Watching America’s Next Top Model in 2021

It was even more jarring than I thought it would be.

America’s Next Top Model has always been my sick-day TV show of choice. They used to rerun entire seasons during the day, which made it perfect for when I had the stomach bug, or for when I was faking having the stomach bug.

The first time I remember watching the show, I was in the sixth grade.

Watching it now, I can’t imagine one 12-year-old girl who could come out of that feeling better about themselves than they felt before.

The show features the worst combination of 2000’s insensitivity and 2010’s girl-power feminism that I’ve ever seen. The one thing that Tyra exells at in the show is constantly choosing the worst possible human beings as judges, photographers, and mentors for the girls.

Most of the time, I’m also convinced that the entire show is just the product of Tyra’s friends encouraging her delusions.

The problems are endless: racism, homophobia, exploitation of contestants’ traumatic pasts, and so much more. Another thing I noticed is that contestants would develop unhealthy habits while on the show (such as alcoholism or unhealthy eating habits) and production did nothing but document their downward spiral.

In 2020, ANTM was back in the news. The media belatedly criticized Tyra for some of her insensitive comments. Of course, Tyra was subsequently canceled on Twitter. From this, came articles condemning cancel culture as a whole, including a confusing Forbes article in which the writer insists Tyra should not be cancelled because it is not “kind.”

I’m not saying I think cancel culture is the best thing we’ve ever done as a society. I’m just saying, if you want to use Tyra as your example in order to guilt Gen Z out of their dastardly cancelling ways, maybe you should watch the show first. She isn’t really redeemable. She was consistently terrible on network TV.

There is so much wrong with Top Model, way more than I can get into here. If you DO want to go down a rabbit hole, I can recommend some videos to help you out.

“Tyra Banks and ANTM EXPOSED… more problematic than you think!” (Cruel World Happy Mind)

Jeana Turner Runner-Up America’s Next Top Model Cycle 24 Tell-All PART 1 (Jeana Turner)

”antm being questionable and problematic for 9 more minutes” (kamek)

And I’ll let the YouTube algorithm take you from here.

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