American’s Next Top Model…could be BROWN?

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mallu girls are hot.jpg BREAKING NEWS THAT PEOPLE WHO CRAVE SUBSTANCE WILL FIND ABSOLUTELY IRRELEVANT:

“america’s next top model”, the UPN reality show that has almost made erstwhile supermodel tyra banks relevant again, has, for the first time in the show’s history, a brown contestant in the mix.

Julie Ann Titus is 19 years old, pulchritudinous, and a whopping 5’10”. acccording to the official “america’s next top model” website, she “…wants to create a new image for Indian women.”

judging from the extended-commercial for the “ANTM” season premiere that i just saw, which featured soundbites from all 14 contestants, our girl is SASSY!

yes, i am well aware that editing often renders our perceptions of reality tv contestants meaningless, but if what i caught a glimpse of tonight is any indication of who Julie is, she has enough attitude to make vin diesel incontinent.

i applaud her poised confidence as well as her unyielding, “anti-drama” stance, and i look forward to wasting an hour each week cheering her on this fall. go on with your bad self, jules. 🙂 oh, and did i mention that she’s malayalee? and that this fact doesn’t make me biased towards her at all? 😉

56 thoughts on “American’s Next Top Model…could be BROWN?”

  1. i feel like adding that IMO, this pic makes her look worse than she did on TV, where she was quite cute. now you can all exhale– i know you were hoping for more info. 😉

  3. Student at Bellevue Community College

    definitely not a typical american desi. Is she half? Doesn’t look it, but “Titus” sounds more Appalachian than Indian.

  4. A number of people go to 2-year schools, then transfer to a 4 year school, to save some money. Plus, since she’s planning to pursue modelling full-time, 4 years in college would not make much sense – those are the prime earning years.

  5. Titus is a somewhat common malayalee christian surname. Basically anything with biblical roots (particularly Old Testament) can appear somewhere in a M-C name – for ex., my middle name is Augustine…

    I know many-an-uncle with names like Sebastian, Zachariah, Cyrus, etc. which are pretty much out-of-vogue names in most of the West with the exception of Kerala & parts of W. Virginia 😉

  6. well, i prefer anna to her 😉 if anna were blond, i might have thought her last name was kournikova ;);)

  7. vinod:

    Titus is a somewhat common malayalee christian surname. Basically anything with biblical roots (particularly Old Testament) can appear somewhere in a M-C name – for ex., my middle name is Augustine…

    though i don’t think you took it this way, no dis intended, just an observation. I have nothing against Appalachians. Even if her last name was Cletus rather than Titus she’d still be fine 🙂

    Also, she doesn’t look like the typical Malayalee, IMO. Looks much more North Indian (angular features rather than round nose), dontcha think?

  8. Also, she doesn’t look like the typical Malayalee,

    The Mallu’s are a weird breed – there’s some evidence that the Mallu vs. Tamilian split is the product of higher Mallu admixture w/ the barbarian invaders from the North vs. the more Dravidian-pure Tamils.

    (GC – you can probably verify this faster than I)

  9. Also, she doesn’t look like the typical Malayalee, IMO. Looks much more North Indian (angular features rather than round nose), dontcha think?

    actually, i think she looks quite malayali…she has very large, very round eyes, full lips and dusky skin. also, her hair seems straightened, which would seem “very kerala” to me since many malayali women have wavy if not extremely curly hair. that is the exact texture one would get if one was working with frizz-prone curly hair to begin with.

    i didn’t see angular at all, really- i also don’t think that the photograph here (or on the linked website) give much chance at a detailed examination. the website’s smaller photo made her look anything but north indian.

    to me, the least malayali thing about her is her height. that’s what she has in common with her northern counterparts.

    round nose?

