Gap, a clothing company that seems cheaper than it actually is, just announced the winners of its Gap kids model contest. The winners were announced on the Rachel Ray Show, a show that has come to represent blind consumerism, brash and abrasive cheer and the privileging of ease over quality in matters both culinary and philosophical. Anyway, on to the kids! There are four of them. Only one has a name that is rather common (Samantha). Of the other three, Parker is the cutest, Jaron sounds the most annoying and Kenadi is only 3 but also fucking cute. Samantha, and this is just a gloss, but she's also annoying. She's seven and of the sixteen words used to express her, nine are used to say, "She wants to be famous when she grows up."


Though the families of the four children are rejoicing and surely so are the children, one might wonder if the families of the winners haven't condemned the children to a life of downhill tumbling. After all, if you were the cutest kid in the world (or at least the one that conformed most closely to the Gap aesthetic) at age three, it really only descends from there. Also, the winners get a year of free clothing from Baby or Kids Gap which will be of use to them for approximately one year before they outgrow their garments. And then they'll be five and squeezing into too small cardigans in a vain attempt to recapture the past and their fleeting infant moment in the sun.