It was a radical move, especially compared to other reality shows with a similar format at the time. But does the show still have something important to say? It’s fitting that America’s Next Top Model is back on air in a year in which America is visibly struggling to agree on (or even civilly talk about) how much we should or shouldn’t put our race, our gender, our sexuality, or our religion at the forefront of the conversation.
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But in the big picture, Top Model’s commitment to putting women of diverse backgrounds on television predated today’s TV landscape, in which critics and audiences demand (and have at least started to get) more representation onscreen - even as the cheap tarnish of girly reality TV kept Top Model from ever getting much in the way of critical praise or attention. Of course, while many early episodes of Top Model gave contestants a platform to share their marginalized identities, it also exploited them in uncomfortable ways, and often ultimately hewed to the fashion industry’s rail-thin confines. But the show also addressed what it might mean for a model to be Asian-American, openly gay, a devout Christian, plus-sized, transgender, or chronically ill, long before conversations around those identities found their way into the mainstream culture and politics of 2016.
It’s not surprising, given Tyra’s own experience as a black supermodel in a very white industry in the ‘90s, that the representation of black women in fashion was an especially prominent theme on Top Model. But that would gloss over the radical approach the producers took, early on, to making identity politics and a diverse cast an integral component of the show. Looking at the more recent seasons, it’d be easy to place Top Model at the vapid, lowbrow end of the reality TV spectrum. Thirteen years later, Top Model has been given a second chance at life after being canceled by The CW in 2015, the show is back on for its 23rd cycle with a new look and a new home on VH1. It was classic Top Model, before it devolved into pure gimmick and, this year, got a reboot with Rita Ora as host: an intersection of racial identity and beauty, woven seamlessly into high reality-TV melodrama.
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And Tyra, or at least some Top Model producer, had to have been aware that devoting a whole subplot to Ebony’s skin problems could easily be construed as contributing to that colorism. It needed to be stated that Ebony’s skin tone was beautiful, because dark-skinned models with natural hair were even more invisible in fashion then than they are now.
“It will be flawless.” This was over a decade before Lupita Nyong’o became a fashion icon or Maria Borges made headlines for wearing a short fro on the Victoria’s Secret runway. “The color of your skin is so beautiful,” Tyra said emphatically, before lambasting the uneven texture of that skin.Įbony was spared the axe for another week and her resolve to improve her skin became a driving plot point. But Tyra framed her critique of Ebony in a very particular way. Ebony, a Harlem native with a deep complexion to match her name, needed to work on her skin, which had required extensive retouching in that week’s photo shoot. In the third episode of the first cycle of America’s Next Top Model, in 2003, host Tyra Banks outlined the strengths and weaknesses of that week’s bottom two contestants, Ebony and Nicole.