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America’s Next Top Model, or ANTM for short, took the world by storm and claimed to give the participants and viewers an inside look at what it is really like to work in the modeling industry. The show featured go-sees, photo shoots of all kinds, runway challenges, and of course makeovers for all the models that were competing to get to “be on top.” ANTM started off on UPN before transitioning over to The CW and finally VH1. During its time, ANTM became incredibly popular and consistently held high viewership throughout its 24 seasons on television.
While the show may have been popular and successful for its time, former viewers and social media users have been revisiting the show and are not happy with what they are seeing. From bullying the models to unexpected and borderline nonconsensual photo shoots, it is clear to many netizens that ANTM as it is known would simply not last in today’s television and entertainment climate.
YouTubers Have Called Out ANTM And Tyra’s Behavior
In the years since America’s Next Top Model was canceled, social media has blown up with clips from episodes past. YouTube in particular has plenty of content creators combing through old episodes of the show and criticizing how certain situations were handled.
One of the most prominent voices on the platform calling out the show’s problematic history is Jessica Kobeissi, who has an entire playlist of videos where she judges the show from the perspective of a professional photographer.
Kobeissi does not hesitate to call out any behavior in the videos that she deems unprofessional. This can include models boundaries not being respected, putting the models in danger just for the sake of a photo shoot, and the supposed manipulation done by Tyra, the judges, and the show’s editing team for the sake of creating reality drama.
In a couple of her videos, she points out the issue of Tyra and America’s Next Top Model having the girls race swap and tells her audience “I don’t like the idea of this photo shoot at all. It makes me uncomfortable, especially, you know, subjects like race are so sensitive and even me being a minority and being ethnic, it’s very tough to say certain things about this.”
Jay Manuel And Tyra Banks Are No Longer Friends
Former fans of America’s Next Top Model will remember Jay Manuel, aka Mister J, and his presence throughout most seasons of the show as the creative director for the photo shoots. He was known for his white blonde hair and for being a bit snarky with the girls on set.
Jay and Tyra also had a close friendship while the show was in production, but that seemed to fall to the wayside when Manuel decided that he wanted to leave the show for good. According to Manuel, he approached Tyra to tell her “I feel like I’ve given all I can to the show, and I’m gonna work on other things.”
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Banks simply responded to Jay with a simple “I’m disappointed” and allegedly did not continue the conversation beyond that. Jay then took the time to also call Banks out on her problematic behavior on the show, saying that Tyra was “emotionally manipulative.”
Jay Manuel eventually wrote a fictional book entitled The Wig, The B%&ch, & The Meltdown, which takes inspiration from his time on ANTM. While many praised Jay for calling out his former friend, others pointed out that he was compliant in fostering the same “emotionally manipulative” environment that he claims Banks perpetuated.
Several ANTM Episodes Featured Incredibly Problematic Photo Shoots
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The early to mid-2000s was a very different time, and the television and humor from that era are certainly cringe-worthy and problematic, and America’s Next Top Model was no exception to that with its photoshoot concepts.
The show’s producers had the models doing crazy things for these shoots including licking milk off a dirty kitchen floor, posing as a corpse in a crime scene, and even pressuring the models to pose nude without prior knowledge of the photo shoot concept.
The most problematic shoots of them all were the ones in which Tyra has the girls swap their races, with many of the girls donning blackface to achieve the vision Tyra had for the photo shoot. This concept was used twice throughout the show’s run time, both in 2005 for cycle four and in 2009 for cycle 13.
Cycle 13 contestant Jennifer An said she realized the issue with the photo shoot two hours into hair and makeup for her shots, saying that she and the other models were not aware that they were going to have the bodies painted, and that she tried to tell the crew what they were doing.
“I looked around and I’m like, ‘Guys, but I’m in blackface right now.’ And they were like, ‘Yeah, yeah, it’s fine.’ I think Tyra came over and she was talking about how beautiful it was that we were trying to meld these cultures in the shoot, and I just remember feeling super uncomfortable about it.”
An also says that no one asked her or the other models if they were okay with doing a shoot like this, something that seemed prevalent with many of the photo shoots throughout ANTM history. There are also, notably, contestants who regret appearing on the series at all. And given society’s evolution away from accepting blackface and any other problematic behavior, it is safe to assume that ANTM is unlikely to work in today’s climate.
