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I thank my good fortune that America’s Next Top Model aired in the early 2000s. Given all the body hate that reigned on supermodel Tyra Banks’ reality series, I’m glad I haven’t experienced anything like that in years.
My “damage” from the canceled modeling competition may have been limited to the forever ingrained knowledge of the concept of “smize” (smiling with eyes). But now, when I watch the documentary Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, I actually get angry at the thought of all the young girls who tried to live up to the hosts’ insane appearance requirements.
The Netflix documentary is Admittedly a sad contemporary document, but it still sheds light on some things that have changed for the better.
Meanwhile, one of the guys has sex with her while the camera is rolling
For example, the concept of “good television”. A classic expression used extensively in the early days of reality, preferably by a no-holds-barred television executive who claimed with “Gladiator” bloodlust that anything disgusting caught on camera was “good television” and should be broadcast to the masses. And such a boss definitely seems to have been involved in “America’s Next Top Model” (ANTM).
That’s how it could be For example, go to an episode of the second season of the series. The group of young women vying to become the next “top model” are sent to Milan. After completing a photo assignment with each man, it is decided that the young people will meet at the girls’ apartment for a wine party. One of the participants, Shandi Sullivan, who hasn’t eaten all day, becomes so drunk that she passes out. Meanwhile, one of the guys has sex with her while the camera is rolling.
The next day, ANTM production discovers that Shandi, who has a boyfriend, has been cheating. In the documentary, twenty years later, Shandi recounts the trauma of being subjected to a sexual assault in which no one intervened – and in which everything was filmed. Good TV? Do I need to say that this was long before Metoo?
The second thing that becomes clear is that moderators are no longer gods. In the past, famous people running a popular show were an unattainable authority — and the judges on a reality show were untouchable. At ANTM, Tyra and company debated and judged the contestants as if they themselves were Olympian gods and the girls were pieces of meat (not unlike the tone of the Epstein emails). It would hardly go unpunished today.
But the documentary shows how Tyra soon goes from innovator to tyrant
With social media Due to the growing importance and constant questioning of users, the gap between celebrities and vanities has disappeared. The moderators’ previous authority has been undermined. And it’s no coincidence that the meme of screaming Tyra Banks berating a contestant (“I was rooting for you!”) only went viral in 2020 – fifteen years after the episode aired.
The generation that watched ANTM reruns during the pandemic and post-metoo is also the one that reacted most strongly to what was normalized in the show: cosmetic surgical procedures against the contestants’ will, ethnic swapping and glorification of violence, the use of contestants’ traumas to create exactly that: “good television.”
And of course a lot of body shaming – especially the bizarre fat shaming of already thin models and their completely normal food.
In the age of the thinness fixation, we no longer need a TV tira screaming at us to control our weight
Tyra Banks initial The aim was to expand the concept of beauty at a time when the industry was fixated on white, thin models. But the documentary shows how Tyra soon goes from innovator to tyrant. Gradually she seems to be internalizing the industry’s old beauty rules. Especially the slimness thing. And it’s easy to see that this rule has never really been abolished, even in 2026.
When Tyra Banks hints at a revival of her show, I realize how completely unnecessary that would be. In the age of the thinness fixation, we no longer need a TV tira screaming at us to control our weight. It already lives in our heads.
Read more chronicles and other writings by Catia Hultquist
