After being ousted from Tyra Banks’s show America’s Next Top Model, Janice Dickinson has struck back with her own show and it ain’t pretty. The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency which premiered on Oxygen earlier this month, shows a darker, harsher side of modeling than most people get to see.

One episode shows a group of genetically-superior men and women stripping down to their skivvies and subjecting themselves to criticism from Dickinson and her staff.  The better-looking contestants were rewarded with smiley-face stickers – the less fortunate ones were given frown-faces and drawn on with magic marker – but none were safe from Dickinson’s verbal abuse. Later in the same episode, she instructed another young woman that she needed to have a nose job (and even set up an appointment for a consultation).

Dickinson herself is a terror; the moods keep swinging and insults keep flying. But while her personality is a lot to take, she does know her stuff. She’s all too familiar with the unforgiving nature of the industry and has a keen instinct for a model’s marketability.

Dickinson claims to be the “world’s first supermodel” but many would argue otherwise. While she did have a extensive modeling career as a household name, many others came before her including Lisa Fonssagrives, a model whose career began in the 1930s. According to Wikipedia, she appeared in nearly every fashion magazine of that era and graced the cover of Vogue over 200 times. (Dickinson only had that honor 37 times). Top models such as Twiggy, Beverly Johnson, and Verushka were household names way before Dickinson became famous. 

The real difference between Dickinson and the women who came before her comes down to money. She was one of the first models to push for the top pay that supermodels receive and she still possesses that lethal combination of confidence, cunning, and nerve. Hopefully for her, it’ll be enough to keep people watching.