  11. for ex., my middle name is Augustine…

    !!!

    vinod, i’ve never met an augustine. that’s hot…and…so…catholic. 😉

    well done, explaining the (relatively) good part of malayalee names…my little nephew Isaiah’s parents are both second-gen hipsters who were born and raised here, who couldn’t resist the lure of the old book. 😉 . . . well, i prefer anna to her 😉 if anna were blond, i might have thought her last name was kournikova ;);)

    dear lord, man! i’m paying you to fawn realistically! tone that shit down. 😉

    j/k

    thank you very much. you made my day with such undeserved sweetness. btw, i prefer me to jules, too. my nose is “rounder”. 😀

  12. The Mallu’s are a weird breed – there’s some evidence that the Mallu vs. Tamilian split is the product of higher Mallu admixture w/ the barbarian invaders from the North vs. the more Dravidian-pure Tamils.

    (GC – you can probably verify this faster than I)

    Yeah, I’d have to look specifically into the Mallu vs. Tamil distinction (there probably aren’t any any multiple locus autosomal studies for just those two populations, which makes the conclusions more difficult).

    but on a related note, see this post on the state-of-the-art re: genetics of caste in india.

  13. re: Mallu vs. Tamil –

    Most of the refs I’ve dug up deal with Language origins. Malayalam is, in many respects, Tamil hybridized with Sanskrit. Back in the day, of course, such language mixing usually meant someone’s fore-parents were getting jiggy.

    For ex – wikipedia –

    Malayalam belongs to the southern group of Dravidian languages. Its affinity to Tamil is the most striking. Proto-Tamil Malayalam, the common stock of Tamil and Malayalam apparently disintegrated over a period of four of five centuries from the ninth century on, resulting in the emergence of Malayalam as a language distinct from Tamil. As the language of scholarship and administration Tamil greatly influenced the early development of Malayalam. Later the irresistable inroads the Brahmins made into the cultural life of Kerala accelerated the assimilation of many Indo-Aryan features into Malayalam at different levels.
    Influence of Sanskrit is most prominent in the Brahimin dialects and least in the Harijan dialects…Malayalam has borrowed from Sanskrit thousands of nouns, hundreds of verbs and some indeclinables. Some items of basic vocabulary also have found their way into Malayalam from Sanskrit.

  14. found one… It doesn’t get into genetic marker precision like GC would want to see but it does provide a plausible history –

    These people, Keralites of Kerala and elsewhere, are, in the view of anthropologists, “an ethnological museum.” Several racial strains are easily recognized in the racial composition of the Keralites of different communities…
    The Aryans who reached Kerala in the eighth century changed signifi-cantly the racial, social, political, and cultural landscape of Kerala. This will be discussed briefly in the next chapter. It is important to remember that though the Aryans conquered the Mundas and the Dravidians of Kerala, it was ultimately the Aryans who were conquered and absorbed by Kerala, creating a new brand of Hindu religion, a strong hybrid race, and a new culture–a blend of Munda, Dravidian, and Aryan cultures.

    This date does correspond to the emergence of Malayalam as separate from Tamil cited earlier…

    Ok… now we’re deep into GNXP territory 😉

  15. thank you very much

    well, a white lie a day keeps anna’s blues away 😉 😉

    j/k .. you are pretty cute 🙂

    you made my day with such undeserved sweetness

    yes, yes, i agree you don’t deserve it 😉

  18. anna, you should stop self-posting under different names 🙂

    i know.

    i mean, totally. being “GC” is EXHAUSTING. 😉

  19. Well first of all malus are not a weird breed many are darker but still gorgeous…julie is reppin for south she dont care bout nothin…we have biblical last names because most southern indians are christians! Julie is workin it and has much malu pride.

  20. Well first of all malus are not a weird breed many are darker but still gorgeous

    kathryn, it’s possible that you are not aware that the gentleman who asserted that playful statement is the “darkly gorgeous” mutineer Vinod, who is 100% malayalee (AFAIK). there are two malayalee mutineers (Anna is as well) and both of them are quite fetching, so worry not about “reppin for south”.

    we have biblical last names because most southern indians are christians

    sigh. actually, most of south india is not xtian. regarding kerala, the state with the highest concentration of them:

    Today, about 60 percent of the population are Hindu, 20 percent Muslim, and another 20 percent Christian. Once there was even a sizable Jewish population. The first Christian community is said to have been established by one of the Twelve Apostles, St. Thomas, in the year 52CE. Whether St.Thomas himself actually sailed to Kerala , the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church is quite old. Early congregations were established in Muziris and were followed by others from the Persian Christian Church. Persian decor and objects can still be seen in such churches as St. Mary’s Valliappali in the northern part of Kerala. Christians became important in overseas trade and had the status of Brahmans. As word of peaceful and prosperous conditions spread, more Christians migrated to Kerala. Today there are about 20 different Christian groups, some following Orthodox (similar to Greek and Russian Orthodox) rites, others Roman Catholic, and some Protestant. Christians can always be identified by family names, such as Thomas and Matthew.

