Whether you think it was outright cheating or simply underhanded but permitted scheming, no one can deny that
VJ Logan was helped along to an
America's Most Smartest Model win by a lot of clever – and some say dirty – tactics on his part.
Judge Mary Alice Stephenson didn't have an issue with them, but some viewers did and would have even preferred volatile
Andre Birleanu to VJ.
What does VJ have to say about the controversy?
VJ takes popular Survivor final jury defense of “I was in it to win it.”
He says he didn't necessarily go into the competition planning to scheme and work the system, but he did plan to win no matter what.
When entering the
America's Most Smartest Model competition, he said, “I didn't have [a scheming strategy] in my mind. I didn't say, ‘This is what I'm gonna do and this is how I'm gonna do it.' But what I always said is that I was the only person who had winning in his mind. I was the only person in there who believed I'm gonna go in there and I'm gonna win. And that's the only thing I wanted to do… I never let that get away from me. It was an upper hand on everyone else in the house because they were busy being friends. It wasn't a popularity contest. Not for me. I didn't care about how they were gonna make me look. I knew that I wanted to go there, and I wanted to win $100,000 dollars. And I did it.”
He does have some quibbles, though, with Andre's accusations that VJ copied his poses. “How many ways can you possibly sit? How much stuff you could do with props that were given? As men, we don't do the same body language as women do in a shoot. They have their ass and their arms and their long legs.”
And he doesn't think any of his actions make him a worse model. In fact, he thinks it all supports the case that he was the rightful winner of
America's Most Smartest Model.
VJ said, “Matt who was a company manager or whatever of the product said something that was just so perfect: ultimately, the client just wants somebody who delivers the product well. And they don't care how they did it, they just care that when they deliver, it's believable. They don't care how they obtain information, what's going on behind scenes, but when you're on camera selling the product, they want the person that is best.”
- Leslie Seaton, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: VH1 Blog
(Image courtesy of VH1)