America’s Next Top Model Failed At Its Only Job: Creating A Supermodel

A new Netflix documentary, Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model recently dropped, reflecting on the rise and fall of America's Next Top Model. The show ran for 24 seasons from 2003 to 2018, but only a handful of contestants participated in the documentary, along with the show's most notable judges and Tyra Banks herself. Some ANTM alum, like Adrianne Curry, have retired from the industry and declined all interviews, while others distrusted the production to handle their criticisms with sensitivity or good faith.

The models who participated shared their journey from excitement to disillusionment as they progressed through their cycle, and reflected on poorly aged or exploitative content. The show invites us to reflect on its tone-deaf nature as contextualized through its time, the intentions of the creatives involved, and the different sociocultural landscape, then asks us, well, was it really that bad? The answer is boring, predictable, and teaches us nothing new. Worst of all, it's used as a launchpad to bring back the supposed source of psychological horror and exploitation for cycle 25, the first time the show will return to air since 2018.

Making America's Next Top Model

"Congratulations, you are still in the running to become America's Next Top Model," Tyra Banks would announce, milking the pause like a theater kid on Broadway, week after week. She delivered that line so many times to young women who genuinely believed a reality show would be their cheat code to supermodel status. Was it naive? Maybe, but the prizes were framed as legit: modeling contracts with top agencies, front-page spreads in the world's biggest fashion magazines, and cash prizes of $100,000. The exact package shifted from season to season, but it certainly sounded promising.

Compared to getting "scouted" by some random guy at the mall, who may or may not be running a sex trafficking ring, you were being chosen by industry titan, Tyra Banks. How could that not feel like a one-way ticket to legitimacy? Some of the models have ANTM to thank for launching their careers, or at least for giving them exposure, while others blame ANTM for blacklisting them from the fashion industry.

Some of the models have ANTM to thank for launching their careers, or at least for giving them exposure, while others blame ANTM for blacklisting them from the fashion industry.

The show produced a few stars and launched the careers of many unknowns in the entertainment industry. Winnie Harlow is widely considered the most successful model to have come out of America's Next Top Model. After her appearance on the show, she became the first model with vitiligo to walk in the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show and has been a global brand ambassador for Tommy Hilfiger. She's walked runways for brands including Coach, Marc Jacobs, and Moschino, and appeared in fashion campaigns for Fendi, Steve Madden, MAC, Swarovski, and other major labels.

The show also launched several other women in the entertainment industry, who pivoted to acting or other reality TV gigs. Lio Tipton appeared in films like Crazy, Stupid, Love, Lucy, and Warm Bodies. Eva Marcille successfully transitioned to other reality shows like The Real Housewives of Atlanta, starring in 56 episodes between 2018 and 2021. Yaya Dacosta transitioned to acting and even portrayed Whitney Houston in a Lifetime biopic. She's starred in The Nice Guys alongside Ryan Reynolds and Russell Crowe, as well as a string of successful TV shows like Chicago P.D., Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, and The Lincoln Lawyer.

Allison Harvard, who already had early internet fame as "Creepy Chan" on 4chan, enjoyed increased visibility from her two cycles on ANTM, which cemented her in online subcultures as the proto-e-girl. She became a Tumblr icon in the early 2010s. That being said, other ANTM alum, like Giselle Samson, Ebony Haith, Keenyah Hill, and even winners like Danielle "Dani" Evans, felt like the show outright sabotaged them.

Many of the girls reportedly struggled to get signed or to get work because of the stigma attached to reality TV at the time, which felt like a huge spit in the face after being promised that ANTM would be the vehicle that launched them into superstardom. This, perhaps, more than anything else, feels like the most cynical angle of the show: misleading young girls desperate to escape their mundane lives—the working class, their toxic family situation, their dead end job—by dangling the golden handcuffs in their face, only to throw them back in the ocean with not so much as a life raft after throwing them overboard.

Tyra Banks' Mission to Fight Against the Fashion Industry

One of the first lines spoken in the documentary, between the tackily spliced-in TikToks from random social media influencers, was, "Tyra Banks set out to create a space for people that were not the ideal weight, not the ideal height, to show beauty in a different light." Given the show's reputation, you might think it's in jest, but remember this show existed in the context of 90s heroin chic evolving into early 2000s still-skinny obsessed culture. Pre-#MeToo, body positivity, and woke politics, the show truly had no idea what a scrutinizing lens it'd one day be viewed under.

This context explains why Tyra was interested in creating the show in the first place. As one of the first black Supermodels in a sea of thin, tall white women, she achieved many firsts for black women. She was the first black woman to grace the covers of GQ and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. In 1995, she became the first-ever black Victoria's Secret contract model and the first black Victoria's Secret cover model. She quickly dominated the fashion industry, then expanded into TV and film, including The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Life Size.

