When America’s Next Top Model arrived on our screens in 2003, it was an instant hit with viewers around the world. The reality TV competition, hosted by supermodel Tyra Banks, saw young aspiring models compete for the chance to win a lucrative modeling contract.
Although the show ended almost a decade ago, it’s back on our screens this week in Netflix’s new documentary series Inside America’s Next Top Model.
The three-part documentary revisits the most shocking moments and includes interviews with former contestants and judges. It paints a picture of a toxic and harmful filming environment, where women were subject to humiliating tasks and filmed at some of their most vulnerable and private moments.
The Netflix show will also remind viewers of the scrutiny and criticism that women’s bodies were subjected to in the early 2000s. Models on the show who didn’t conform to ultra-thin ideals of beauty were called “fat” or “huge” by one of the most outspoken judges on the panel, Janice Dickinson.
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These harmful attitudes not only affected the women participating in the show, but every young impressionable woman watching at home, who felt the world wouldn’t accept them unless they were thin.
“[Watching the show] I felt a real sadness for our younger selves,” says Irish Times contributor Rachel O’Dwyer, speaking on the latest episode of The Women’s Podcast.
“The messaging [about weight] was all around us, all the time… how can that not have done a huge amount of damage?”
O’Dwyer, who watched the reality show religiously when it was on air, now finds looking back on some scenes “deeply disturbing”. One in particular is the filming of an intoxicated model having sex, when she hadn’t consented to the encounter and didn’t have the capacity to do so either.
“What really struck me about that scene was the way they [the producers] tried to defend it as a documentary. The producer says ‘it’s just a story arc.’”
In this episode of The Women’s Podcast, we also hear from model and actor Amber Jean Rowan, who took part in the Irish reality show The Model Agent when she was just 15 years old.
“We were all very young and we didn’t live together, so there wasn’t that kind of drama,” she tells podcast presenter Róisín Ingle. “I think because The Model Agent was more documentary in its style… it only really had a positive impact.”
“They had narratives for all of us, but there wasn’t that kind of pitting us against each other,” she says.
In this conversation, Rowan also reflects on some of America’s Next Top Model’s most contentious moments and shares her thoughts on how young women were treated in the industry when she was starting out.
You can listen back to this episode in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts.
