“Remember that girl from high school? You know, head of the class — prom queen, cheerleader, the popular one. Ever wonder if she’s really that perfect?”
Ashley Denefield wanted, or so she thought, to help provide the answer to that question, and posed as part of the here-comes-the-catfight video teaser for a new television reality series that debuts Monday.
The La Marque High School honor roll graduate really thought it would be fun to be just one of the girls: 17 of them, ranging in age from 18 to 21, to be exact.
The fresh-faced women from across the country were thrust together this summer by MTV — the demographics-savvy purveyor of teenage pop culture — during the filming of the 10-part series “Miss Seventeen.”
Under the scrutiny of Atoosa Rubenstein, Seventeen magazine editor in chief, the girls will face sudden elimination — and will be booted off the island, in reality TV show jargon — until one emerges as Miss Seventeen. The winner earns a college scholarship, an internship at Seventeen and a magazine cover photo spread.
Reached on her cell phone this week at the University of Texas campus in Austin where she is a freshman business major, Denefield was nursing a cold, and was not bubbling over with enthusiasm about her experience.
Actually, Denefield said she has urged her friends not to watch. Sure, like that is going to happen.
“All the commercials are making it seem like I only acted a certain way the whole time, and people have already been asking me about it, cause they’ve said some negative things about my portrayal (in the teaser ads),” said Denefield, who turns 19 Oct. 22. “I really can’t say what happens but I really didn’t do anything (that bad) and didn’t really say that much.”
The bio provided by MTV had this to say about her: “Ashley comes from a rough neighborhood in Texas, but she does not let that get in the way of her studies.”
Denefield said she really did not have any dreams of grandeur when she decided, on a whim, to enter her name as a possible cast member in April.
“I was just playing around on the computer … I remember going to the Web site and seeing this ad about a positive show and it looked like a good opportunity,” she recalled. “I wondered if they would take somebody from a small town that no one knows and give them a chance.”
After forgetting about her application, figuring it just might not happen, Denefield was shocked when MTV called her to come for a screen test.
Once the final 17 girls were selected, they were flown to New York where, as is typical for most MTV reality shows, they roomed together while cameras — even hidden ones — rolled nonstop to capture all the highs and lows, the laughter and the tears. Make that plenty of tears.
In the series teaser ads, the voice-over announcer promises that “they will do whatever it takes to win it all” and that the show “separates the mean girls from the cover girls.”
It quickly becomes apparent that there will be fireworks amid the frolicking.
“Females are sneaky,” says one girl. Adds another, through a cascade of tears, “I can’t handle it any more. I don’t want to be affiliated with a house of liars.”
Still, the Galveston native and former La Marque resident, who conceded she found out the hard way that TV can be an unforgiving medium, says that over time she will reflect on this as an important learning experience.
Denefield, who according to the MTV Web site says she wants to own her own talent agency or PR firm, already has a plan for success in her life. She says she will make enough money in the business world to retire early, and then become a history teacher, while writing a novel along the way.
Although her reality show TV experience was bittersweet, she isn’t through with the notion of having the whole world look at what she is up to. Denefield is one of five UT freshmen chosen to write a Web site journal about the experience of being in her first year of college.