In the end, the show achieved what it set out to do: humanize models, despite Tyra and the rest of the producers' exploits.

By the early 2000s, she had a nagging idea for a TV show that would do a couple things: fight against the fashion industry by showing America a representation of beauty that wasn't so narrow, and humanize models by giving you a glimpse into their inner worlds. Tyra talks about wanting to show people what it takes to make it in the industry as a model, while also dispelling the common notion that models are vapid, unsympathetic characters. How ironic that this mission would come back to bite her. In the end, the show achieved what it set out to do: humanize models, despite Tyra and the rest of the producers' exploits.

The Premise: American Idol Meets The Real World, With Representation

In 2002, Tyra pitched ANTM as a concept that would marry American Idol with The Real World and set it in the modeling industry. Producer Ken Mok, whom I appreciate, doesn't pretend to be a very nice guy; initially, he assumed this would just be a vanity project for Tyra (and believed Tyra was probably not very bright—she's a model after all). He was hooked by her pitch, though, and knew he could transform it into a workable format.

Ten girls would live together in an apartment, each week learning a new modeling skill, with weekly eliminations that would send one model packing. The last model standing would be named America's Next Top Model. A selling point of the show would be having industry experts featured as judges and coaches throughout the competition.

One of the first people Tyra called was Miss Jay Alexander, who had known Tyra since she was 16-years old. As an expert in all things runway walks, Miss Jay taught Tyra how to walk back when they were both in the Paris fashion scene in the early 90s. Jay Alexander is a 6'5" African American gay man who goes by the name Miss Jay and wears elaborate gowns. Contrary to speculation, he does not identify as transgender, and the "Miss Jay" title is just a flamboyant fashion persona.

When Tyra pitched this man for runway coach, Mok was, let's say, perplexed, but quickly impressed by his amazing legs and overall fabulousness. Miss Jay brought more than runway technique to the show. He had a signature sass and snark that packed just the right amount of diva to the show, acting as a foil to the show's other Jay—creative director Jay Manuel, or "Mr. Jay." Manuel was Tyra's makeup artist, whom she tapped to direct the show's photoshoots. He describes the dynamic between himself and Miss Jay as the "gay wonder twins" because their playful banter fed off of each other.

Ten girls would live together in an apartment, each week learning a new modeling skill, with weekly eliminations that would send one model packing.

Often feeling like a character right out of RuPaul's Drag Race, Miss Jay knew how to employ a shady side eye or two. He was the fabulous shady diva, while "Mr. Jay" would feed into it as the more talkative guy who was less snarky, more down to business. Through documentary narration, Manuel describes feeling like they had to stick together so the world wouldn't attack them. "I know it sounds ridiculous now," he says, "but it was a different time." A different time it was, indeed.

Not only was it not typical to see gay people represented onscreen, but it was kind of a faux pas, if not outright "offensive," as one contestant would put it, objecting to finding out one of the other contestants, Ebony, is a lesbian. Tyra recalls receiving hate mail from viewers who were outraged by what they saw on their TVs, asking how they could dare to show such content. Tyra did push for representation by making her flamboyantly gay friends and colleagues the heart of the show, and, as much as Ebony's storyline about her girlfriend has been criticized as exploitation, it's clear what Tyra was going for was destigmatization.ch-22 between what the fashion industry was and what she wanted it to be.

Tyra often had so much sympathy and investment in young black women coming from nothing that when she saw them giving up in front of her eyes, she had a category six crash out that traumatized everyone. She wanted to be the savior but often had to be the villain, caught in a catch-22 between what the fashion industry was and what she wanted it to be. It seems that's left her in this impossible bind where she feigns ignorance over things that happened on the show when she knows they reflect poorly on her and then takes full credit when they look positive, like giving opportunities to people who usually weren't given much visibility in the industry, whether they were petite, trans, or had a skin condition like vitiligo.

From the moment Tyra got the news that her pitch for the show was approved by a failing network that had nothing to lose by gambling on the show, she frames the news as empowering and transformative. Now she was no longer just a model reliant on casting directors and designers, but a creator, visionary, and businesswoman. This opportunity was about more than just herself. She was a rising tide that would lift all boats. "It was my payback," she said. "You just have a magazine? I have a TV show, and so many people are going to see way more of this TV show than your magazine, which is closing off so many beauties. I'm going to show you what beautiful is."

The Big Lie

Producer Ken Mok says the objective of the show was to reward the winner with a prize package that would give them a head start in the modeling industry. By the end of the show, they would "build the perfect model" who would have the tools available to her to go out in the real world and pursue a modeling career. Upon airing of the first season, the show was an instant hit. Everything ramped up from season to season, for better or worse, from ratings and chat about the show to the stakes and stunts.

