Britain's Missing Top Model, which premiered in the UK in the summer of 2008, began airing on BBC America last night. All of the 8 contestants are white. All of the 8 contestants are thin. All of the 8 contestants are conventionally pretty. Each one of them says, at some point in the first episode, that they think they're attractive. These are not women with confidence issues. (Debbie, who lost most of her arm in a bus crash, has posed for Playboy.) The judges make some good points — one says, being disabled is part of the world, "Why shouldn't it be part of fashion?" But while watching these women — all pleasing to the human eye — I thought, well, it's not much of a stretch to find beautiful people beautiful. Wouldn't an eye-opening show feature women with cleft palates or port-wine stains — visible differences which tend to make people uncomfortable?

Then again, maybe the fact that they're all pretty is the point? These are not your "average" disabled people, just as models are not "average" people. The contestants want a shot in an industry in which aesthetics is everything, so, naturally, they're going to be aesthetically pleasing. Maybe the point is: "I'm pretty, I just happen to have one arm, but don't let that stop you from hiring me to model designer shoes." The problem is, that doesn't make for very dramatic television.

Take Debbie, for instance. when asked if she'd show off her disability, she was totally fine with it. So her photo shoot was pretty boring.

And Sophie, who survived a what she describes as a "violent" car accident and is paralyzed, also had a boring (gorgeous, but anti-climatic) photo shoot.

At the critique, the judges said one nice thing and one critical thing about every model's picture, which Jenny from Seattle found frustrating. "Don't patronize me," she spat.

The judges couldn't even agree on what the show is really about. Two deaf women are in the final 8, but the judges wondered: Shouldn't the winner be visibly disabled? Or isn't that part of the point: Not all disabilities are visible? In the argument, the disabled judged fought for a girl with a visible disability, but was outvoted by the other able-bodied judges, and the contestant the disabled judge liked was sent home, and the judges had to watch her limp out the door. Why not listen to the one disabled judge? Dumb.

Frankly, the show would be more successful, more interesting if it followed one disabled model and her trials and triumphs in trying to get work — as well as how she was encountered in the fashion industry. Because watching the judges niggle and nit-pick over eight beautiful women is tiresome.

In July 2008 a reader spotted a Nordstrom catalog featuring a model in a wheelchair. I'd much rather watch a series about how this came to be and follow as someone, Michael-Moore style, asks execs why we haven't seen other catalogs/ad campaigns do the same. Maybe the world is "missing" a "top" model to tell that story.

Earlier: On BBC Show, Disabled Models Learn Same Lessons As Any Other Models

[Madrid, November 3. Image via Getty]

Members of the Spanish Blind People's Organisation (ONCE) have breakfast accompanied by their guide dogs at a restaurant in Madrid, on November 3, 2009, to claim their right to acces restaurants, bars and hotels with their dogs. AFP PHOTO / DOMINIQUE FAGET (Photo credit should read DOMINIQUE FAGET/AFP/Getty Images)

Dean's mom, May, explained the situation thus:

[Abercrombie] hired her unaware that she had a disability, however when they were made aware, within 6 shifts, they removed her from the shop floor and wanted to hide her in their stock room because her prosthetic hand was breaking their "Look Policy". [...] her minor imperfection was repeatedly pointed out by various staff members who harassed her for wearing a mini cardigan (which she was instructed to wear over her usual uniform). After only her 2nd shift on the shop floor, she was told that they could not have her being seen on the shop floor, as she looked different to everybody else and asked her to report to the stockroom while they found a replacement.

So basically Riam Dean was not only discriminated against, but also jerked around, as store employees first forced her to wear a cardigan and then made fun of her for it. Riam told the BBC that her manager told her she could return to the sales floor if she removed the cardigan, and that this made her feel "taunted."

In her statement to the court, Riam says,

It made me feel as though [the store manager] had picked up on my most personal, sensitive and deeply buried insecurities about being accepted and included. Her words pierced right through the armour of 20 years of building up personal confidence about me as a person, and that I am much more than a girl with only one arm. She brought me back down to earth to a point where I questioned my self worth. My achievements and triumphs in life were brought right down to that moment where I realised that I was unacceptable to my employer because of how I looked. I have never before encountered the stark reality of this attitude, but deep down I have always feared this, and in that moment my worst fears were realised. My entire perception of my own my self worth was shattered. It was a moment of clarity and pain.

A former Abercrombie "visual manager," once in charge of hiring and recruiting, e-mailed to let us know that the discrimination against Dean was par for the course for the company. The ex-employee says that an Abercrombie regional manager "canceled one of my otherwise-perfectly-good hires when it turned out he had a deformed arm." He also says,

There is a "style guide" that hiring managers get to see. It contains almost no text - just a few dozen pages, each with a full-sized color photograph of different ethnicities - a male and a female for each. They are supposed to serve as examples of the kind of people you should hire. Presumably so the managers will know what good-looking minorities look like. They're amongst the confidential files that are never meant to leave the office, but I'm surprised none have ever surfaced. (And all of the minorities, by the way, are as white looking as a person can be without actually being Caucasian).

This sounds different from the "guidebook" that Dean was given as an employee, which dictated the length of her hair and fingernails — and frankly we're not sure which is more upsetting. All the information about Riam Dean's case suggests that her mistreatment was not an isolated incident, but rather part of a pattern of discriminatory and authoritarian policies that created not only a hostile work environment but also an environment that was subtly damaging to customers. After all, what kind of message does it send to shoppers when all your employees must be "white-looking" and conform to a bizarrely rigid set of appearance standards? May Dean says Riam "is prepared to put up a fight on behalf of all disabled people and refuses to allow such prejudice to go unnoticed." So do we.

Disabled woman sues clothes store [BBC]
Student With Prosthetic Arm Sues Clothing Store Abercrombie [Daily Express]
Riam Dean: "I Questioned My Self-Worth" [Zelda Lily]

Earlier: Abercrombie "Banishes" Girl With Prosthetic Arm To Storeroom Because She Doesn't Fit The "Look Policy"

For now, it's legal for Tabitha Darling to ride her seeing eye horse Trixie through Target and for Debbie Rose to keep a monkey with her to sooth her anxiety attacks. But soon the government may ban people from using certain species as service animals, since not all animals can be as well trained as dogs. Clip at left.