Netflix is set to release Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model on February 16th. The documentary purports to expose the hidden secrets of America’s Next Top Model, covering the controversial moments that defined the series and the behind-the-scenes drama that didn’t make the cut.
If you spent your lazy girlhood summer weekdays posted up on the couch with nothing to do, you probably watched a ton of America’s Next Top Model, including the reruns. The most iconic moments of that show are burned into viewers’ brains forever. Who could forget the horror of Shandi cheating on her boyfriend in the hot tub, sobbing hysterically when she called him to confess? I’m still not over how many long-haired middle-American girls were forced to chop their locks against their will, only for Tyra to send them home mere days later. The most memorable moment in America’s Next Top Model history is far and away Tyra screaming at Tiffany, “WE WERE ROOTING FOR YOU, WE WERE ALL ROOTING FOR YOU, HOW DARE YOU.” Pop culture enthusiasts will always have a place in their hearts for the show
Reality Check will feature Top Model judges Tyra Banks, Jay Manuel, Nigel Barker, and Miss J Alexander; therefore, it will be a biased documentary. How can they actually expose all the behind-the-scenes and tea from one of the most exploitative reality shows of the 2000s? They will laugh about the bad makeovers and grimace about the segments that didn’t age well, as they did in the trailer. They will discuss tension between the judges, specifically between Tyra and Jay Manual. However, they won’t say anything that will actually frame Tyra or anyone else involved in the documentary in an irredeemable light. There’s no way they would’ve agreed to do it if they thought it would make them more canceled than they already were because of what they did and said on America’s Next Top Model.
A show like America’s Next Top Model obviously wouldn’t be made today, mostly because telling size-4 women that they need to lose weight is no longer going to fly with a great deal of the population. It probably did more harm than good for young girls to watch Tyra (and especially Janice Dickinson) call objectively thin girls “plus-sized.” No amount of Tyra claiming that she personally was progressive for the time by including “plus-sized” models will make that point moot.
The documentary will claim that Top Model was a product of its time and argue that all reality shows in the early and mid-2000s competed to be as crazy as possible. After all, in the early 2000s, the genre was primarily known for Survivor contestants eating bugs. America’s Next Top Model was a show designed to be outrageous, and the final product was far more outrageous than its fashion-industry contemporary, Project Runway. Part of that was because Tyra is such a wacky person. If you’ve watched even a single episode of The Tyra Banks Show, you know that she is TV gold, no matter the context. That’s because she is willing to be over-the-top to create an iconic TV moment. Heidi Klum might dress up as a hyper-realistic worm for Halloween, but she would never be able to convince a live-studio audience that she has rabies the way that Tyra could.
America’s Next Top Model felt much more cruel than Project Runway because the contestants were the product. It’s a lot less personal for a judge to say, “I think your outfit is garbage” than it is to say, “I think you are garbage.” And if you think that’s an exaggeration, then you have not seen Janice Dickinson judging.
Based on the trailer, it’s obvious that Reality Check only exists because the creative faces of Top Model want to justify the existence of a show like America’s Next Top Model to a modern audience. It seems akin to them confessing their sins, publicly acknowledging the episode in which they had the models use makeup to “switch races,” only so that everyone will stop bothering them about how wrong it was. Despite its nostalgic popularity, there’s still a sizable chunk of the population that desperately wants these celebrities to publicly chide themselves for the sins of their past.
This documentary will be nothing more than a trip down memory lane with a couple of half-hearted apologies thrown in. The trailer even features Tyra blaming the audience for always demanding more. Audiences were ravenous for crazy challenges, so they had to hit 19-year-old girls with a giant swinging pendulum while they were walking in heels. She couldn’t let a legally blind contestant see the circuitous runway before walking it, because the audience would’ve been mad that she had an unfair advantage. Saying, “We went too far, but you guys were the ones asking for it,” might have truth to it, but it’s surely going to leave a sour taste in the mouth of the audience who wasn’t so keen on forgiving Tyra in the first place.
Source: @aedison
A documentary that perfectly encapsulates exactly what happened behind the scenes of America’s Next Top Model might never exist. There are far too many contestants over all of the cycles of all of the different franchises, and a lot of them are content to move on with their lives without dredging up 20-year-old drama. The America’s Next Top Model judges should learn to do the same, and accept that their imperfect past selves will live on in pop-culture history forever, and there’s no amount of rewriting the narrative that will change that.
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