Life is a runway, especially during London Fashion Week. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images
The world is one long catwalk. Whether you're walking along the station platform or floating up a supermarket aisle, like it or not, we are all models on life's runway. Don't even bother protesting - you've been checked out as you've edged towards the back of the bus, maybe not by fashion's elite but by a silent front row of commuters making little mental notes about your appearance. You are a model, just not a very well paid one.
Blame television for shaping my new outlook. For quite some time I've survived on a diet of fashion-related programming: from America's Next Top Model to Make Me a Supermodel - they're easily digestible, highly addictive and extremely low on substance. But the mothership arrives on February 18 on MTV. Called The Agency, it's a reality TV show about New York model agency Wilhelmina Models. No conspiratorial, girly chats with Tyra Banks here, just blunt comments - well, not so much blunt as limb-lopping sharp. "You're way too old", "you're too short", "you're too big", "your eyes are too close together", "your face is asymmetrical" barks a booker at bunch of hopefuls in the first five minutes. "She's a fat cow," yells another booker about a very slim model. This after earlier grabbing said model's waist and declaring at high volume: "It's like the Pillsbury Doughboy."
What a great television programme The Agency should be - like X-Factor, it has just enough requisite tears and casual savagery to ensure we'll all tune in for the next episode. But since watching the first instalment I've been getting a nasty repeat. Surely when someone pokes the belly of another who is clearly not overweight and suggests they are not dissimilar to an internationally renowned purveyor of baked goods the message to the rest of us is rather dubious. What are they trying to say: that we are all fat?
There's nothing shocking in the discovery that a series on the world of beautiful people reveals ugly methods. But previously model shows, such as America's Next Top Model, have dealt with the cut-throat realities of the fashion industry by suggesting to contestants that if you smile wide enough, clench your buttocks tight enough, and really work on those different looks you might just succeed (all while booting one contestant off each week - but hey, that's showbiz).
And like a sucker, I've bought the whole thing. I want those models to succeed. I want them to win a contract with CoverGirl cosmetics and a spread in Seventeen magazine - because in our celebrity obsessed times there is no higher accolade. The problem with the Agency, however, is it suggests failure from the start - what hope is there for the rest of us if one of Wilhelmina's own signings is dubbed "doughy Chloe"?
Now, I'm short, receding and spreading in the middle. I'll probably never grace the catwalks of fashion week - but I'm not letting anyone rule it out on my behalf. That's why The Agency should come with a health warning: "May seriously damage your dreams."
