This week, Netflix dropped a three-part, much-anticipated (at least by us millennials) documentary on reality television show America’s Next Top Model (ANTM). The new series, Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, shows Tyra Banks – the creator of the reality series, its executive producer, and its longest-running host, as well as a famed supermodel – alongside the other judges and over a dozen contestants, discussing the creation, success and backlash surrounding the show.
For those unacquainted, of which I assume there are very few, given that generations who may not have tuned in live will certainly be familiar with the viral sounds (especially “We were all rooting for you”), shocking moments, and TikTok dissections of it in recent years, ANTM was the reality TV show of the early ‘’00s. It ran for 15 years, had 24 cycles, and was a cultural phenomenon, at its height drawing in more than 100 million viewers worldwide. The premise was simple: a supermodel competition show in which aspiring models (between 10 and 16, depending on the season) lived together and competed for a career-launching modelling contract. To win, they took part in weekly photo shoots, runway challenges, and extreme makeovers.
This is not the first exploration of the show’s toxic past. There have been podcasts like Curse of: America’s Next Top Model (2025), an investigative 13-episode series from iHeartPodcasts and Glass Podcasts, many think pieces, essays, social media posts and more. But this is the most significant access any exploration has had: Banks, catwalk coach J. Alexander, creative director Jay Manuel, photographer Nigel Barker, executive producer Ken Mok, and contestants such as Giselle Samson, Shandi Sullivan and Danielle “Dani” Evans all take part.
We were all rooting for you!
Tyra Banks opens the series by saying, “I haven’t really said much, but now it’s time.” In fact, she doesn’t say much throughout the three episodes; at least nothing we didn’t already know. No one really takes accountability for the treatment of contestants. Whilst the show points to the surrounding culture that existed at the time, which created such bigotry, fatphobia, racism, rigid beauty standards and misogyny for the show to perpetrate it, no one explains or apologises directly to the women harmed. In fact, Banks even hints at a comeback, saying, “After the show, I had so many different ideas for my life. I’m obsessed with pivoting. I feel like my work is not done. You have no idea what we have planned for cycle 25.”
At one point, she tells the camera, “Hindsight is 20/20 for all of us. It just so happens that a lot of the things that are 20/20 for me happened in front of the world.”
I’m not sure that “hindsight” is enough of an excuse to accuse what the contestants experienced: On Reality Check, former Cycle Two contestant Shandi Sullivan revisits one of the most distressing chapters of her time on ANTM. While filming in Milan, she says that production arranged for a group of men to come to the models’ residence, where everyone drank and socialised. After consuming alcohol on an empty stomach, she says she “blacked out” and later recalls only fragmented sensations, including waking to find a man on top of her. “I don’t even feel sex happening, I just knew it was happening, and then I passed out,” she said.
Footage from the episode later shows Banks bringing up being cheated on with the cast, then turning to Shandi and telling her, "Everybody messes up, Shani. I'm not judging you, but I think that we have to fight against our carnal desires."
“I understand that people do become attracted to other people, and it's all about your relationship and how open your relationship is and how honest you can be with one another.”
When asked about how production handled the alleged incident, Tyra Banks said, “I do remember her story. It's a little difficult for me to talk about production because that's not my territory,” while executive producer Ken Mok said, "We treated Top Model as a documentary. And we told the girls that," Mok said. “We would go over the rules. There's going to be cameras with you 24/7, day in and day out, and they're going to cover everything — the good, the bad, and everything in between. No matter what happens while you're on camera, we're going to document all of that.”
Several former contestants shared their experiences of being body-shamed on the show. Keenyah Hill said production made her weight a punchline: “To see that that was going to be my entire narrative, it just felt unfair and just felt kind of dirty.” During one challenge, she was assigned to portray gluttony as one of the Seven Deadly Sins. In another, she was cast as the elephant in a safari shoot. In the early seasons, on-camera weigh-ins and discussions of contestants’ measurements were a core part of the competition. During Season 1, judge Janice Dickinson repeatedly called contestant Robynne Manning “fat” and “huge.”
Whitney Thompson, the show’s first plus-size winner (Cycle 10), shared in the documentary that she felt the lack of clothes in her size on set was intentional, adding: “You’re standing there for eight, nine hours under those hot lights waiting for people to tell you that something is wrong with how you look. It was emotionally exhausting.”
Season 1 contestant Giselle Samson was also subjected to body shaming, with judges remarking cruelly that “she’s got a side ass.” She told Netflix in the documentary: “In our confessionals, I could feel the push of producers trying to navigate us against each other.”
The documentary also includes Danielle “Dani” Evans, who, in her season, was told to close the gap in her teeth or risk elimination. Years later, Banks urged contestant Chelsey Hershey to widen hers. While Banks maintains she apologised, Evans believes Banks was less interested in her autonomy than in the dramatic value the moment brought to the show.
