Revisiting America's Next Top Model: The Complex Legacy of Diversity and Harm
Watching the new documentary Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model felt like stepping into a mirror of my own adolescence. As a Black woman who grew up during the era when America's Next Top Model dominated after-school television, the show's makeovers, eliminations, and tear-streaked confessionals quietly shaped how many of us understood beauty, ambition, and personal worth. Revisiting it now as an adult, I recognize the subtle but powerful lessons it taught about appearance and identity.
The Documentary's Examination of a Cultural Phenomenon
The documentary revisits the global hit television show America's Next Top Model, the modeling competition series created and hosted by Tyra Banks that aired from 2003 to 2018. The program followed aspiring models from across the United States as they lived together while competing in weekly photo shoots and challenges. Contestants faced judgment from a panel that frequently included runway coach J. Alexander and creative director Jay Manuel, known to viewers as 'the Jays.'
Each cycle centered on dramatic makeovers, high-pressure challenges, and emotional eliminations designed for maximum television impact. The judges did not hold back with their cutting remarks about contestants' bodies, from how they moved to their physical size and proportions. Tyra Banks reportedly earned an estimated $18 million (£13 million) per year as host during the show's peak popularity.
The Promise and Reality of Diversity
The show appeared to celebrate diversity at a time when high fashion remained overwhelmingly white and size-exclusive. Tyra Banks stated: "I created it to introduce diversity and inclusion into a world that was pretty much not representing that or representing it in the most minute ways." To achieve this vision, the program cast Black women, plus-size contestants, and models from varied socioeconomic backgrounds.
It felt radical to see dark-skinned Black women centered on a prime-time fashion series, suggesting access to an industry that had historically excluded them. However, beneath that promise was something more complicated. The documentary exposes how beauty standards, production pressures, and power imbalances shaped contestants' experiences, sometimes in psychologically harmful ways.
Ebony Haith's Painful Experience
Former contestants describe instances of humiliation framed as "tough love," culturally insensitive makeovers, and critiques that echoed long-standing stereotypes about Black hair and skin. One of the most difficult moments to watch was Ebony Haith's experience during Cycle 1. Ebony stood out early in the competition for her striking features and natural confidence, but during the show's signature makeover episode, her textured hair became a focal point of tension.
In the documentary, Ebony recalls her hair being cut in a way that left three bald patches. In the original clip from the show, three stylists are documented laughing while working on her hair, which left her feeling humiliated and unsupported during the process. Afterward, she expected a reassuring phone call from Banks but instead was told the judges felt she had been "showing up ashy every day."
The term 'ashy' is not neutral within Black communities. While it refers to dry skin, in broader cultural contexts it has been weaponized as shorthand for neglect or undesirability. Historically, Black women's skin tone and grooming have been policed in both white-dominated and intra-community spaces, often tied to respectability politics and colorism.
The Broader Pattern of Pressure
Watching this scene was raw and painful. It represented humiliation packaged as professional development, consistent with the show's makeover narrative that often framed drastic physical changes as necessary sacrifices for success. This resonated with my own memories of being told, subtly and overtly, that my natural hair wasn't deemed attractive, that moisturized skin was a matter of discipline, and that beauty required constant adjustment.
Growing up as a dark-skinned girl, I internalized those quiet corrections. Classmates commented on my natural hair, relatives suggested I would "look more polished" with it straightened, and magazine covers rarely reflected my features unless they were softened or altered. None of it was as dramatic as reality television, but the underlying message was similar: Black beauty was conditional and required modification.
Systemic Issues in Fashion and Entertainment
Ebony's story isn't isolated. Across fashion and entertainment industries, Black models have frequently spoken about stylists lacking the training or tools to work with textured hair. The burden often falls on the model to adapt—cutting, straightening, or otherwise altering their hair—rather than on institutions to broaden their expertise.
Model Londone Myers has spoken publicly about this imbalance, questioning why drastic cuts are often presented to Black women as professional necessity. The comparison to white women and buzz cuts is not about whether white women ever cut their hair short—figures like Sinéad O'Connor famously did so on their own terms—it's about agency and choice.
When a white woman shaves her head, it is typically framed as rebellion or empowerment. When a Black woman is pressured to do so because a stylist lacks the skill to manage her natural texture, it becomes something else entirely. Short hair can absolutely be empowering for many Black women, symbolizing freedom from Eurocentric beauty norms and a reclaiming of identity. The crucial distinction lies in choice versus systemic pressure.
The Show's Mixed Legacy
America's Next Top Model undeniably expanded visibility for women of color in fashion. Contestants such as Eva Marcille (Cycle 3 winner) went on to build successful modeling and television careers, later starring in The Real Housewives of Atlanta. Yaya DaCosta (Cycle 3 runner-up) transitioned into acting, appearing in projects including The Butler and the series Chicago Med.
Winnie Harlow, who competed in Cycle 21, became one of the most recognizable faces in fashion, walking for major brands and challenging traditional beauty standards. The show placed women of color at the center of a genre that had historically sidelined them, offering visibility in an industry that often denied it.
Yet that visibility was not uncomplicated. Lighter skin tones were frequently described as "commercial," with proximity to Eurocentric features subtly rewarded. Natural Afro-textured hair was often straightened during makeovers, framed as more "versatile" or marketable, reinforcing the idea that certain expressions of Blackness were more acceptable than others.
Production Pressures and Lasting Impact
Emotional responses such as frustration, homesickness, and defensiveness were sometimes edited into narratives of "attitude," particularly for Black women, shaping how audiences interpreted their behavior. Representation existed, but it operated within strict boundaries determined by production needs and established beauty norms.
The format itself amplified tension through constant surveillance, challenges structured to provoke tears or conflict, and judges' critiques delivered in front of peers to heighten vulnerability for dramatic effect. These very elements that made compelling television also intensified power imbalances between contestants and production.
In the documentary, Ebony reflects that she is "still healing" from aspects of her experience. Giving her that space to speak reframes the show not just as nostalgic entertainment, but as a site of lasting psychological impact. The contradiction is painful: a platform that opened doors also perpetuated harm through its methods and messaging.
Moving Beyond Symbolic Inclusion
For me, watching the documentary wasn't merely a reckoning with producers or judges—it was a reckoning with the quiet messages I absorbed long before I understood their meaning. Ebony's story resurfaced memories of deep shame and insecurity I felt from arbitrary beauty standards imposed by people who looked nothing like me.
The show's attempts at diversity were meaningful in theory. Seeing Black women compete for high-fashion campaigns on national television mattered culturally. But diversity without cultural competence can reproduce the very exclusions it claims to challenge. True inclusion must be paired with care, structural change, and genuine understanding of different cultural experiences.
Representation remains vital in media, but representation without protection risks becoming mere spectacle. If the fashion industry and media platforms that shape it truly want progress, they must move beyond symbolic inclusion and confront the standards that quietly determine who is celebrated and who is asked to transform themselves to fit established norms.