The season one prize was a Revlon contract, a fashion spread with Marie Claire, and a contract with one of the world's top agencies, Wilhelmina. However, season one winner Adrianne Curry claims some of these prizes were randomly changed or never received, and that ANTM switched agencies between seasons, which made her a pariah and led her to believe the agents wanted her to fail.

Everything ramped up from season to season, for better or worse, from ratings and chat about the show to the stakes and stunts.

She told Entertainment Weekly, "What I won was to go to Revlon corporate, sit in a back room, have a makeup artist put makeup on my face for a team of about seven people watching me. Who the f*** would fight as hard as we fought for that?" She said she felt "***ing humiliated" by the gig, which only paid her $15,000 in prize money after hyping up the models to believe they would be huge Revlon models and become the next Cindy Crawford. Other models have stated that they really did win the stated prizes, including $100,000, though the prizes shifted from season to season. In later seasons, they began to feel incredibly random, with prizes including guest-correspondent gigs on Extra and a recording deal to produce a real song and star in a music video.

Giselle Samson recalls Tyra asking her during casting, "If this show made you famous, what would you do?" which led her to believe that it was in the cards. Shannon Stewart says she thought the show would make her a supermodel. "This is going to change my life forever." In the documentary, Giselle claimed no agencies wanted to sign her after the show, only seeing her as a reality star. Worse, she felt like the show crafted a narrative around her being the "insecure girl," which sabotaged her. Week after week, judges commented on her lack of confidence. Once she left the show, she felt like that reputation hindered her: "Who would want to sign or hire that girl?"

Ebony recalls having an epiphany that this wasn't really a modeling show but "a new way of making TV shows," and felt that the girls were unprepared for what reality was about to become. Keenyah, despite making it far in the competition, wasn't able to use any of her ANTM shots in her modeling portfolio because the shoots were overly themed and used way too much makeup. She laments that the show wasn't a useful stepping stone for her, especially given her "fat girl" arc.

Dani, who won cycle six, had apprehensions about going on the show from the very beginning, seeing it as an exploitative reality show more interested in humiliating young girls than any real modeling. Her brother convinced her it was her ticket out of Little Rock. Despite winning cycle 6, at the expense of her boundaries—her makeover involved closing her signature gap in her teeth despite her protests only for Tyra to recommend a white woman in a later season broaden her gap—she describes winning as a blip of euphoria followed by being thrown to the wolves once the cameras shut off.

Though she won representation by Ford Models and moved into a New York model's apartment, she described the energy at the agency as "cold" and felt like the black sheep. While the rest of the models got regular work, some of whom became big stars, she sat in the model's apartment for months, never going on castings. A fellow model in her agency reportedly asked about it one day and was told they have to treat Dani differently because "she comes from Top Model." In her first show season, she didn't book any shows, claiming designers didn't want to book her for fear of a reality star redirecting attention from their collection to herself.

The part that hurt the most was a phone call from Tyra years later, in which she alleges Tyra told her she knew there were certain doors she couldn't get into because of Top Model, and that she never did anything about it: "I always rode the fence with you." One of the show's bigger faults, from my perspective, was its misleading premise that it would turn one lucky girl into the next supermodel. All of these girls believed they would make it. The problem is that none of them did, not even the winners. Tyra herself seems to have some regrets: "Maybe we could've done a better job letting them know that not everybody was going to be a star."

It Was a Different Time

Part of what makes America's Next Top Model such a mess is that it doesn't know what it is. On the one hand, it's a reality show filming young girls' every move and capitalizing on their lowest moments for content. On the other hand, it's a modeling competition based on aesthetics, finesse, and star power. But Tyra Banks talks about it like she was running a Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Tyra claims her philosophy during casting was to have a percentage of the women represent what the public thinks is pretty because "you have to meet people where they are," with a covert mission to show people what's not so obvious. As much as Tyra fought for representation of women from different ethnicities, backgrounds, and looks, you can't exactly marry together "diversity, representation, and inclusion" with a meritocratic competition that's, at the end of the day, about how you look.

Tyra Banks talks about it like she was running a Make-A-Wish Foundation.

As much credit as ANTM gets for having a plus-size winner and opening up doors for women who historically have not had as many opportunities in the industry, the show also gets skewered for "upholding problematic ideologies and attitudes." The show was rife with fat shaming, though a much tamer variety that was more tolerant of various shapes and sizes than the real fashion industry ever was. A plus-size girl even won cycle 10. The real faux pas wasn't so much in being big as it was being too heavy to be a traditional model and too thin to be a plus-size model.

Tyra, who seems to suffer from some sort of identity crisis, would launch into impassioned rants against her fellow judges for being the problem with the industry and American beauty standards for perpetuating ideas about what women's bodies should look like that cause them to starve themselves. Then, she would send women home for being too pudgy. She would go on her talk show, "The Tyra Banks Show," to deliver girlboss clap backs in response to media tabloids' fat shaming her, telling them to "kiss her fat ass."

