The Illusion of ‘America’s Next Top Model’

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0:13Hello and welcome to Money Talks, a special extra podcast from Slate Money where we chat with brilliant and interesting people. I'm Emily Peck. I'm a writer at Axios and co-host of Slate Money. and I'm here today with Bridget Armstrong. She's an audio journalist and a senior producer and a host of the podcast Curse of America's Next Top Model. It is an amazing reassessment of one of the most popular reality TV shows of all time, I think, and definitely of the 2000s so far. 24 seasons ended in 2018. That's now going through this sort of like reassessment. I don't know what you would call it, But we'll get into all of it.

0:54Welcome, Bridget. Hi, Emily. Thanks for having me. I'm so glad you're here. I wanted to talk to you because I guess I should say right off the bat that I didn't watch America's Next Top Model. I was aware of it. I knew about smizing, which is Tyra Banks' word for smiling with your eyes, which I tried to do this morning for my husband and then just started laughing because I can't do it. Don't feel bad. I watched 24 seasons and I still can't do it. I'm going to practice. It's a really hard thing. I guess that's why models do it. not podcasters. Anyway, so I wanted to talk to you because there's this new Netflix documentary out now called Reality Check that's been really popular that I watched and then thought, oh, it'd be really interesting to talk about the business of reality TV show through this lens of America's Next Top Model, all the ways that it sort of promised these very young women entry into the modeling world and a career in modeling and all the ways that let them down and all the things you exposed on your podcast about the contracts used in the industry, about how the producers manipulate the narratives, plus a lot of the other stuff that I think the Netflix show and you really go in depth on, the racism, the sexism, all the isms.

2:09One Slate writer called this reality TV show a fever dream. I don't know if that's true, but I think it just, it hits all the themes that I've wanted to talk about. So I'm so excited to get into it all with you. And that's all coming up next on Slate Money Talks.

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3:19Okay, so Bridget, why? Why did you want to do a podcast about a reality TV show that ended eight years ago? So I'm a big reality fan, and Top Model was probably the first show that I really got into. It came out when I was a teenager, like I was in high school. Survivor had been out, American Idol was out. I feel like American Idol was just like a family type of show that everybody watched, right? But I wasn't like into it. But Top Model had this combination of like fashion, young women who like were kind of my age. And it felt like it was the first show that was speaking to someone like me. So it was a show that I watched for many years after it premiered.

4:03And it was a show that I revisited a bit in 2020 when everybody else was revisiting it and realizing this is horrifying. What were we watching? And so to me, it's hard to find another show that had been off as long as it had been, like it went off in 2018, but still got so much criticism. Anytime Tyra Banks did anything, right? Like people would bring up, you exploited those girls or they bring up the craziest moment they remember from the show. There was still so much conversation around Top Model. And it's a show that I think had a huge influence on like a generation of young women. So millennial women around my age, so many of us watch that show.

4:45And there's so many things that were normalized on that show for us. Things like, you know, we talked about smizing, right? Like that's in the dictionary, like words like that. But even like scarier stuff like body shaming, you know, certain stereotypes about how people behave and what to expect from them. We saw a lot of that on that show. And I think when we're watching it as like a 14, 15-year-old girl, you don't realize how much that shapes your view of yourself, your relationship to beauty, how you feel about your own body, what you think is okay on television. Like what people have to go through to get a thing that they want.

5:20All of that was very normalized on that show. So I thought it was a really great time to revisit the show that had a huge impact on me and a lot of other young women. And also, it seems like Netflix agreed with me. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess before we go any further, we should probably just say America's Next Top Models. When did it first launch? It was... It was 2002. Well, 2003. Sorry. So the first season was taped 2002 and then 2003 premiered. Okay. So premiered in 2003. Tyra Banks was basically like her brainchild, at least according to both your podcast and the Netflix documentary. And the idea was kind of like survivor meets something else.

5:56It's actually like real world. No, it's not survivor. It's not Survivor. It's like Real World meets an American Idol type of show, like a show where there's a talent and people are also living in a house together. Yeah. So they're all living in a house together, but they're also competing to be a star. They're competing to be America's next top model. And the idea is that they battle it out. And then at the end, one of them wins like a contract to be a model, basically. Basically, yeah. And Tyra Banks is a very successful model in her own right, so had a lot of cachet. All these girls were just very excited to compete for this.

