I Was Voted Off ANTM For Being Too Sexy. This Is My Story.

It’s the word we reach for when something felt unfair, exploitative, or painful. But it’s not the word I’d use.

After watching the episodes and the wave of docu-series that dropped all at once, many of which included me, I’ve sat with it long enough. It’s my turn to speak.

The messages poured in from all over the world. “Do you hate that you were on America’s Next Top Model?” “How much do you hate Tyra Banks?” Those two questions, more than any others, kept showing up. So let me be direct: I hate no one.

Hello, my name is Sara Racey-Batraville, formerly Sara Racey-Tabrizi, and I was on Season 2 of the iconic show, America’s Next Top Model. I was the girl who was voted off for being too “sexy.” Tyra cried for me when I was eliminated, and she said some pretty life-changing things, including that I could stand next to her and Heidi Klum in a Victoria’s Secret ad and fit right in. She practically called me a supermodel, and I will absolutely take that!

It feels surreal to say all of that while sitting in my sweatpants, folding my nine-year-old’s laundry. But it’s true, and it’s mine forever.

It’s my turn to speak.

Being chosen for that show was life-changing, for me, and for my mother.

I was raised by a single mother. My father, God rest his soul, was an Iranian immigrant who immigrated to Los Angeles, to what they call “Little Tehran.” Being half-Persian was my “story” on ANTM, and yes, I had the daddy issues to match.

My mother and I were unbelievably broke. I would say poor, but that’s a little too cliché. When she finally bought our first house, as I entered high school, it was a rickety old place in South Seattle that looked frozen in time. Broken windows. Vomit-green curtains hanging half off the rod. She told me later: “I was only able to buy that house because I was hit by a car.” My response: “You were hit by a car and this is all we could get?” Two months later, she lost her job. Our car broke down constantly, and when it did run, you could hear it coming from five miles away. One morning, I picked up a friend on the way to our all-girls’ Catholic high school and the car just died, right there in the street. Dead. A police officer happened to be nearby and drove us to the front door of school. God bless him. We were mortified.

I’m not sharing this for sympathy. I’m sharing it so you understand what it meant to us when something like Top Model came along. To a family like ours, you didn’t question it. You called it a blessing and you showed up. And yes, I hear it constantly now: “But that should make you hate the show even more. You didn’t get paid. They used you. They exploited you!”

Maybe so. But here’s my answer to that: I almost didn’t do the show. Not because I was afraid of New York or the cameras, but because I was afraid of letting my light shine.

I was bullied relentlessly in elementary school and even more so in high school. In those early years, I was just a weird kid. Different clothes, a hat obsession, chose to be alone. The “cool kids” offered me a spot more than once, but the entry fee was conformity, and joining in on the bullying. I declined the invitation.

For my first two years of high school, I was terrified to walk through the door. I was a quiet, competitive athlete, and there is always that girl, the one who zeroes in on you. Mine was two grades older. She and her crew didn’t like that I existed in their school, so the death threats started. When I finally told my mother, she went straight to the principal. She was not playing.

Then came the local mall’s model scout competition. I made the cut. And there she was, that girl, sitting in the crowd, eyes narrowed, waiting on a spot on the same stage. I told my mother I wanted to leave. She took me home. That was how I handled anything that felt like success back then.

Compliments, opportunities, praise—I deflected all of it. If I said no first, maybe I was safe. Maybe no one would notice me long enough to come for me. So when I found out I’d made the cut, out of thousands of women, for the most talked-about show on television, that same instinct kicked in. My mother looked at me with those piercing blue eyes and said: “You’re doing this. I don’t care what you say. Go be Sara.” And I did. With gratitude.

The whole point was to entertain people and keep them watching. That’s the deal you make when you sign up.

Let me say this clearly: Top Model was a television show. A highly produced, highly competitive television show going up against American Idol, Survivor, and The Real World at the time. Was it perfect? Not even close. It was September 2003, so think Survivor, but make it tall, hungry, and in couture. The whole point was to entertain people and keep them watching. That’s the deal you make when you sign up.

Do I think it was necessary to dangle us 100 feet in the air in an abandoned warehouse for a couture shoot? Absolutely not. In my entire career as an actual working model in New York, I was never once suspended high enough to plummet to my death. But we survived. We’re fine.

Do I feel that production should have grabbed that Italian man and yanked him out of the house before anything could have happened to Shandi? Regardless of who or what or how it all transpired? Hell yes. That was heartbreaking to watch. The pure pain Shandi felt gripped my heart.