  21. Well all i kno is we are christian n we are from south india…im from kerala we all come from the same area in kerala…and we want it known why our last names are wha they are! and we take much pride in being malu

  22. kathryn, your pride and passion for all things (with the notable exceptions of informed discourse and wordcraft) are evident for all to see. it is obvious that you are fiercely loyal to your background, as you should be. kerala (as the link i provided in my last post proves) is an astonishing, magical place that defies assumptions and exceeds expectations.

    no one is denigrating kerala’s culture or her people. i’m sorry if you felt that way.

  23. I’m actually a very good friend of Julie’s and she’s nothing close to being north indian… which is not a bad thing in anyway. I’m glad that they picked someone who wasn’t the “light skinned” indian because true indians have color. Unfortunately a lot of desis have skewed perceptions of what a beautiful indian is and I think she’s the woman to make that change. So if anything just be happy for the girl who’s going out there and doing it. By the way, I didn’t see any NORTH INDIANS picked this show so what could that mean?

  24. our pride and passion for all things (with the notable exceptions of informed discourse and wordcraft)

    Don’t be mean to people named like Appalachians! You are only perpetuating vicious stereotypes 🙂

  25. Ach! All of this discussion, albeit stimulating, over a reality tv model contestant.

    I still have problems deciphering where my own genetic code springs from. I hail from the northeast, specifically West Bengal. My ancestry stems from the least literate state of the subcontinent (Bihar), but I cannot recall a time when my bed did not have at least three different books beside it (all read simultaneously according to whim or gumption). My skin is pale brown bordering on burnt umber (remember that Crayola crayon that was always kept in the 64-pack? that’s me, but some more yellow). My eyes are big and round, but my nose is angular like a Jewess. I am Hindu, but an odd strain of Hinduism combined with pretentious Bengali cultural values. My lips are thin, my hair is fine, and my hips are wide. In other words: I’m like every other Indian, a mixture, a mongrel, an interbreed (NOT to be confused with inbred) compiled after several millenia of nomads, invasions, and diaspora crossing the subcontinent.

  26. I’m like every other Indian, a mixture, a mongrel, an interbreed (NOT to be confused with inbred) compiled after several millenia of nomads, invasions, and diaspora crossing the subcontinent.

    So you’re a palimpsest, with zest, sans pimple?

  29. Must it always turn into this? Just a friendly conversation between fellows bloggers on the interweb and now, this? Sigh Let me remind all of you that I am currently in maximum security isolation from all straight XYs. It’s called “survival mode.”

  30. Titus is a somewhat common malayalee christian surname. Basically anything with biblical roots (particularly Old Testament) can appear somewhere in a M-C name – for ex., my middle name is Augustine…

    minor note, titus & augustine are both latinate and not biblical in origin (titus was roman emperor when pompeii blew). protestants in europe actually made a strong shift toward hebraic names during the reformation while catholics will have more of a mix of latinate & hellenic names.

  31. Mimosa: My apologies for teasing you. And since you’re safely ensconced in a nunnery, I guess there will be no warm mingling of “fresh and salty waters” for you in the near future.

  33. Get a room you two!

    you picked the wrong girl to take the mick out of, ennis.

    if you had sequestered me with GC (whose gentle reproach for my cruelty to appalachians was far more electric than manish’s florid clarification), i wouldn’t have made you recant.

    GC, on the other hand… 😉

  34. minor note, titus & augustine are both latinate and not biblical in origin (titus was roman emperor when pompeii blew). protestants in europe actually made a strong shift toward hebraic names during the reformation while catholics will have more of a mix of latinate & hellenic names.

