Mentoring New York newbie Whitney Port, P.R. queen Kelly Cutrone recently broke The City’s painfully mundane tone. “Are you okay? You look so skinny,” she asked emaciated model Allie. Cutrone repeated the question until Allie, irritated, exposed, and probably hungry, stormed out.

Let’s look at the ladies’ patented reactions:

Whitney, sweet and safe, if a bit incomprehensible, lends Allie a shoulder to cry on. She apologizes for Cutrone’s behavior and calls body image a “personal thing,” whatever that means. Port’s co-worker Olivia Palermo, desperately glamorous and jaded, joked that Shamu can’t come walking down the runway. (I love a pretty socialite as much as the next MTV denizen, but isn’t Palermo getting a little old to be a mean girl?) For her part, Allie bitches to her boyfriend who proceeds to call Kelly “jealous.”

So: blonde; bitch; weak.

Cutrone was genuinely concerned about the boney model. But in expressing this concern, she disregarded the rules of Allie’s polished, fabricated world, where nobody has real problems. Except that – beneath the big-budget camerawork and Manhattan montage sequences – they do, just like everyone else. And Kelly Cutrone is the only female in the room with the balls to confront them, and the moral impulse to try to help.

Cutrone was just as heroically brazen off-camera last week, coming under fire (and getting fired) for seating Ashley Alexandra Dupré at the Yigal Azrouel fashion show. Dupré, aka Kristen, is, of course, the infamous former prostitute who had sock-wearing sex with former New York governor Eliot Spitzer.

Like young ladies caught fellating politicians before her, Dupré is conventionally trashy. The 23-year old hails from the Jersey Shore and spent years dancing in Chelsea nightclubs. After the scandal erupted, she posed topless on the cover of the New York Post.

But you know what? Having an entire nation call you a whore isn’t easy. (Okay, I wouldn’t know, but I’d venture a guess.) Spitzer was just as much to blame—in fact, more so—for the illicit relationship, but now he’s writing columns for Slate! Ashley Alexandra Dupré has been through a lot.

She at least deserves the kindness of one fucking person.

Then Cutrone was fired for seating a big, trashy whore front-row at a chic, chic fashion show. And instead of purging up some excuse (and, rumor has it, Cutrone didn’t even invite Dupré to the show; she just didn’t have a cold enough heart to throw the girl out), she shrugged it off. “I’ve been fired before, and I’ll be fired again.” Classic Cutrone.  The reaction was blunt, ballsy, and honest. More importantly,she didn’t acquiesce to her haters; she stood by her decision, rare in the heyday of public apologies (Lohan, Cyrus, Spears, Phelps, etc. al.).

Though Cutrone has a bit of a cult following, she isn’t being hailed as a heroine. Instead, she’s come under further fire for her comment, in regards to her relationship with Dupré, “I am vehemently opposed to morality.”

The former factory girl (Warhol’s, that is) must have meant that she doesn’t ascribe to a conventional morality (and she won’t ignore eating disorders or scorn former hookers) because Cutrone is the most moral fashion figure to rise to prominence in years.

Helping Dupré mingle with the fashion elite is downright avant-garde and now Dupré is reportedly in talks for a magazine spread. Cutrone’s confrontational nature is bold and original and stylish and if it earns her enemies, she’s all the more fashionable for it. Other chic-ass role models might get a better placement at the next Yigal Azrouel show, but they’ll still be making the same expected pout, hiding any real personality behind big, tinted sunglasses; while Cutrone will remain uniquely sans make-up, the sort of role model a girl could use.

Photo: Patrick McMullan/New York Magazine