During filming in the city, only two years had passed since 9/11. Our individual interview segments—the talking-head clips where we’d narrate our day—were filmed on the top floor of the Millennium Hilton in lower Manhattan, directly across the street from where the Twin Towers had stood. The metal was still twisted. The rubble was still there. The dust hadn’t fully settled. I cried almost every time. It was captivating and horrific in equal measure.

On September 11, 2003, the two-year anniversary, April and I were up there filming our interviews. I looked down from the window and saw thousands of people swarming ground zero. I was sobbing. Production told me to stop. “We can’t film if you’re crying.” I tried. Twenty minutes in, the fire alarm went off. We were on the top floor; the penthouse. We ignored it and kept filming. Then the intercom: evacuate. My heart stopped. It was September 11th, and our hotel was on fire.

Production ran for the elevator. “Wait,” I said. “You don’t use the elevator in a fire.” Fifth-grade fire drill, people. We got in anyway. The elevator stopped mid-floor at 34. We pried ourselves out and took the stairs. Worth noting: I’d had three knee surgeries after tearing my ACL and meniscus. One flight was excruciating. We had 34. I held the rail with one hand and a PA’s hand with the other. By the time we reached the bottom, we could smell the smoke. A woman ahead of us opened the exit door and a massive plume of smoke swallowed us whole. Then, like something out of a movie, an FDNY firefighter came through the door, found April and me, and carried us out one by one, dropping us into the middle of the crowd that had gathered outside. April and I held onto each other and cried. Thirty minutes later, back in the production van, a PA turned to me and asked if I was ready to go back up and finish my interview.

Broke and famous is its own particular kind of humiliating.

The real reckoning came after the show ended, though, when I had to turn the dream into something actual. Coming off ANTM, I was recognized everywhere. Police escorts. Autographs. I was doing a local news spot once when Gabrielle Union spotted me, screamed my name, and ran over to hug me. I stood there with my jaw on the floor. It was surreal.

But the first two years after the show were brutal. Broke and famous is its own particular kind of humiliating. A waiter asks for your autograph while you’re quietly praying your debit card doesn’t get declined. I was angry sometimes. I won’t pretend otherwise. But New York has a way of hazing you, and if you can survive that, you come out the other side knowing you’re going to be okay.

Eventually, something shifted. I stopped feeling sorry for myself. Stopped asking “why me.” I dug my heels in, no pun intended, and decided: I came here for a reason, with or without Top Model, and I’m not leaving until I’ve done what I came to do. I went back to my faith. I accepted that no contract, no amount of anger, no reality TV credit was going to build the life I wanted. That was on me.

I could write an entire book about the real modeling world in New York, where you’re not competing with 11 girls in a house but 11,000 from around the world, all vying for the same job. That’s the actual horror film. But I digress.

Once I got out of my own way, things started to move. I left my boutique agency and signed with Ford Models New York. Ford Models wanted me. I’m still a little giddy about that. From there, I signed with Innovative Artists and got my SAG card. The clients followed: Revlon, L’Oréal, Tony & Guy, Proenza Schouler, Anne Taylor Loft, Target, Converse. Commercials, films, projects I’m genuinely proud of. I went from not being able to pay my bills to building a career I built myself. I earned it, with integrity.

ANTM gave me exactly what I needed—the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Tyra herself connected me with Diane Smith at Sports Illustrated, the magazine I’d been obsessed with since I was twelve. I had my own apartment. I was launching my own companies. The girl who almost said no, who spent years shrinking herself to stay safe, was done dimming her light.

Every woman who was on that show has her own story—her own journey, her own weight to carry. I honor all of it. I love all of them.

But I refuse to hate my experience. I don’t hate Tyra. I don’t hate the judges. I don’t even hate the mascara running down my face when I was eliminated. To hate something is to let it own you; to hand it power over your heart. I’m not interested in that. Over the years, I’ve received message after message from Persian women and men telling me I inspired them to pursue their dreams. That’s what made all of it worthwhile. Why would I hate something that lit a fire in someone else? That experience made me a better mother, a better wife, a better business owner. It led me to create The Urban Catholic apparel line and our Saints And The City Podcast. I built something real out of it.

ANTM gave me exactly what I needed—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Without it, I wouldn’t be who I am. And I happen to really like who I am.