* DiagnosedByTheAudience:
** Myrracle acts childish and sometimes is lost in her own world.
** Zarpessa seems to be going through some sort of mental breakdown, possibly due to her family going broke.
** Lizzie clearly has PTSD from her MysteriousPast.
* EnsembleDarkhorse: Multiple ones.
** Lizzie. Even most people who dislike the book consider her the most interesting character, [[PutOnABus not that her story gets much attention]].
** Myrracle often garners more sympathy than Tookie herself, for being far more proactive in pursuing her dreams.
* {{MSTing}}: Done [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/lb_i.php?lb_id=13173496870B00529600 here]] and [[http://impishidea.com/spork/lily-sporks-modelland-part-1-prologue here]].
* TheScrappy: Dylan is far and away the least-liked of Tookie's ensemble, being a sassy-black-woman stereotype that constantly spouts annoying babble and rarely helps out with anything in the story.
* SoBadItsGood: It's a book where SMIZE is an actual word and models are living gods. What else would it be?!
* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: Lizzie, just everything about Lizzie. She's being subjected to horrifying experiments for the sake of "beauty", but the plot instead focuses on the titular model school while Lizzie ends up PutOnABus (twice!).
* UncertainAudience: Despite being Tyra Banks's take on the Young Adult genre, it’s kinda difficult to establish who the target audience for Modelland is (beyond herself). It’s unsuited for children and even teens since it introduces things like stopping periods of girls without their consent, unwanted pregnancy, and particularly disgusting and disturbing imagery (some of which would not be out of place in a [[Creator/CliveBarker Clive Barker]] novel). But at the same time, the main plot is bare bones, uses teen romance clichés, and wastes pages detailing song lyrics. The ridiculous names and made-up terms also make the plot hard to take seriously.
* UnintentionallyUnsympathetic: Tookie is a complete loner... except given the way she acts in the beginning of the story, she comes across as an obsessive weirdo no one would ever want to be anywhere near anyway. She also does some nasty stuff throughout the book, such as:
** Stealing hospital equipment for fun.
** Taking sadistic joy in seeing Zarpessa have to dumpster-dive for food, even though Zarpessa hasn't done anything mean to Tookie at this point.
** At the end of the book she hopes Lizzie is doing okay, but makes no effort to check on Lizzie even though she easily could.