6:31But like right there, right away, you sort of break down some myths. The first thing being that at the end of this show, you don't get to be a top model. There's 24 seasons, and had anyone ever succeeded in the modeling industry that you know about? No, I mean, I think there's only one model who we could say counts as a supermodel or a mega successful model. And that's Winnie Harlow. Winnie Harlow was on a later season. When they had multiple eliminations that could bring people back, the show really got crazy in its later seasons. But Winnie Harlow was one of those people who was eliminated, brought back, and then eliminated again.

7:06She did not win the show. Winnie Harlow has since, I think she did Andy Cohen's show on Bravo, Watch What Happens Live. And she, Point Blake, said, that show did not help me at all. There are people who debate that, who say the exposure itself did help her in some ways. But according to her, it didn't help her. And she's the most successful person, which isn't a great sign that a show treated the contestants well. When your biggest star from the show says, it didn't help me at all. It actually hurt me. Other models, I talked to a handful, and there are some, who became working models, right? That's not the same thing as a top model or a supermodel like a Tyra Banks, although the show is promising to make people top models.

7:43But a large majority of the models, they didn't get a career out of this at all. They, in some cases, say their careers were hurt. There were models who were working before going on the show, right? Not like household names, but they were getting work. After they went on the show, they did become household names, but not for modeling. Maybe for the craziest thing they did on the show. And so now it was hard to book them in the toothpaste ad that they maybe would have done before going on a show like Top Model. And when you think about the idea that this show sold to us, right, that like Tyra Banks and her crew have this special eye and talent to make someone who is basically in obscurity make them into a top model.

8:24That's the idea they sold for 24 seasons. And we watched it kind of based on that premise, right? It's wild to think that not one of those women actually went on to have the career that they promised. And they were even told, I mean, I think you have examples of women who, you know, their agent says, oh, you know, we're having a hard time getting you work because people don't want to hire any women that have been on this show. Like that they have a stigma, basically. There was a stigma. It wasn't just that, you know, they couldn't break in or weren't good enough. It was almost like there's the stigma that they did all these like weird, extreme photo shoots.

9:00And, you know, we just saw too much of their lives or something. I'm not sure exactly what the problem is. but it really hurt them. Absolutely. So there were the photo shoots that they did. Those photo shoots. Yeah, talk about the photo shoots. So, I mean, there was stuff like the rickety runway photo shoot where the models were on a runway that we heard that this runway is floating on the water, right? And crew members went in and loosened some of the screws so that it could become even more rickety so somebody will probably fall, which people did fall into the water, right? Amazing TV. But it's not the sort of thing a real model would ever do.

9:35There was a photo shoot where they went to Greece, and Tyra had them pose in a bowl of Greek salad. That's not something that wouldn't really happen in a real photo shoot. One of the producers we talked to was actually a real creative director and photographer for high fashion work with celebrities prior to his work on A &TM. And he said, yeah, I wouldn't have done any of this in the real world, but this was about TV. This was about making a good show. The problem with that is when you take the photos, when you take your Greek salad photo to a real modeling agency, they're looking at you like, what the hell is this?

10:11We can't use this. So there was a very tangible fact that they couldn't even use the portfolio they got from the show because it was unrealistic photo shoots and it was way too touched up because it was for television, right? Then there were some models I spoke with who got signed to agencies afterwards, but the agencies didn't know what to do with them. These days, if you go to a talent agency, there's probably a reality star slash influencer, internet culture star division, right? That didn't exist back then at all. So you had these women who you would otherwise put in your modeling division who nobody really wants to work with.

10:49The client doesn't want to work with them because they're a distraction. People are going to be remembering the argument they got into on the show or the time Tyra cursed them out or whatever, right? They're going to remember that. They're not going to be looking at the product that's being sold in the ad. A show like American Idol, in the early years, we did see some stars. But that was a little different because we were the client, right? I could say, wow, I really love Kelly Clarkson's music. That Fantasia, she's great. I'm going to go buy that album. I may love, have my favorite model on A &TM, but I am not the target audience.

11:22I can't employ her. I can't put her in an ad. That's a great point. And so that was a huge issue. That's such a great insight. And it really points to the difference then and now because now with influencers and social media, we are now the client more so. And that's why you're seeing now if someone's infamous for being on social media, they can actually launch a modeling career or from reality TV. Do I have that right? Absolutely right. Someone who does a reality show, someone who is an influencer, there's a platform. You can roll that into another reality show. You can, like, you know, and get paid for it.

