The Biggest Shocks in Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model

Tyra Banks is aware that America's Next Top Model is viewed through a different lens these days. Not that the show didn't have its critics during its successful 15-year run, which started on UPN...

Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model review – Tyra Banks comes across terribly in this expose

This three-part documentary has remarkable access to people involved with this 00s TV hit. It’s an awful tale of body-shaming, humiliation and toxic treatment If you’re a millennial woman, America’s Next Top Model may have been your first experience of appointment TV. The show, which ran for 10 years from 2003, was an early reality juggernaut and made a household name of the supermodel Tyra Banks, its creator and host. At its peak, Top Model drew more than 100 million viewers globally, and left a niche but indelible impact on culture. “Smize”, meaning to “smile with your eyes”, is in the Collins dictionary, while Banks’ infamous tirade (“We were all rooting for you!”) at an unruly model still circulates as a meme. With its high-concept photoshoots and extreme makeovers, Top Model was ahead of its time in manufacturing viral moments. Today, however, the exacting critiques and body-shaming makes for deeply uncomfortable viewing, as gen Zers bingeing the show through the pandemic have pointed out. This latter-day reckoning is the peg for Netflix’s three-part docuseries, Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model. Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model is on Netflix Continue reading...

By Elle Hunt