I didn’t really talk about it yet, but Elyse eventually is my favourite antm contestant ever. It wasn’t really based on her attitude, as it was questionnable at times, but that girl really had something special, that kept me captivated by her whenever she appeared on my screen.
Maybe I let myself influenced by the fact that the show gave her so much screentime, my boyfriend just made me notice in my second rewatch that it basically was « Elyse’s show » in the first few episodes. I almost think that she practically had the original antm winner edit (not meaning they initially intended to give her the win, but still). She was the medical school student soon-to-be-doctor whose supposed intelligence didn’t fit the mold of the model stereotypes, and she always made sure to remind us how their various tasks could be stupid and didn’t required her brain. I think it was quite unnecessary and pretentious for her to always repeat that. And aside from that, she was a bit of a backstabber to be honest, as she had no business bashing people behind their back.
And then you have her massive rant about everybody surrounding her in this competition. I’m not saying that this is something I agreed with, but I kind of understand where it comes from. At that moment, the girls along with Miss Jay spent the day judging her because of her doctor aspiration, eventually implying that it meant she didn’t really wanted to be here, or at least not as much as the others did. This was kind of bullshit because Elyse wouldn’t have give this competition a shot otherwise. And you can tell by her post show work that she did care about modelling. In the end, I think Elyse’s arrogant overall attitude really came from the fact that she felt like nobody took her seriously at the beginning.
But she quickly proved them wrong, by becoming the real threat of the cycle. And it started with the photo that I consider to be the best photo in antm history ; her magnificent snake beauty shot. After that she took gorgeous photos after gorgeous photos, her portfolio was near flawless from that point on. Her only average photo was more due to the bad photography of that week rather than her performance. I still don’t consider her portfolio as one of the strongest to come from the show, because the beautiful photoshoots were seriously lacking in it, but Elyse still didn’t disapoint.
In regards of her walk, I think it was pretty solid, one of the best from the group. And she surprisingly delivered a very strong commercial (despite admitting she took it like a complete joke, which tells a lot about her abilities), which made her a very complete model. She also has a somewhat captivating presence, the second she stepped into the audition room in the first episode I was totally drawn into her, I just couldn’t ignore her. The fact that I found Elyse so fascinating in person certainly plays a part in my admiration for her, she just was such a natural model (this is precisely where Adrianne faltered in comparison for example).
Elyse was the first of the three finalists to be eliminated. I was sad to see her go, and even though the reasonning of the judges made sense, I initially thought that she was robbed of competing in the finale at that point. But now I think I have an idea as to why she wasn’t selected as part of the final two. The fact is, the final runway was for the Baby Phat fashion collection designed by Kimora Lee Simons. And she made it clear through all the judging session, that she didn’t like Elyse because she was « too thin and too pale », without adding any extra comments. So I think she just didn’t want her collection to be represented by a woman whose body wasn’t appealing to her, and even if that’s not the only reasonning for Elyse’s elimination, I think it played a strong part in it and sealed her fate.
I’m not to mad about Elyse placing third on the show, she still had a great run and shined in most of the challenges and photoshoots. Her personnality could came accross as arrogant but I really enjoyed her sarcastic sense of humor, as well as her captivating beauty in person. That’s all the reasons why Elyse is my winner of cycle 1, and my favourite model to ever compete on this show.