12:00You can bolster your Instagram profile and use the followers you gained by being on that show to get sponsorships. You can become an Instagram model who then becomes a real model. There are so many avenues for reality stars to become successful, even if the show they're on doesn't pay them a whole lot of money. But back in the early years of A &TM, really most of A &TM, right? Like Instagram, I think, became popular after A &M had been on for almost 10 years. So really most of the show, there were no avenues. There were a few people who like Adrienne Curry, who was the original, the first winner, first season of Top Model.

12:36She went on to do a reality show, Surreal Life, that came on back in the day. So there were a few who did other reality shows after that. She was married to one of the kids from The Brady Bunch, actually. What? I think they met on The Surreal Life. Just to me, if I'm wrong. No, that's the only person I remember is Adrienne because of all of this long tale of other reality shows. Other reality shows. She was married to the guy who played Peter Brady. Peter Brady. Yeah. Not even the top Brady. Not even the top Brady. But she— Just kidding. Any Brady Bunch lovers out there, right? I don't know. Yeah, she was able to sort of roll her top model fame into other reality TV fame.

13:08But we don't see that with a lot of the other women on that show because those opportunities just weren't there. Eva Pickford, who won season three many, many, many years later, was on Real Housewives of Atlanta. And she's also one of the most successful, I think, in the modeling and acting world from that show. But again, these are two people, two or three people that I can name. For the most part, those avenues weren't there and you couldn't book jobs as a model. So it just left a lot of the girls asking, why did I even do this in the first place? Well, on the Netflix show, Tyra Banks, and I want to talk about just her participation and all that.

13:41But on the show, she says something like, we pioneered influencer culture. And I was kind of like, did you? I don't think that's right. Am I wrong there? That's a hard question, right? Because I think everybody says they pioneered influencer culture. I talked to Perez Hilton for our podcast. He said he was the original influencer, which I was like, I never really thought of. But maybe you were. I don't know. Everyone was. Everybody's the original influencer. Everyone was influential. I mean, if that's the definition. Like, we were influential, thus we were influencers. But she was gatekeeping.

14:14Yes. The show was gatekeeping these girls, and they weren't allowed to have their own, you know, direct-to-consumer pipeline, like you're saying. That's a really good point, because not only were they gatekeeping, the contracts went out of their way to make sure that the women on that show couldn't derive any sort of compensation after the show. I had someone tell me that they were told, you can't write a book, you can't do an interview, like anything that you could possibly get paid for. they were contractually barred from doing once they left the show. So then that sort of goes against the idea that they're original influencers because they weren't even allowed to influence in a lot of ways.

14:51Whoa, I didn't catch that, that they weren't. We should talk about the contracts because you go into a lot of detail about how onerous the contracts were. I mean, basically, they could call you to service at any time, even after the show's up, and you'd have to do publicity for America's Next Top Model, like whenever, and sign away your life rights. And I was pretty shocked. Reality contracts are not great, even to this day, right? Like they're not great. But Top Model's contract really stands out for being a particularly shitty contract. So like you were saying, the winners, right? We talked to Ioana House, who won season two.

15:27They, for the next year, as Ioana put it, she said, Tyra owned me for that year. And Ioana was one of the winners who did not get paid anything. So she won before the$100 ,000 cover girl contract was a feature of the wins. So she literally needed to work. She was signed to an agency, but she needed to work to make that money. She talked about moving to New York broke, sleeping on a makeup artist's couch, but she's famous. People are taking pictures with her and she has to do all of this publicity for top model with Tyra and she's not making any money. And if a job were to call her and say, hey, we have a paying gig for you.

16:05If top model called her up to do some publicity, she had to do the top model thing, even though it wasn't going to pay her at all. And so she said she was really, really broke and really down the year after her win, because although she was the winner and people did want her for jobs, she couldn't really jumpstart her career in the way that she thought she would be able to by winning the show. Yeah, that seems pretty onerous. You had one woman you talked to who turned to sex work after she left the show. Anjali Preston. So she was on two seasons. Anjali's story is probably one of the most heartbreaking stories, I think, on our podcast.

16:42And she's also one of the most fun people to speak with. Anjali has an amazing personality and she's one of those people that you're like, if you hadn't done reality TV a few years later, I think you could have been a really big star. Like, I think you could have leveraged that. But she's doing fine. She's a journalist these days. So I couldn't believe that. After her whole story, you're like, and now she's a journalist. And I was like, of course she is. At a public radio station. Yes. I was like, this is great. Very happy for her. Anjali describes herself as a round-the-way girl, right? Like, she is from Buffalo, New York.

