Calling Christy Turlington

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

On a recent afternoon in Manhattan, the Elite modeling agency gathered a group of journalists for a panel discussion on the psychology of modeling. Present were four models, the agency's maternal-seeming president and two psychotherapists who work with the professionally beautiful to help them overcome their unique problems. Exceedingly attractive women, the audience learned, lead complicated emotional lives. Many fret that the world will never look beyond the height of their cheekbones; they are worried that they will never be perceived as intelligent. "I was ashamed to become a model," admitted Jenny, a waifish Brit. "My parents are physicists."

This long-legged quartet predicted that the Fox network drama Models Inc. would only further degrade their profession. How right they were. The Melrose Place spin-off, which premiered last week, portrays models not only as bubble- headed but, worse, as immensely unlikable. What we know of real supermodels -- of Kate and Linda and Christy -- is that they are a congenial lot. Their life seems to be one long slumber party as they giggle together, exchanging their joys and disappointments, their Marlboro Lights, their Isaac Mizrahi miniskirts. But the young women signed to Models Inc. are more fractious. They slap one another around; they refer to one another as bitches. At their kindest, they share beauty secrets: hemorrhoid cream, one girl magnanimously informs another, reduces puffiness around the eyes.

Linda Gray plays Hillary Michaels, owner of the eponymous Models Inc. (She also plays the mother of Heather Locklear's character on Melrose, but that's another story line.) Her employees include Sarah Owens (Cassidy Rae), an innocent from Iowa City who is required to wear a leather bustier on her first job; Linda Holden (Teresa Hill), a woman desperately hiding her junkie/ porn- star history; Julie Dante (Kylie Travis), an export from the Australian Outback, where her father beat her repeatedly; and Teri Spencer (Stephanie Romanov), prone to alcoholism and burdened by the grief of losing her mother on the day she was born. Here is a group that really could benefit from model psychotherapy.

The girls' troubled pasts draw them inexorably to men who cause them yet more trouble. The boyfriends and one-night stands on Models Inc. expertly deplete the women's self-esteem; they are men who make remarks like "Models -- you give them some money; you send them to clubs. Beyond that, they're worth nothing." But far more disturbing is the apparent belief among the leading male characters that a commanding sexual presence is best achieved by smearing one's hair with the whole Vavoom! product line. In real life Linda Evangelista goes out with Kyle MacLachlan; the men on this show all look like Chippendales graduates.

Perhaps that is fitting, given that the show's supermodels don't look like supermodels and dress as though they shop at Mandee. Unlike Melrose Place, Models Inc. is simply bad, not wonderfully, enjoyably bad. It would be much more fun if it depicted fashion culture realistically. Few things are more amusing than the sight of a refined beauty in a $4,000 fluorescent yellow dress made of rubber.