"I think I was who I truly am."

Bianca

See, I can write like The Machine™, too. In truth, however, there was nothing too shocking about tonight's eviction. Bianca, a girl with a stress-response disorder, dressed up like the Smart Girl™ she likes to believe is her social problem (you know, as opposed to her stress-response disorder?) for the last time. She was, let's face it, the easiest target to eject, once the time came. With the finale now upon us, and standing next to housemates as marketable (which the show, I've noticed, likes to call "Big Characters™") as Travis, Terri and Rory, the time was now. Ciao, Bianca. No Pamela for you.

Which, when you think about it, could have been really interesting; but this was no doubt why producers were never going to settle for anything less than her name read out on that card. Can you imagine if Bianca had have given Pamela Anderson a lecture about what a bad role model she is for young women?! Most of the Big Brother puppets (Kyle, Brunero, etc) have noted what a "shame" it was that the two didn't meet - but that's rubbish. Corey may have been a celebrity contract, but Corey Worthington is still rungs below Pamela Anderson, and Bianca's outrage actually served to suit the agendas with how they cast Corey (or was supposed to, at least - it did, to some extent). There's no way in God's name Pamela Anderson's people are down with any such thing happening to the woman who's only here to promote her own desperate strut into reality television. If it had have happened, we wouldn't have seen it, anyway. But, you gotta admit, it would have been an interesting dynamic to analyse.

But, it aint gonna happen, so let's not dream. She's gone.  All week, as with Terrence, we were casually instructed in what to do: get her out of there. And, just as with Terrence, Bianca actually handed them her head on a silver platter. And, yes, as with Terrence, the "incident" was actually the result of a manipulation of the game: Rima's "secret mission" to... well... get some of them to react exactly like how Bianca did. Oh, baby, that's Drama™!

By the time the eviction night had rolled around (after a catch-up show that featured Big Brother deliberately tormenting her to assure the anger was elicited - even going as far as that ridiculous farce with the supposedly broken diary room door), they already had her by a fairly big margin. Hence, a miracle. For the first time, ever, we were actually told not to bother voting! The minute Jackie assured us that even if we wanted to, "it wouldn't have much effect", well, we should have known who's name was on that card. Bianca's. No, everyone, don't vote - we quite like how it is, right now. But, in case some of you do (because, contrary to Jackie's assertions, the last hour of voting can easily change the announcement - quite hypocritically, it's usually this they use to keep us voting), here's about eight hundred montages of what a crazy bitch Bianca is. Here's a few reminders of how great Rory and the others are. And what are we going to ask the potential evicted in their diary room interviews? Hey, I know! Let's ask them about what a crazy, horrible bitch Bianca is!

"Let's talk about Bianca, for a second," Jackie's interview with Terri began (cut to the chase, why don't you, Jackie?), after a montage of how horrible Terri thinks the crazy bitch Bianca is.

"She's been grating on your goat hasn't she?" Kyle chimed in. "What are your problems with her? Tell us... run us through it."

"What did you think of Bianca's reaction (to Rima)," Jackie asked our Aussie brickie, Rory.

"I thought it was a bit over the top," said the boy who, after her exit, made a cardboard cutout of Rima and stabbed it with a knife. 

"Yeah," sighed Kyle. 

And let's ask Bianca about... well... what a crazy, horrible bitch she is. Will that do it?

Well, der. It's time to go, Bianca.

They would have been pretty happy with Bianca, it must be said. She was never there to win, after all. But she was there to be an easily manipulated source of drama; and that, she most certainly was. That's why they chose her. In she would have walked: a young, deluded girl who openly confesses to having anger management issues, and who wants to teach Australian youth how to be more like her. Oh, and she has that F cup. Let's not forget that. Yes, they must have been rubbing their hands together, when a young Italian girl with rather obvious emotional problems and abnormally large breasts walked into that audition, and when all is said and done, she delivered on the promises she didn't even realise she had made to them. For that, even now, she has my sympathy. In spite of all. And it's a pretty big "spite"! 

What I do give credit to Bianca for - and this is, very much, a credit that makes what we can out of this atrocious series - is being  one of the more interesting of the housemates, and for at least giving us a journey and a narrative, of some description. The cliche of "I was being myself" can sometimes get a little worn out in Big Brother, a world where hardly anyone really is. But for Bianca, it rang true. There's much deception at play, but these are self-deceptions that pre-exist Big Brother, and are not the contrived kind of a group of young people trying their hand at BB fame. In many ways, I think Bianca went on the show to try to complete her self-deception. As I always say, at the core of these people - because of the nature of this beast called Big Brother - is an unhealthy emphasis on external perception. Whatever we decide they are... they "are". And if Bianca could have waltzed into that house and fooled us all that she was really that initial character she tried so desperately to portray herself as - the young intellectual who struggled against a world which could not accept her the way she wanted, because of those big boobs - she could have fooled herself. 

