reminding her models and us that she can still turn it out like the gorgeous gal she was on covers of Cosmopolitan in the 1970s. She does that in a photo shoot at the top of the episode this week and, dang, if the lady really can get her glam on.

 

With lips like two wet slices of raw steak, and surgically enhanced cleavage pushed up high beneath her chin, Janice rules her tiny world of skinny 20-year-olds who think the path to stardom starts on a fashion show runway.

 

The show presents Janice as talent scout, business owner and mentor to young models. It’s not entirely clear if we’re supposed to love or loathe her. Clearly, she’s nuts. But she’s so self-mocking she leaves almost no room for others to do it.

 

It’s not easy to read this woman. Her drive, her sheer force of personality are fascinating to behold—which is probably got her this TV show after a few seasons behind the judging table on Top Model. But it’s hard to tell when Janice is happy, upset or surprised—her frozen forehead betrays no worry lines. Her eyebrows permanently arc over flat, purple-shadowed eyelids.

 

As a beautiful zombie, Janice Dickinson is both compelling to look at and utterly horrifying.

 

The show is all about the shock factor—as much as Oxygen allows--so every episode of Modeling Agency gives viewers lots of eye candy. Ten seconds after meeting her model aspirants, Janice has them stripping to the skin. A continuing theme is how often she gets her male models down to their undertrou (or less). When she tells a muscle-bound lad from Italy that he’s “the whole package,” you know which package she’s complimenting.

 

This week, Janice fancies herself an equal opportunity employer. A magazine editor requests Latino models for a cover shoot, so Janice, who had no Latinos on her roster, faces hordes of gorgeous kids who line up at her shopping mall headquarters for an open audition.

 

Janice expresses great surprise that Los Angeles has so many pretty young Hispanic kids. (Janice, where’ve you been for the past 20 years?) Why not start a whole Latino division of the agency! This is her revelation.

 

Later, it turns out the “cover shoot” is actually a bust and the models would only be featured in a lesser spread inside the magazine—Janice would frown at that if her frown muscles hadn’t been murdered by injections of pig poison—but no matter. There are bigger probs for the agency when one of the top-earning male models wants to bolt for new management because of trouble getting paid.

 

The real business of running an agency isn’t as telegenic as girls and boys in bikini bottoms, so that part of The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency doesn’t get much screen time. Too bad. Sounds like Janice’s business partner is kind of a jerk. Is he ripping her off? Is this a real agency or just a shell created for a reality show?

 

But that’s getting too real, and what this show is about are moments like the male model shaving his arms and declaring that being de-furred “takes away my Italian heritage.”

 

It’s about Janice, in a dress that exposes shoulder blades like skin-covered coat hangers, declaring that it’s “a proud day for all Latin Americans!” All because she hired some skinny girls of mixed ethnicity to catwalk for chump change.

 

High on her newfound liberal hiring practices, Janice shrieks, “It’s my dream that men and women of all ethnicities remain true, free and equal!” And she throws her fist in the air as if posing for a park statue.

 

A very, very thin statue, with big boobs, large lips and windblown hair. Cue the pigeons.