“How Dare You!” America’s Next Top Model’s Toxic Reign Over Feminism

The first time I watched America’s Next Top Model (ANTM), I thought it was just a makeover show where the models took pictures. At twelve years old, it made me uncomfortable to see a group of 20+ girls get yelled at for their photography. I didn’t realize what I was watching. I understood that the show was a reality show centered around the modeling industry, but I didn’t truly understand what was going on until this year, when I watched the Netflix documentary titled “Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model,” I began to understand the deeper problems within the fashion industry.

ANTM was a TV show that ran from 2003 to 2018, with each season featuring 20 to 25 young women competing to become “America’s Next Top Model.” The participants would compete a few times a week to have the best picture in a photoshoot, with competitions ranging from an underwear shoot to one where the models posed with tarantulas. The contestants would then be judged by the show's host, Tyra Banks, as well as a slew of judges that varied over the years. Each week, one or two girls would be voted off the show, and in around eight weeks, a winner would be named. 

Tyra Banks, the creator and host of ANTM, was one of the most famous supermodels in the 90’s. Wanting to stay popular in the early 2000’s, she and the producers created elaborate photoshoots with overworked backstories. By going with what was thrown at them, the contestants tried to show Tyra that they were ready for the real modeling industry. Those backstories were what kept the show popular for all 24 seasons, as were the freakouts that judges and contestants had throughout a season (or as the show calls it, a “cycle”). 

Top Model also focuses a lot on the stories behind the photoshoots. However, most of them have been controversial, such as a racist shoot where models were painted to look as though they were another race, or one in which a model, whose mother was fatally shot, was portrayed as though she was shot. Dramatic, embellished shoots like these were what gave the show its “look.” 

Since the beginning of modeling in the 1940’s, the fashion industry has expected women to look a certain way. Although society has evolved and women’s roles in the world have changed, beauty standards have not. While most women are no longer forced to stay home with their children and take care of their house, we are still forced to deal with restrictive societal standards. The modeling industry is notorious for body-shaming women, and these problems were exacerbated by ANTM. In the early 2000s, Janice Dickinson was the show's harshest judge. If the models didn’t look up to her standards, she would make her opinion known. Judges like Dickinson were encouraged to be harsher than they were in real life, as stated in Reality Check. While the industry was problematic, exaggeration was the show’s main selling point.

America’s Next Top Model wasn’t just a reality show about models. It was a competition to see who could impress the judges and the world the most. ANTM was meant to be entertaining, but it was also meant to teach young girls about the industry and unnatural societal standards. For 12-year-old girls watching the show, we weren’t told that we could do anything we put our minds to. Instead, we were given the message that if we didn’t look a certain way, we weren't enough.. 

Subliminally, these shows—and the fashion industry as a whole—send the message that if women don't look a specific way or reach unrealistic beauty standards, we aren’t attractive, and that’s just not true. Now, if that phrase were different, so that standards aren’t put on women, Top Model could have been much different. Yet Top Model isn’t different. It’s still the same, toxic show it was in 2003. Hopefully, one day there will be a modelling and fashion show that teaches young women what they can be instead of telling them what to be.