America's Next Top Model?

Future Miss Dead America

Fashion models once represented the most beautiful members of our species. I have never minded seeing them, even if they do spark a twinge of jealousy from time to time. But in these days of political correctness gone amok, that is no longer the case. In recent weeks, with New York City's famed Fashion Week underway, I have read about two runway models who are less than perfect: one has Down's Syndrome and the other is paralyzed from the waist down, strutting her stuff on the catwalk using a walker.

Give me a break. I know there are people saddled with terrible burdens, and my heart goes out to them, often to a debilitating degree. But really, need they be paraded in front of us as icons? What's next --the hideously ugly? After all, ugly folks still wear clothes. Or the morbidly obese -- America's favorite downtrodden losers? Hey, here's one you never see: the old. Imagine a withered old lady with sagging skin and a dowager's hump crawling down the runway. How inspiring to our young people!

Sadly, seniors are the one group that nobody seems to think needs heralding.