Los Angeles - Jaslene Gonzalez's heart and soul can rest easy.

A year after failing to make the cut, the 20-year-old Chicago native was named America's Next Top Model Wednesday, becoming the first Latina to win the competition and easing Tyra Banks' worries about what the leggy raven-haired beauty would do if she didn't win.

"Every little girl has a dream to be something," Gonzalez said, eyes brimming with happy tears. "And to be here, I overcame so much. I didn't make it the first time, but now look at me...That shows to all young women, if you have that drive, keep going. Second time around, and I'm America's Next Top Model!"

Gonzalez, who said earlier in the season¡ªTop Model's eighth¡ªthat modeling is what she was meant to do and that every fiber of her being was wholly devoted to taking the top prize, beat out fellow finalists Renee Alway, 20, and Natasha Galkina, 21. She wins a year's representation from Elite Model Management, a $100,000 contract with CoverGirl and a cover and six-page spread in Seventeen magazine.

And she doesn't have to pull out Natasha's hair, like she threatened to do if the bubbly Russian won.

(There's a reason they call it the catwalk.)

After 13 weeks of posing like corpses, dressing up as men, faking Australian accents and otherwise subjecting themselves to uncomfortable-looking scenarios that somehow never failed to produce seemingly flawless photographs (to a normal person, anyway), the top three girls had to make it all come together in a print ad and commercial for CoverGirl.

Alway nailed her "My Life As a Cover Girl" spot and easily transferred her "easy, breezy, beautiful" look to the subsequent photo shoot but, as the judges have been saying throughout the competition, she ended up looking older than her fellow contestants, prompting one CoverGirl exec to remark that she almost seems "too mature to be starting out in the modeling industry."

"I've seen this face before," photographer and judge Nigel Barker said as the panel deliberated after round one. "It's not the freshest face for me. And we're looking for America's Next Top Model."

Galkina, who almost went home in week two but spent the rest of the season taking better and better pictures and charming the judges' pants off, took her usual buoyant approach to the task at hand. But something was lost in translation, and ad-libbing the spot required left the very vivacious yet heavily accented Galkina sounding mechanical.

Which was fine, considering the judges just adored her.

"Your imperfections are often what make you so beautiful," Barker told her. "You have all the bits and pieces that you need."

"I personally think she is the most beautiful of the three," 1960s-era modeling icon Twiggy said.

Jaslene took a surprisingly sweet and soft photo¡ª"She knows how to take a fierce picture!" Tyra exclaimed¡ªbut she didn't exactly shine when it came to the talking part of the top model business, turning in a choppy commercial.

Not that the judges minded, with Barker calling her "amazing, spectacularly pretty."

So, washed up before 21, Alway was eliminated in the first round¡ªand she looked stunned.

"I'm completely blown away by the judges' decision," she said. "I had the best commercial, I had the best picture, which apparently wasn't enough for them...I'd rather have wisdom in my eyes and knowledge in my head than be blank and stupid and have nothing there."

At least spending all that time as the competition's resident be-yotch wasn't for naught.

That left Galkina and Gonzalez to strut their stuff on the runway.

"She is more fierce, and I am more exciting and fun," the ever-exuberant Galkina said, touting her own runway prowess.

"I'm the Latin spice here!" Gonzalez added. "I'm the edgy girl. I'm not the girl next door, but I'm the girl down the block in your hood!"

"Strong but not stiff," Banks reminded Galkina. "Strong but not drag queen," she told Gonzalez.

Done and done. Both finalists changed clothes and strutted like pros, with Galkina even losing her skirt at one point but managing to make it look like a deliberate striptease.

But when it came time to dish out the spoils, Tyra & Co. felt that Galkina had lost a bit of her edge as the fashion show wound down and Gonzalez had the most potential as both an edgy, unique-looking presence and as a commercial model.

Barker summed it up with his critique of Gonzalez's runway show: "Jaslene, you didn't start with it.

"You ended with it."