Meanwhile, Keenyah was repeatedly subjected to critiques about her body throughout her cycle, being referred to as "dumpy" and "piggy chic." Miss Jay said she was "almost shaped like a boy, minus the breasts." And while Tyra stood up for her against Dickinson's remarks, she ultimately conceded that Keenyah had to go because she just wasn't thin enough to be a model. "As much as I hate and preach about models not having to be stick skinny, we have to face it that we are in the fashion industry. If you don't fit the clothes, you don't work." It doesn't make much sense to oscillate so wildly about whether you're for or against these standards, and that's the part I find truly perplexing. These weren't evolving beliefs over the years, but coexisting at the same time.

In a modeling competition, it shouldn't be that controversial to be judged on your appearance. This is modeling, after all. However, the show's confused identity comes down to the contradiction between Tyra's stated mission to "fight against the fashion industry," to show America representation of beauty that's not all white or skinny but showcases all different types of beauty—something the show honestly did trailblaze—with the realities of the modeling industry.

Losing the Plot

A large part of the documentary focuses on the various themed shoots done in poor taste, as well as the moment the show goes off the rails with desperation. From race-swapping shoots to graphic imagery with bizarre backstories involving violence, eating disorders, drug overdoses, and homelessness, these shoots were so outrageously tone deaf it's a miracle no one ever stepped in and questioned them.

During the race swap shoot, the models were given random ethnic three-year-olds to hold on their hips. During the homeless shoot inspired by Tyra's own stint pretending to be homeless for 24 hours, real homeless people were featured in the background. Underweight models were given photoshoot themes where they had to pretend to be bulimic, covered in what looked like vomit. Some girls had to pretend to overdose from drugs, while others with family members who were victims of gun violence had to pose as a model who was shot in the head.

Another girl, upon learning her close friend had just died, was suddenly lowered 6 ft into a grave for a coffin photo shoot. It became clear that there was a connection between the distasteful themes and storylines on the show and the model's own personal traumas and insecurities. If a girl's storyline was all about being the "fat" one who needed to lose weight, she was "coincidentally" told to portray gluttony in a seven deadly sins shoot and an elephant in an Africa-themed shoot.

Exploitative & Tone Deaf Early 2000s Reality Shows

The reality TV formula of the early 2000s made any initial good faith intentions ever more unlikely, as these productions relied on increasing drama, shocking gimmicks, and an opportunism lacking in humanity. But this documentary hardly makes any big reveals. River Page of The Free Press clocks it best, filing this one under the newly emerging "Reckoning Industrial Complex." The formula, he says, goes something like this: "Take a pop-culture product from roughly two decades ago, point out how unsavory it was in retrospect—even if this was obvious and remarked upon at the time—then make the viewer feel somehow complicit, and finally offer some fairly tepid behind-the-scenes insights."

The big reveal (which is not so big and not so revealing) that ANTM made good TV by "humiliating contestants in increasingly elaborate ways" was a fact that was "obvious at the time and not hidden from anybody." This documentary, he argues, "creates a permission structure by which the viewer can voyeuristically consume the psychological suffering of beautiful young women once again, only this time with righteous indignation."

This documentary, he argues, "creates a permission structure by which the viewer can voyeuristically consume the psychological suffering of beautiful young women once again, only this time with righteous indignation."

There were far more serious issues raised in the documentary, to be fair, such as subjecting models to hazardous conditions in which models fainted or got hypothermia, and incidents where women felt violated. By their serious nature, they require serious evidence and contemplation, not jumping to conclusions, so I don't have much to say about them.

Mind you, you should take some of these models' anecdotes with a grain of salt, as cycle 10 plus-size winner, Whitney Thompson, claimed to be a size 6, 5'10", and 115 lbs during filming, which is not only instantly visually disputable, but also completely nonsensical. Those measurements are not a size 6. That's a BMI of 16.5, which is severely underweight. Designers were scrambling to get her into a size 10. So, forgive me if I need to see the receipts for some of these stories.

What I do come away from this documentary with is an appreciation for the straight-laced harshness of Janice Dickinson, whose contrarian, offensive feedback was characterized by "Nice Guy" judge Nigel as an attempt to bait Tyra into a reaction. If you ask me, that's just how people act when they apply the same standards Tyra ultimately always submitted to, without the facade.

No covert narcissism, woe is me, I want to change the world but can't and really don't even want to, just a good old-fashioned villain who knows who they are and tells it like it is. This is modeling, sweetie. Not a charity. This is reality TV, not a support group. But worse than any hell they put these girls through is that it wasn't for much. They created good TV and wounded soldiers who can serve face, but still no supermodels. Will the new era be any different? I highly doubt it.