    Augustine might be a latinate name, but Titus is surely biblical. How about the new testament book of Titus (i.e. “the letter of Paul to Titus”) ?

    About the model’s geographical background: from her last name, my guess is her parents are from Tamilnadu not Kerala.

  35. Augustine might be a latinate name, but Titus is surely biblical. How about the new testament book of Titus (i.e. “the letter of Paul to Titus”) ?

    that doesn’t in any way disprove that titus is a latinate name. titus was a gentile, converted by the apostle paul. for all we know, he might have been roman, or named by parents who had an affinity for latinate nomenclature.

    think. where do the names in the bible come from? early christians were converts from many areas. biblical names are thus diverse in origin. they didn’t just spring in to existence as soon as the bible was assembled. they had to come from somewhere.

  36. from: http://baby-names.adoption.com/search/Titus.html

    Titus male
    Greek – of the giants
    Tito, Titan

    so the romans popularized a greek name and christians sometimes used it. that is of course the irony of ‘christian’ names that many converted peoples pick up (converted by europeans that is): they are non-hebrew, but associated with the originally pagan cultures of greece or rome.

    for ex: Julie Ann Titus is -> derived form the julii, julius caesars clan, a latin name, and titus, greek via latin. ann is hebrew, means gracious.

  37. EOFIA: By biblical i meant any name that appears in the bible. I’m aware that Titus is a roman name, all i’m saying is that it is ALSO biblical. Unlike Augustine, which does not appear in the bible. I probably should have phrased it differently.

    think. where do the names in the bible come from? early christians were converts from many areas… they had to come from somewhere.

    Yes, Ma’am.

    Sincerely, Not-a-complete-moron

  38. you picked the wrong girl to take the mick out of, ennis. if you had sequestered me with GC (whose gentle reproach for my cruelty to appalachians was far more electric than manish’s florid clarification), i wouldn’t have made you recant. GC, on the other hand… 😉

    Admiring emails and sundry correspondence can be directed to godlesscapitalist_at_gmail_dot_com. I generally have to warn the ladies to avoid being too explicit, as otherwise their heartfelt feelings get dumped into my spam filter. C’est la vie…

  39. Titus is a name in the bible, but she is from kerala… Kumbanad;omenloor. After St. Thomas came to south india to teach Christianity a lot of indians changed their last names in coordinance of the bible to show they’ve converted to the christian faith. Titus is a great and powerful names. I can only expect great things to come from this vivacious woman.

  42. I think anna is stupid first of all and second my homegirl julie is way tight so stop hating for whatever reason you have.

  44. Hi everyone i’m the real nisha Daniel and I have never even heard of this thing before until Anna wrote me a message of friendster saying that i said some stuff. Alright first of all, 2 1/2 is made up of me Julie and Kinita and we do not post blogs on this thing, so who ever is reppin us better stop now. Second, we don’t want any beef with anyone so who ever is mad at us, we’re sorry that you think it’s us because it’s not and we’re not people to start stuff. And lastly, who ever it is using mine, Neetha’s or jeena’s email address to start shit better stop now.

  45. please dont post bullshit tha isnt coming from mine jeena or nishas mouth…dont try to start stuff

  46. Unfortunately, Julie got the boot (too early, in my opinion). The girl was funny and smart! I highly feel she’ll get jobs when this is over. I see her on the cover of Anokhi Vibe.

  47. Julie Ann Titus is certainly attractive, but no more so than a large number of Malu girls (and desi girls in general) that I know. I guess I’ll just never understand the model phenomenon…

  49. uh…did you SEE her competition? not ONE of those girls were runway material. the whole show was a joke.

    julie at least had a look and a cool attitude to match. sheesh.

  50. Julie was quite attractive, but not really what I consider beautiful – I guess because I know so many beautiful South Asian women that I couldn’t help comparing her to them (but who am I to talk? Have I ever posted a picture of me in the internets?)

    Also, I thought she seemed unfocused and did not know how to answer interview questions well. When you are asked why you want to be a top model, you don’t answer “because I’d like to seque into fashion.” Bad, bad answer. Never tell an employer that what you really want is a different job than the one you are interviewing for. Goodness. Doesn’t she know any better?