Out of the about 240 girls that converged on the Grand Palm Hotel's GICC, very few impressed the two talent scouts, Botswana's 2006 winner Kaone Kario and longstanding South African model Andiswa Manxima and the cast of the M-Net crew shooting the behind the scenes segments of the search. The day of hopes and dreams was not without the drama of a reality TV show; something M-Net viewers would appreciate.
After scanning the length of the line of hopefuls, which snaked its way along the right service access doors of the GICC building, and in between 'cuts' and 'takes', the very blunt Manxima, with Kario in tow, approached young girls that did not fit the bill. Visibly upset and dejected, the unfortunates who never had the opportunity to even strut for the scouts got a brief brush with the stringent rules that govern the world of the fashion model. "Unfortunately our industry is a bit cut-throat and straight forward like that; we can't beat about the bush, otherwise we will be wasting everybody's time.
I'm sure that some of them are very talented in many other ways but unfortunately they don't have the kind of talent we are here looking for," said Andiswa Manxima. Maybe because of the country's obsession with beauty pageants since Mpule Kwalegobe's unexpected win at the 1999 Miss Universe pageant, a majority of the girls, who fell below the height restriction of 1.7m showed up hoping to impress the judges with their looks and sense of fashion.
