The Future According to Tyra Banks

Neatly swapping the horrific corporate inequality of the present for a horrific corporate inequality of the future, this humorous WSJ op-ed by obscure novelist Tyra Banks has thoroughly aroused my death instinct. Here’s her vision, cobbled together from a non-degree-granting Harvard Business School extension program and too many America’s Next Top Model photo shoots:

Food: “Scarce.”

Prejudice: “Nearly eradicated,” but also organized by socioeconomics rather than physical features, just like it is today.

Race: Nonexistent except in the few people with very light or very dark skin, who will be “rare and heralded for that uniqueness.” Models, who will be robots, will have this look. Human models, made obsolete, will presumably write opinion columns.

The “golden-skinned everyday people”: Those with a “Rihanna or Beyonce or me kind of look,” as selected by their parents at the drive-through fetus feature selector.

Innovation: Drugstore plastic surgery. The more old-fashioned of us will take beauty pills whose effects will be dramatic but temporary; we will take these pills “repeatedly,” presumably unto death.

Companionship: Everyone will own a sponsored robot companion who will constantly suggest new products to buy.

Feminism: “An irrelevant concept because the balance of power between the sexes will have shifted dramatically. Women, in control of when they can have children (up to age 120!), and having more degrees and education than men, will be in charge.”

I guess we have our answer for why Tyra never finished the Modelland trilogy; her heart lies elsewhere, in a heady whirlpool of misandry and YA dystopia. [WSJ]