The ‘America’s Next Top Model’ Documentary Proves the Series Was Always Doomed to Hurt Us
I have struggled with disordered eating my entire life. Being 13 years old and obsessed with America’s Next Top Model in tandem with the ever-pervasive diet and tabloid culture of the 2000s absolutely contributed to my shaky body image. With a frontal lobe about as firm as overnight oats, I, like many others my age, fell victim to the ideals presented in the docuseries: It’s just how things are. My friends and I entered middle school and traded juice boxes and multiplication tables for diet soda and calorie counting. We didn’t understand at the time how the media we consumed, not our diets, was causing our anguish.
But in Reality Check, Banks—who has been interviewed about the negative impact of her show multiple times—smizes unflinchingly into the camera lens as she utters every adage and platitude instead of, “Hey, I'm sorry for fucking up a generation of young people—particularly young women.” (For what it’s worth, Banks has said in past interviews that she “agreed” with criticisms for “off choices,” but it was still predicated by the “it was a different time” spiel.)
But the sins against contestants—and society writ large, for that matter—extend beyond distorted conversations about beauty. The highlight reel of what-the-absolute-hell moments on America’s Next Top Model also included the now-infamous race-swap photo shoot, a photo shoot where the models pose as unhoused people, and a spine-chilling photo shoot where the models (one of whom was the daughter of a gun violence survivor) pose as murder victims. The models Banks vied to empower so audaciously became her dolls for makeovers and playing pretend. It stripped contestants of their bodily autonomy—if they could not protest a bob, they did not have a leg to stand on when the series took unpredictably dark turns.
As many fans vividly remember, the production filmed and aired cycle two contestant Shandi Sullivan’s intoxicated encounter with a man in Milan, which she describes in the docuseries as sexual assault. “It’s a little hard for me to talk about production because that’s not my territory,” Banks said when asked why production did not intervene to protect a clearly intoxicated Sullivan, blaming Mok and other members of the team. (Writer's note: Banks also held an executive producer title on the show; the docuseries does not interrogate exactly how production wouldn’t have been her “territory” in this instance.)
In one instance, she does apologize—on camera, not face-to-face—to cycle four contestant Keenyah Hill, who faced unwanted sexual advances from a male model on the set of a photo shoot. These instances happened on camera and in front of the entire production crew, but when Hill stopped the shoot to share her distress, she was dismissed and later told she needed to take more control. Banks’s response in hindsight: “None of us knew… but she needed more [protection],” Banks said of Hill’s experience. “Boo-boo, I am so sorry.”
Photo: Courtesy of Netflix
