Victoria Coren
Body Language
It was only a matter of time. After all, you have to admit that real supermodels are slightly imperfect. Cindy Crawford has a mole. Kate Moss has bad hair days. An unflattering picture was once taken of Linda Evangelista.
We simply cannot be expected to put up with these flaws. It is nearly the 21st century and we deserve more than these defective crones with their hideous blemishes, not to mention weight fluctuations (sometimes a whole kilogram can be gained and lost within a month). Thank the Lord that someone has finally invented the computer- generated supermodel.
“Webbie Tookay” is a digitally composed “woman”, created by designer Stephen Stahlberg and signed by the Elite model agency for their new division, Elite Illusion 2K. Director of this new division Ricardo Bellino says: “In the future, virtual models are going to become as widely used as real ones.”
Visually, nothing much is going to change as far as the public is concerned. A model’s job is basically to show what clothes look like. You might ask what is the point of electronically dressing a computerised woman, since that gives no clue as to how the frock will look on a real person – but the same is true of Claudia Schiffer.
If you flick through the pages of your average glossy magazine, they might as well all be robots. How often, honestly, have you found yourself thinking: “That’s a helpful picture. It represents exactly how I’d look in a chainmail G-string and gold tiara?”
No, the reason why these fake models will never work is entirely psychological. The supermodel genre came about because we needed more lives, not more beauty. This is an era of multimedia nosiness: there are so many outlets for dishing the dirt on the famous that the traditional gamut of actresses, royals and pop stars simply couldn’t fuel them.
We demand hours of television and pages of newsprint every day, full of information that is none of our business. But Lenny Henry can’t be caught cheating on his wife every day: the man has scripts to write. Will Carling doesn’t have much of a job any more and, bless him, he’s doing his best to fill space, but he can’t work alone.
We needed Crawford, Moss and Schiffer because we needed people to make statements about how Richard Gere wasn’t gay; to hole up in Cannes with Johnny Depp and go into rehab; to form engagements with bizarre American magicians. There was a gap in the gossip market and the supermodels stalked selflessly in to fill it. We have no use for a supermodel who spends her downtime working as a screensaver on her creator’s Apple Mac. That’s not what modern celebrity is about.
Let’s take a look at the talking chimp. You may have read about Panbanisha, the ape who presses buttons and speaks through a computer voice synthesiser. She can say “I want coffee,” and – her most complex thought process to date – “I was thinking about eating something but I didn’t.”
Looking at those two statements, Panbanisha would make a great supermodel. Just give her a bikini wax and teach her to stand. She’s already got the backstage conversation, which puts her streets ahead of Webbie Tookay the virtual model.
My point is that the time may have come to breed monkey celebrities. If the supermodel genre is exhausted to the point at which we need to make them on computers, let’s invite the apes to speak instead. Soon Panbanisha could be posing for Loaded, having a one-night stand with Jack Nicholson and checking into The Priory. Pick up a few more like her and the newspapers could be full every day. If male sexual desire were only a little more open- minded about body hair, Webbie Tookay would have nothing on the Panbanishas of this world.
As it is, of course, one has to concede that Webbie has the looks. But even there, one can smell problems on the horizon. Webbie, the first in this virtual vanguard, is apparently composed of features from existing beauties. To create her perfection, the designer has borrowed heavily from Tyra Banks, one of America’s most successful black models. Except he’s made her white. As the old saying goes: the can is open, the worms are on the floor.