Guilty pleasure is how our gal Robin Givhan describes Project Runway, now beginning its third hit season. In her latest Washington Post column, Givhan picks apart what has become the most entertaining — and in its way, devastating and authentic — queer-centric show on television.

The premise:a dozen no-name designers compete for $100,000 and a chance to present a collection during New York fashion week.

To do this they must win various challenges — challenges, writes Givhan, which are always “absurd — make a dress from foliage! candy! the clothes off your back!”

Very quickly the show became a cult in the fashion industry, reports Givhan, not only for its preposterous, but fabulous fashion experiments but because of the seriousness of its commentary. With a judging panel headed by the somewhat vacuous supermodel Heidi Klum (above), “the guest judges included a smart mix of fashion insiders and the critiques were entertaining and pithy.”

Longtime readers of this site know in what high esteem we hold Miss Givhan (at left), who won a Pulitzer this year — the first person ever to win one for fashion writing. Her rundown of Runway’s premiere episode, which aired last week, was a particular treat

This season the contestants include a Barbie-doll dress designer and a certain Keith Mitchell, who could be mistaken for a supermodel himself with his sultry sidelong glances and 5-o’clock shadow. Only one of these hopefuls does Givhan tag for superstardom — but of entirely the wrong sort, calling him “the most insufferable contestant ever to appear on reality television.”

Meet Malan Breton, an utterly affected queen (at right). Think Bobby Trendy, Anna Nicole’s kitschmeister home designer, but more polished.

Chosen to be on the show, writes Givhan, probably “because of his ability to sound condescending just uttering the word ‘hello,’” the Taiwanese Breton claims, somewhat unbelievably, to have been a former model — as well as a movie director, a TV announcer and several other doubtful things he lists on his his Project Runway bio, of which our favorite is “has danced with Paula Abdul.”

“Brenton dresses in formal suits and wears his dark hair slicked back,” notes Givhan. “He has the sleepy eyes of Macaulay Culkin and a self-conscious accent that sounds like a mix of Madonna, Martin Bashir and the Geico gecko”.

Our favorite passage:

The first challenge for the 15 contestants has them ripping apart their Project Runway apartment in New York for materials to create the garment that best represents their aesthetic point of view. They have 15 minutes to collect as much of the sheets, curtains, mattress ticking and shredded upholstery as possible.

“I was irritated that the materials we’d have to use would be bed sheeting,” Breton sneers. “I myself prefer better-quality fabrics.” Here one wonders whether Breton has ever actually seen Project Runway. As a regular viewer, he’d know he was lucky the judges weren’t forcing him to make a dress out of goat cheese. For a goat.

Eager to grab the best scraps, his competitors dash into the apartment and begin feverishly collecting material.

Sniffs Breton: “It was sort of irritating to see how inappropriate people would act.” Does he not realize he’s on reality TV — a parallel universe of depravity where adults will eat sour-smelling slop for fame and cash prizes? If the gods of reality and ratings are wise, Breton will have a long, irritating run on the show.

As much as we love her, we fear our Robin does not have the proper respect for the reality show format.

In these shows there can be only one winner, of course. However, what sets them apart is that there is also only one loser. On Project Runway, that’s the designer who fails the most at the assignment. In what has become a stock shot, the camera dallies over the departing loser as he packs his bags, accompanied by voice-over musings in which he tries to put the best face on his defeat.

It is a familiar spectacle of humiliation common to all the highly successful reality shows, and it’s what gives Project Runway its compelling bite. Despite our pieties to the contrary, life really does have winners and losers, and we take a low, earthy pleasure in watching the law of the jungle play out. We may not have sweaty, muscular gladiators goring each other in the Roman Coliseum anymore, but we all love the cruel — if illusory — power the “thumbs-down” gesture gives us — however much, as on American Idol, we moan in our stadium seats and mime grief-struck compassion.

You could abolish these cruel displays, but they’d still come back in veiled form, Just as with religion, which panders to our need to find an important meaning to our lives, we respond deeply to the harsh arithmetic of the jungle. Its lesson are bred in the bone, impossible to ignore or whitewash: No victory without defeat. No life without death.

And so, as ever, competition is the mother of invention. And many are the dizzy gay wonders a desperate designer can perform with a few shower curtains and some lampshades.