If you are a millennial woman, America's Next Top Model may have been your first experience with reality television. The show, which ran for 10 years starting in 2003, was an early reality giant and made Tyra Banks, its creator and host, a household name. At its peak, Top Model drew over 100 million global viewers and left an indelible mark on culture. "Smizing," meaning "smiling with your eyes," is in the Collins Dictionary, and Banks' infamous tirade to an unruly model, "We were all rooting for you!" still circulates as a meme.
With its high-concept photoshoots and extreme makeovers, Top Model was a pioneer in creating viral moments. However, today, its relentless criticism and body shaming are deeply uncomfortable, as former contestants like Gen Zers point out during a pandemic-era reunion show. This is the latest installment in Netflix's three-part documentary series "Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model."
The series has great access: Banks, runway coach J. Alexander, creative director Jay Manuel, photographer Nigel Barker, and executive producer Ken Mok all give interviews, as well as dozens of former contestants. However, it suffers from Netflix's usual issues: it's too long, unevenly paced, and heavily edited. What could have been a powerful 90-minute film spans three hours, but the TikTok-like editing robs it of impact.
Banks portrays herself as a pioneer determined to democratize fashion and diversify the industry, but "Reality Check" reveals that Top Model was just as much about maintaining a toxic status quo. Women on screen were weighed and criticized for their bodies. Giselle, an Afro-Latina woman that Banks was proud to cast, was mocked for her "wide ass." "That's how I still talk to myself, to this day," she regrets a decade later. In a safari-themed photoshoot, a woman deemed too large was forced to pose as an elephant.
Today, Top Model's "challenges" resemble rituals of humiliation. One contestant, Danyelle, was forced to close the gap between her teeth. Another, Dion, was asked to pose with a bullet wound in her head; her mother was shot and paralyzed by an ex-boyfriend. "I thought it was a coincidence," she says.
Mok admits nonchalantly that this particular shoot was a "mistake," a "celebration of violence," though he seems indifferent to the individual suffering. Meanwhile, Banks sidesteps discussing storylines and production ("That's not my area").
Many contestants came from difficult backgrounds and blame Banks for making them believe Top Model was their ticket out. Instead, most found that the show worked against them. Not surprisingly: the fashion industry wasn't charmed by Top Model's OTT, increasingly tasteless photoshoots featuring models posing as homeless people, murder victims, or other ethnic groups besides their own.
While the judges express more remorse than Mok and Banks, all participants want to agree that the series lacks 2026 standards. However, "Reality Check" clearly shows - but doesn't emphasize enough - that many contestants expressed distress at the time and were manipulated or pressured into participating.
Most disturbingly is Shandi's account of the models' trip to Milan. After partying in a hot tub with local men, Shandi had sex with one of them in the shower, then went to bed with him, all while the camera crew followed. Shandi and the documentary don't explicitly call it sexual assault, but footage from the original Top Model suggests she was too drunk to consent. Shandi tearfully tells the documentary that she drank two bottles of wine and "there was a lot of blacking out:" "I just knew that sex was happening and then I passed out." And not only did production not intervene, "it was all captured."
Mok's defense is that Top Model was "shot like a documentary and we told the girls that from day one," adding that it was "significantly reduced" in post-production. "Whether good or bad, it was one of the most memorable moments in Top Model." Shandi says she requested to leave production after, but was denied, and she was only given a phone on the condition that it was filmed and recorded.
The crew apologized afterwards, says Shandi: "They just knew it wasn't right." Banks' response, meanwhile, was to take all the women to a terrace to talk about relationship mistakes and "first-time wishes" while the camera captured Shandi's distraught face. The episode aired with the title "The Girl Who Cheated."
It must be said that Banks is a real piece of work, passing the buck while boasting about her ability to identify talent and what audiences want. She even blames viewers for Top Model's extremes: "You all asked for this." When Banks expresses gratitude for being forced to reflect and evolve, it's not only insincere but also implicitly threatening: perhaps the rest of us will be just as grateful when we're called out, "because that day will come," she says ominously.
"Reality Check" is right to end with former contestants, all of whom seem much happier and healthier than their Top Model days and have a remarkably clear-eyed view of the show's impact on them. But it does them a disservice by constantly framing Top Model as a product of its time and only getting criticism from the woke Gen Zers. For a show about beauty, Top Model was always ugly - but "Reality Check" only draws surface-level conclusions.
