ANTM - Netflix (smize!)

[NooNakedJacuzziness]

Anyone watching the America’s Next Top Model expose on Netflix? Just watched the first episode, it’s quite compelling. I used to love it back in the day, what with Noted Fashion Photographer Mr Nigel Barker, the go-sees, makeovers, the two Jays, etc. Shame it seems things were a bit toxic behind the scenes (still gonna watch the whole thing though!)

binged it on Monday on my day off. Tyra is such a narcissist and she was so insincere. What a crazy women, she is absolutely deranged. I also didn’t buy that stuff about Jay wanting to leave and was coerced into staying for another cycle but ended up staying for years. He could have left! The things the judging panel said about the girls. Yuck.
Shandi was raped! Then she was shamed for “ cheating”. Poor woman. I watched it as a young teenager and it’s terrible to think I thought this was all normal. It ruined lives! No wonder Tyra has run off the Australia

Also Janice Dickinson was absolutely awful to the girls. And if that is what happens on camera what was said to them off camera?!

I remember a few awful things from watching many years ago.

One was a girl being forced to tolerate extremely tight and very painful hair extensions even though she was crying with pain.
They were eventually removed after much shaming and ridicule from the host.

Another girl was pushed to have a brutally short hair cut which she very much did not want and hated.

Another young girl who was clearly very uncomfortable was coerced into a naked photo shoot.

Then a girl was kept in freezing cold water for multiple photos until she actually collapsed.

I haven’t watched this expose yet but have always been concerned about what this show did to desperate and vulnerable young women.

I loved the show back in the day. Tyra comes across SO bad in it, she came across so disingenuous and clueless as to what the issues were, even with hindsight. A documentary focussing on the harmful impacts the show had and Tyra sits there gleefully advertising cycle 25, I’m assuming she didn’t really understand the direction the doc was going in!

Yes! They completely glossed over the fact he wanted to leave cycle 9 but was still there 7 or 8 cycles later?!

I wonder if the soft ball questions were deliberate. The doc is showing horrifying stuff, and then not really pressing Tyra which means she’s not really putting up a defence which in turn makes her look so much worse. Not defending her of course, but the doc did feel very mismatched.

I've also watched the first two episodes - I absolutely loved the show back in the day but it does come across so badly now. I agree with a PP that the general culture - particularly around women, weight and the fashion industry - was so toxic then that it didn't seem out of place, whereas now it's pretty horrifying to see. What happened to Shandi too, absolutely shocking now, through our post Me Too lens. But I watched it at the time and don't remember being greatly shocked, which is shocking in itself really.

I don’t for a moment buy the ‘Oh, things were totally different 25 years ago’ nonsense. #MeToo didn’t invent sexual harassment in the workplace or tape. What happened to Shandi was a horrifying neglect of duty of care by the producers and crew, and if she wasn’t very young, dirt poor and trussed up in by legal contracts, there was surely a case to be made against the crew for not preventing a crime they were witnessing.

Tyra in her expensive Inspector Gadget coat looked dead behind the eyes, and clearly has the self-knowledge of a shoebox. And the other three were almost as bad.

Loved the show when I was a teenager, and I already knew how bad a lot of the behind the scenes stuff was from reading about the contestants. There was nothing particularly surprising, apart from Miss J, in the show, and I'd forgotten how much Nigel was in it, as he often wasn't in episodes if they got different photographers in.

Never got the Nigel being eye candy though, just looked like he could be someone's dad or builder to me!

Thing is with the Shandi thing (I don’t remember it, which says a lot in itself) is that is exactly the kind of behaviour viewers would have overlooked, we wouldn’t have seen it as rape like we know it is now.

The production company absolutely should have stepped in, it must have looked awful from their angle, for us in the early 2000s we would have seen a drunk girl cheating on her boyfriend, because that’s what the cameras wanted us to see, and devastatingly, back then, we didn’t really have the same concept around consent and drunkenness as we do now. And shows like ANTM are partly to blame for that!

I’ve got one episode left so don’t know if this gets mentioned but I remember one model who got the news that a friend had died - they made her do a photo shoot posing in a coffin a few days later! They were just told this is what the fashion world is like, get on with it 😳

Agreed.

At its most basic level

1. they never asked the new tv exec guy if he actually did phone tyra and chunter on about "sacred cows"

(Spoiler: he didn't)

1. The tooth gap was horrific. When her defence was "they said she wpuldnt work with a gap" they never asked if that was the case... why did you give a girl a gap on a later season?
2. Why when she DID know and were asked not to did you show the video footage of (poor) Shandi on the reunion?