There was also a now-infamous challenge centred around a “race-swapping photo shoot.” Banks said, “I didn’t think it was controversial, I was in my own little bubble in my own little head. This was my little way of showing the world that brown and black is beautiful. But we put it out there, and the world was like, ‘Are you crazy, have you lost your mind?’”
Racism was laced throughout the show. Ebony Haith, another Season 1 contestant, reflected on her ANTM makeover, which began with Banks telling her, “This little piece of hair right here? This extra little thing? Gone!” In Reality Check, Haith said: “I’m sitting there, and I have three of the top stylists over my head, laughing at my hair texture. It was really just frustrating. People did not have the correct clippers. Everyone basically said they didn’t know what to do … They ended up giving me three bald spots. Very disappointing.”
America’s Next Top Model was built to profit from women’s distress, pain and trauma. It had no problem creating situations that would cause this pain, or sitting back and watching as it happened, simply for “entertainment.”
This voyeurism of women’s pain, especially in the pursuit of unrealistic beauty, is not a thing of the past. Whilst reality TV might be marginally better regulated, the politics and culture of today still disregard the well-being of women and marginalised genders; they are racist, homophobic and misogynistic. Yes, we may not have Tyra Banks and Co humiliating young women against relentless beauty standards on screen in this particular way, but it still exists. Online, on social media, in real life, on TV, in modelling, in fashion. Everywhere.
In October 2025, a report by Vogue Business found that out of the 9,038 looks presented across 198 shows in the womenswear collections at fashion month, 97.1% were shown on straight-size models who measured between a US size 0-4 (the equivalent of a UK 4-8). Only 0.9% of models were plus-size, also known as curve (UK 18+), while 2% were mid-size (UK 10-16). Only 9% of executives and boards in the UK fashion industry are held by people of colour, and 39% by women. According to research conducted by the Mental Health Foundation in 2025, 46% of girls aged 13-19 noted that their body image concerns cause them to worry “always” or “often”.
In 2023, a study found that approximately 1 in 3 women (33%) reported being fat-shamed on dating apps. We have the President of the United States telling a woman to smile as she tries to report on a mass-scale case of paedophilia, child trafficking and sexual abuse. Not long before, he told another woman reporter, “Quiet, piggy”. Closer to home, Reform UK’s candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election, Matt Goodwin, remarked this past week: “We need to also explain to young girls and women the biological reality of this crisis. Many women in Britain are having children much too late in life, and they would prefer to have children much earlier on.”
When a Black woman takes up space, she is quickly labelled ‘aggressive’.
Personal trainer and functional mobility specialist Laura Ghiacy, who has spoken about the damages of ANTM and diet culture, told Glamour: “We often look back at 2000s beauty culture as a cautionary tale, as though today represents meaningful progress. But in many ways, what’s changed is the branding rather than the standard itself. Thinness didn’t disappear; it became ‘toned,’ ‘Pilates arms,’ or the body associated with the clean girl or vanilla girl aesthetic. Diet culture didn’t vanish either; it was reframed as wellness, gut health, and elaborate routines.”
You might feel these issues are unrelated, but they are not: the core of what we find shocking is the bigotry and abuse displayed so brazenly on this show. That bigotry is alive, well, and kicking.
There have been many similar documentaries of late that point to the recent past and imply that we all deserve a pat on the back for how far we have collectively come. They look back at fatphobia, racism, misogyny and structural oppression as if they no longer exist, or at least as if high-profile examples of them have been dealt with. This distance between then and now is a comfort we do not deserve as a society. We use entertainment and art as expressions of our times, but this is subjective: we always assume progress, we signal to it, but this can be a distraction to the world around us. Yes, the world has progressed in many ways, but the patriarchal grip on beauty and thus women is tightening and as strong as ever.
Kate Winslet, during the promotion of Titanic, was called ‘blubber’ in the press.
ANTM, as we look back and watch now, feels shocking because the language and tone paired with the messaging are no longer fashionable. But really, very little has changed. In the modelling industry specifically, discrimination, fatphobia, racism and patriarchal beauty standards remain the same. It is still tokenistic, and subjugative standards are still forced on young women.
Popular culture for young people – especially girls and women – remains rife with pressure to be thin, to have a certain kind of body, to fit Eurocentric beauty standards codified via white supremacy, and to be concerned with appearance above all else. As fascism threatens our autonomy globally, especially for those who are marginalised, these ideals become more entrenched because beauty standards are, ultimately, a form of control and oppression.
Ghiacy adds: “Even trends that emphasise minimal makeup and ‘effortless’ beauty can still privilege proximity to thinness, whiteness, and wealth. Framing the 2000s as uniquely harmful creates a sense of distance that can feel reassuring, but it risks overlooking how persistent fatphobia and racialised beauty norms continue to shape what is celebrated as aspirational today.”
The three-part series is available on Netflix now.
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