Let's just get right to it: Yoanna House, the Jacksonville, Fla., native who's wanted more than anything in the whole wide world since she was a little girl to work in the fashion industry, is America's Next Top Model.

So sayeth Tyra Banks and her couture coterie, who bestowed upon the 23-year-old -- say it with Tyra now -- a contract with IMG Models, a fashion spread in Jane magazine and a cover spot for Sephora cosmetics. And probably a guest spot on "Eve" next year or something.

Yoanna outdid her fellow finalists Mercedes Scelba-Shorte and Shandi Sullivan in Tuesday's (March 23) finale, which featured one final photo shoot and the live test of a Milan runway show. As for what, exactly, made Yoanna rise to the top, beats me. Seriously, this world is so outside of everyday experience, it's really hard for a non-fashionista to pick out some concrete thing.

Suffice to say that the judges -- Tyra, "world's first supermodel" Janice Dickinson, Jane fashion editor Eric Nicholson and photographer Nigel Barker -- know what they're doing. And that's not in any way meant as a knock on Yoanna, who (this is easier to tell) photographs beautifully and seems very professional.

It's just that, watching the finale with more than just a fan's eye, you realize how subjective everything is, beauty being in the eye of the beholder and all that.

The episode chronicles the final three's last days in Milan, which starts with a beauty shoot. Jay "I'm Not on 'Queer Eye'" Manuel explains that because the three women are so distinct from one another, each will have a radically different look for the shoot.

Yoanna gets a Bond-girl makeover, posing in a motorcycle helmet. She nearly sabotages herself by trying to even up the back of her hair with the helmet on her own, but a last-minute trim saves her from catastrophe.

Mercedes, done up in a style she describes as an "Aztec warrior-Zulu-African thing," gets raves from the judges for how edgy she looks, allaying their fears that she's too "commercial" to work as a top model. Shandi's big hair, flowers and serious eye makeup aren't enough, and she's the first of the final three sent home.

But she's not going away empty-handed. The ex-Walgreen's clerk has a boatload of new self-esteem to take with her -- "I've grown into a person I like," she says -- and thinks things will work out with her boyfriend. Good for you, Shandi.

Tyra and Co. also offer some constructive criticism for Mercedes and Yoanna at the elimination ceremony. It's mostly for Yoanna, actually, who has some model-walking issues in front of the judges. Tyra says Yoanna sometimes reminds her of an athlete who's great most of the time but can fail in the clutch.

Tyra's dated Chris Webber, so she knows what she's talking about.

The final test for the two finalists is a runway show for Dean and Dan Caten, the designers collectively known as D2. Again, to the layperson's eye there's little to separate the two; even the judges remark how well both do in their first professional show.

Mercedes reveals a heretofore unseen competitive streak, telling the camera she threw in a few extra poses at the end of the catwalk to punk Yoanna. For her part, Yoanna overcomes a shoe disaster backstage to make it through the show.

In the final judging, Mercedes appears to have the edge, or maybe it's just because Dickinson is dominating the conversation again. Barker can see either one doing well, while Nicholson keeps coming back to Yoanna's flawless face.

That face -- or some other "It" that us mere mortals are fated not to understand -- tips the results in Yoanna's favor. A tearful Mercedes accepts her loss reasonably well, and Yoanna adopts one of her many accents, this time a Southern drawl, to describe her feelings.

"Ah never was a cheerleader, never made the squad, never made homecomin' or prom queen, nothin'. Ah was always just there, an' I never won," she says. She switches back to her normal voice to close it out: "And now I'm America's Next Top Model."