I’ve watched the first episode.

I really felt for Ebony.

I remember her from watching it the first time around. I found her quite harsh and abrasive at the time, but seeing it again I can see why she was angry and uncomfortable.

I can also see now just how young she was, which I didn’t appreciate at the time (as I was young myself).

I can remember Robyn being very homophobic to her; it didn’t sit well with me then and was even worse now. Robyn was very religious and said some pretty damning things to and about Ebony due to her sexuality. If I remember correctly she also used to close her eyes and sing gospel songs if somebody disagreed with her and she didn’t want to hear it.

Tyra confronting Ebony about her skin, calling her ashy and telling her to sort it out….Ebony duly started a moisturising routine….and the girls (Giselle) then confronted her and asked her to wipe her hands as she was leaving residue on things. Said with giggles ans cringing and hands over mouths. All very Mean Girls.

That was painful to watch and I really felt for her.

I mentioned her in my previous post, but still got a lot of love for Adrienne (the winner) who took no shit and, if I recall, was very open minded and accepting. I do think she found it hard to relate to a lot of girls, although had a close friendship with Elyse (sp?) but she seemed a decent sort, and hates the show, Tyra and wants nothing more to do with it. She seemed to see through it all quite quickly.

I do remember the Shandi episode, so can see why its looked at different now to then. It would have still been the cheating without the sex. She was heavily flirting and kissing him before getting out of the hot tub. However I don't know how it was edited, did they go to the shower first and then to bed, was she trying to sober up in the shower? Who knows, it's complicated. She was definitely drunk though.

I've seen clips of Robin saying she did meet with Ebony's girlfriend and they edited it out, so not sure what actually happened there.

I don’t think it did, but they did briefly explore making a model whose mother had been shot and left paralysed pose as though she’d been shot in the head in that unbelievably tasteless ‘violent deaths’ photoshoot where they were made up and posed as decapitated, drowned, disembowelled etc.

She said she only realised when she was actually doing it that it wasn’t an unfortunate coincidence, that it was done specifically to create drama in the hope that she would break down and produce good tv. So she said nothing and swallowed down her reaction.

I think that’s what this series made entirely clear. It was never anything to do with modeling.

@MertonDensher”it was never anything to do with modelling”

I noticed in the first episode that Noel Marin (so? I remember him but don’t remember his role), said that it was very vulnerable girls who were selected. Girls who didn’t have supportive families and didn’t get validation at home, they came on the show looking for validation.

He said that just as a throwaway comment. It wasn’t expanded on. But it’s pretty awful if true, which I’m pretty sure it is.

I'm like others. Used to love this show. And it was a little bit of its time. But bloody hell, it was horrible and this expose just shows Tyra in an awful light. I used to like her and thought she was a bit boss babe type, but it was awful to see how she engineered so many discussions as part of being a mentor etc.

The Sandi situation was horrific, especially about only letting her have a phone if she called her boyfriend on camera etc. it was just vile. I do think production should have stepped in (and whilst I appreciate its 20 years later that's exactly what happened on below deck down under, two deck hands, the woman very drunk, went to bed alone, drunk dude who'd been kissing her all night went into her room. Production immediately went in after him, got him out of bed, and he was removed from the boat to a hotel for the night with further consequences next day). Instead the filmed it when she couldn't consent.
I really liked the Jays and Nigel and smiled a lot at the enduring friendship they obviously have.

They were different back then though, no one is saying it is right or okay because of this, but more horrified at how accepted it was and reflective of the time (which it was). You are right, it is absolutely awful that this happened and that no one saw it as problematic.

I thought about the Below Deck incident too. At least that's progress I suppose!

I only ever see this said by very young people who think that 25 years ago, people wore crinolines and were oppressed. Attitudes have not in fact changed that much. 2002 wasn't another era.

I assume Tyra has done this to try and ‘own the narrative’, but she comes across as a complete cow and it’s so obvious she lying when pretending to be naive about what was going on.

She must be worried she’s going to be sued.

As someone who was a young adult at the time, it certainly was for my generation.

@MertonDensherI completely disagree, the 00s absolutely was another era. I’m not saying we’ve improved massively, I think the victim blaming and misunderstanding of consent are still prevalent but less outspoken, we question it more, I think we outwardly have more of a moral compass on these things. Whereas back then the way women were treating publicly by the media, by society, was much worse.

(I was a teen and young woman in the 00s)

Yes, looking back now it is unbelievable we didn't see it as problematic - watching this doc has actually really shaken me. But I didn't see at the time, clearly most of us didn't. That's not excusing it at all, I'm horrified.