Two specials exposing the ugliest parts of America’s Next Top Model, the world famous modeling competition show that promised to redefine beauty standards, aired within three weeks of each other. I, a millennial blessed to witness the height of extreme reality television, was sat for both!
Netflix’s three-episode docuseries, Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, which premiered on February 16, centered multiple contestants’ experiences. Supporting expert commentary was sparse, but significant screen time was given to the cast, and co-executive producers Tyra Banks and Ken Mok, along with noted judges Jay Manuel, J. Alexander, and Nigel Barker, spoke on the show’s most controversial fails.
There was no shortage of cultural critique on Dirty Rotten Scandals’ back-to-back episodes dedicated to ANTM, which debuted March 11 on E! network. Tyra, Ken, and the judges were absent, however, and the narratives were driven by the critics more than former contestants. Early on, it was also clear that the culture experts were trying to minimize the celebrity and relevancy of Tyra. To further muddy the doc’s actual intention, Janice Dickinson, the most volatile judge in ANTM’s 15-year history, and Perez Hilton, a celebrity blogger known for cruel and even racist commentary, make appearances.
Admittedly, I am an unapologetic Tyra stan (yes, still). This, I’m sure, has colored my decades-long stance that analyzing a 23-year-old show without context of the culture now and then is unproductive, and that some contestants were able to maximize the opportunity while others weren’t. I still feel this way about Top Model and a lot of the ‘90s and ‘00s programming that raised me. But having sat through approximately five hours of flashback footage and analyses, my position is more nuanced. This is credited mostly to Reality Check.
It wasn’t until the first doc that I realized there was never a world in which one Black supermodel was ever going to be allowed to debunk oppressive beauty standards or dismantle a system of which she herself was a victim. In her confessional, Tyra, 52, speaks of ANTM’S goal to change the beauty industry with the same bright eyes as she did in season one when she was just 28 years old. And, in many ways, despite the show’s controversy, its mission was accomplished. Whether it was casting contestants of all sizes, races, and gender identities and expressions, or telling Janice Dickinson, who’d just body shamed a model, that she was “why women are leaning over toilets … and vomiting after they’ve eaten,” Tyra and ANTM boldly challenged the way millions of viewers thought about and defined beauty.
But phobias and -isms plagued fashion before Top Model, and continue to do so 23 years after its premiere. Perhaps revolutionizing the whole industry was too lofty a goal, especially for Tyra, who at the onset of her modeling career was told that her nose and lips were too big, and was fat shamed and nicknamed “America’s Next Top Waddle” by tabloids at the end of it. Tyra’s résumé is decorated with historic feats, like being the first Black supermodel to cover Sports Illustrated and sign as a Victoria’s Secret Angel. But if she, in all her power and glory, couldn’t save herself from the fate of a sizeist, racist, ageist industry, it was unlikely that she’d be able to do so for everyday women, many of whom didn’t even have the aesthetic privileges that afforded her such an illustrious career. Widespread change would require intentional support from the real gatekeepers, designers who’d not just make an ANTM cameo but actually book diverse models, and people like Les Moonves—the Viacom president who, according to the Netflix series, gave Tyra pushback for casting a Latina contestant. And if history has taught us anything, it’s that people in those seats rarely, if ever, scooch over to make room.
But that still doesn’t absolve Tyra, Ken, Janice, “the J’s,” and Nigel Barker for their roles in the show’s failings.
In Cycle 1, contestant Ebony Haithe, 24 at the time, was bullied by unskilled White hairstylists who described her hair as “tough,” laughing at her texture and shaving bald spots throughout her buzzcut. To add insult to injury, Ebony, now 47, recalls a phone call from Tyra after the makeover went awry, in which the model-producer told her, “The judges have been talking to me, and they have been saying that you have been showing up ashy every day.” Ebony was targeted from the start of the season until her elimination in episode four. Fellow contestants Elyse complained about “grease all over [the apartment] because of her new moisturizing regime,” and Giselle asked her to “thoroughly clean your hands” so as not to leave the doorknobs slippery. Jay Manuel said Ebony looked “old,” Alice Spivak called her “aggressive,” and guest judge Kimora Lee Simmons described the stunning and quite jovial Harlem native as “much too harsh.” Producers and judges don’t even acknowledge, much less apologize for, the racist, colorist language or the “angry Black woman” edit they gave Ebony 20-plus years ago.
Tyra, Ken, and the judges weren’t on set when 21-year-old Shandi Sullivan “blacked out” and had drunk, nonconsensual sex in Milan with a moped driver. They were, however, all made aware that producers filmed it and that the footage would air on Cycle 2. My eyes watered as the former contestant cried, retelling the fragmented bits she could recall. “All I remember is him on top of me… No one did anything to stop it,” she says, reliving the trauma 22 years later. “I didn’t even feel sex happening; I just knew it was happening.”
I was certain that someone other than Shandi would be teary, that we’d hear a judge’s shaky voice filled with regret and remorse about how they, and the network, neglected to protect a young model, and the driver if he was inebriated beyond consciousness, too. This is never clarified in the doc, and the word “assault” is never used, which feels like an intentional choice to minimize the severity. On the contrary, Tyra tells us that Shandi’s story is “difficult” to talk about because production wasn’t her “territory”— a claim easy to refute, as she was, in fact, an executive producer and self-proclaimed “master editor.” Ken, who was head of story, justifies both the lack of intervention and heartless documentation, saying that the girls were informed that cameras would be filming 24/7. Jay says that they were off the clock when Shandi was having sex in the shower, but it had become a “story point” that production was going to see through. The biggest display of sympathy from any of them is when Jay refers to Shandi as “poor girl.”
The abuse doesn’t stop there. Keenyah Hill (Cycle 4) was given a “glutton” edit, and Nigel Barker told her, “You have to be in control,” after a handsy male model made unwanted advances, moaning in her ear and caressing her thighs. Nigel doubles down in Reality Check, saying that sexual harassment happens in the fashion industry, and victims have to be able to stand up for themselves. Joanie Dodds (Cycle 6) underwent four teeth extractions in one sitting and wasn’t allowed to consult anyone, not even her mom, before the surgery. Also in Cycle 6, Tyra gave ANTM winner Danielle Evans an indirect ultimatum to close the gap in her teeth or go home, only to phone her years later and reveal that she knew the winner couldn’t break into the industry because of the show’s stigma… and that she did nothing about it. Producers knew that Dionne Walters’s (Cycle 8) mom was shot and paralyzed, yet they had her pose as a gunshot victim in a crime shoot challenge.
In Dirty Rotten Scandals, Angelea Preston (Cycles 14 and 17) says that Michelle Mock casted her for ANTM: All Stars, knowing she’d done sex work as a means of survival. When Angela won the season, however, her offer was rescinded because of it.
When questioned about it all, producers and judges of the hit 2000s show justify and excuse the pain they inflicted more than they apologize for it. Janice goes as far as to rewrite history and paint herself as a victim, forced, by Tyra, to play the villain.
The biggest stain on America’s Next Top Model’s legacy is not the show’s problematic edits or offensive photo shoot challenges that predate our current, evolved ethics. It’s that Tyra Banks, Ken Mok, Janice Dickinson, Jay Manuel, J. Alexander, and Nigel Barker were given an opportunity to take accountability and apologize, without excuse, to the contestants whose ambitions were exploited—and they completely squandered it.