But she didn't fool us, at all. In the end, she was what she was. Bianca's not stupid, no. But she's hardly the sophisticated booknerd she played up. I hate to return to the language, but it is the language of this thing, so... well.... Bianca's actually quite the bogan. "I'm gonna get pissed, hard, aye," she said. Don't know many sophisticated booknerds who come out with that. Neither was she terribly perceptive. Neither was she terribly capable in communicating in conflict. And, at the end of the day, neither was she really a girl who rejected the patriarchal gaze. She had suffered at the hands of it, yes. I once wrote an article calling for some more understanding, when it came to her sexual and identity confusion, and I stand by it, today. But beneath it was still a reality that was very different to the one she presented us with, initially. Even that, back then, didn't fool me - I warned everyone that she was, in fact, quite desperate for sexual attention. And she was. And that's not terribly surprising for an 18 year old girl, mind you - particularly an 18 year old who had been socially rejected in her everyday world.

The thing is, what would eventually come to light that wasn't always so clear in the beginning, was the nature of this social rejection. It wasn't just about her breasts, as we would come to know - it certainly wasn't because she's too smart (but that's a rose-coloured way for her to rationalise it). It was about what the show would coin - somewhat simplistically - as an "anger management issue". That's a fair enough term; but it's still a cliche, in many ways. It's almost too "soft" a description. Because it's way beyond "firey", and way beyond being "bad tempered". It's pretty intense - especially if you consider that we know she was actually restraining herself in the house, thanks to the almighty power of knowing the nation was watching her. And that's beyond a trait. That's a fully fledged response disorder, symptomatic of God knows what. She got that from somewhere, you know what I'm saying? Where, we've no idea - the frustration of this show is always that we seldom really get to the bottom of these people (not that it's the right place for that to happen, mind you). But, somewhere. And, not too surprisingly, it causes her - not to mention, the people around her - a lot of giref. 

We saw how dysfunctional this is for her, in the way she dealt with things in the house. And, to be fair, at least by the end she had got real with herself. Kudos for that - most don't. Even she no longer bothered to believe in her ridiculous monologues - in fact, by today, she was openly poking fun at her own hypocrisy (what kind of representation was she to young people, in the end?). She was who she really was - a girl who struggled at getting ahead in life, in her social and family interactions, because she cannot control the way she responds to stress, conflict or discontent. If anything, we saw this repeated in the house - truth be told, this is what happened to the "love story" of Ben and Bianca. She flipped her lid one too many times, and he - as he confessed to her - was "frightened" by it. Oops, Ben, you've actually got close to... well... a potentially unstable girl. For a naive 18 year old like Ben, that smacks of Fatal Attraction material, and boys generally like to keep well away from such women.

A gain, to her credit, at least she did recognise this, and try to control it. When she did go overboard, she generally confessed it, at least. I do believe she tries, because I do believe that she knows it's her hurdle. We talk a lot, here, about how the experience of Big Brother not only fails to "help" them, like they think it will, but hurt them. There's plenty of better ways for her to work on her issues - she will need to employ them, realistically, because the show has hardly healed them. However, perhaps if going on the show was one giant attempt to fool herself, and if she has had that torn apart and can now face the facts about her problems, well, fingers crossed she's one of the few that actually are even slightly better off for the experience. She's going to have a hard time fooling herself of what her real problems, are, now.

That's being incredibly optimistic, however! The other side of that can be glimpsed in that horrible, horrible moment I'm quite sure every single EOBB fan sighed in response to - in unison, across the land - at the end of Sunday's eviction show.

"Are you going to do a spread for Zoo, if you're asked?" asked Kyle, who, as a professional manager and agent, has personal business ties with the magazine (he is now responsible, during his short time as Roberta William's manager, for getting her a spread in the mag).

"If they're tastefully done," she nodded. "As long as there are no bubbles across my butt, or anything."

Oh, Bianca. That's all I can say, really. It's probably all I need to say.  

"Well, we love what you've got... don't we, audience?" exalted Kyle, turning to the screaming bogans.

Oh, yes. Yes, they loved what she's got, too. 

All the best to you, Bianca. May age bring you freedom. May you fashion, for yourself, an identity you can call your own. This is not your moment, no. I realise you thought it was going to be - somewhere in the fantasies of fame, and all - but it wasn't the case. Yes, you have two large breasts that many men in nice suits are now about to try to make a quick buck off. But, regardless, of how... "incomplete"... the picture you painted of yourself was, you do have a brain. That you would want to cast yourself as such a figure, in comparison to the Brigettes and Rebeccas of this world, is actually quite admirable. You're a young girl, and you're not too savvy. Not yet. But you're 18, and you do have choices. Make a smart one, yeah?