17:17She, you know, said she grew up in the hood. Like, these are things that she says about herself. And this show is often cast women who could fit certain stereotypes. Anjali is a black woman, biracial black woman. And they would cast people that can fit certain stereotypes. And I think they wanted Anjali to sort of be the loud, crass black woman on her season. And that is sort of how she was pushed and edited. So what do you know? When she got off the show, no one wanted to hire her because she was sort of painted as a difficult person. And she did turn to sex work. But she was also trafficked.

17:47Like the man who trafficked her took her across state lines against her wishes. She couldn't go home. You know, definition of trafficking. Yeah, I should have corrected myself. It wasn't just like she opted for that. It was kind of like she was pushed into it and then literally trafficked. And then literally trafficked. So she does that. Then not too long after she gets out of that situation, she gets a call to do top model all-stars. They did an all-star season, but they brought back all of our favorites to see who can battle it out. You know, all of our favorite losers because they only brought back people who didn't win.

18:17So she gets called to do that. According to Angelique, the casting director somehow knew about the trafficking. and told her and admitted to knowing it and said, let's keep it between us. No one from Top Model has ever admitted that that happened. But what we do know is Anjali did really well in the competition and she won. She was crowned the winner. They taped her finale with her win. A few weeks later, after she's gone home, the check isn't in the bank, but she's certainly counting what to do with the money. She gets a call from producers and they tell her she needs to come to New York City.

18:47And they basically sit her down and say, we can't air you as the winner because you violated the contract. And in the contract, there's like a moral turpitude clause, meaning that you can't do anything that they, I guess, is judged as immoral. And so they took away her win. The contract also says that the producers have discretion to take away wins. So that also covered them in taking away her win. They didn't air her as the winner. They filmed a whole new finale. She didn't get any money. And this is also a person who doesn't come from money. So that's the part that makes it really, I think, exploitative.

19:20that they find girls who actually really need these opportunities. And when you really need an opportunity, you may do some desperate things to make money, you know? And then they punish this woman for having to do desperate things and then being forced to do those desperate things. So when we come back, we should talk about Tyra Banks. And I think we should also maybe talk about reality TV in general. And I think it's a very American thing to compete and like debase yourself in the end for a job. Just a job when we come back.

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23:51We'll be right back.

24:01So I want to talk about Tyra Banks. And I was thinking a lot about the fact that she, you know, participated in the Netflix show, which was pretty critical of her and brought up a lot of the criticisms that you've already talked about and more. And her, especially her rant. Jasmine, you have to play the rant, okay? And you come in here with a defeatist attitude. I don't have a bad attitude. Maybe I am angry inside. I've been through stuff, so I'm angry. Yes, but this is not— Be quiet, Tiffany. Be quiet! That's what is wrong with you. Stop it! I have never in my life yelled at a girl like this.

24:39When my mother yells at this, it's because she loves me. I was rooting for you. We were all rooting for you. How dare you? Is the documentary on Netflix in a way just as manipulative as America's Next Top Model in some way? Is she again, I don't know, agreeing to participate but also shaping the narrative in a way that the producers of the reality show also shaped the narrative? Am I thinking too hard about this? What do you think? I think that's what Tyra wanted it to be. Okay. In most of Tyra's responses to, like, criticisms about the show or criticisms about things she said or did, she would say it was a different time.

25:14She would say this is what you guys, the audience, wanted. You were demanding this. And I think that Tyra thought she was going to sort of be able to spin this in a way that favors her or at least lets her off the hook a bit. But I think what the Netflix doc did well was sort of juxtapose Tyra's answers to like the real life pain that these women experience or the scenes from the show where we're like, I can't believe that this actually happened. And so seeing that and then hearing Tyra say to someone who was sexually assaulted on camera and then made to call her boyfriend to tell him about that sexual assault on camera and then made to go to a clinic on camera, all of these things.

25:57Seeing Tyra say, it was a different time or this is what you wanted next to like that scene and watching that woman sort of break down emotionally, recalling what happened to her. That sort of like undercut those talking points of Tyra. So I think they did a good job with that. The other thing I'll say is we as journalists don't pay for interviews, right? So we can pay people for their interviews for our podcast. But Netflix can. And so I think that even for some of these models, I'll just say, side note, there's another reality program we're going to tackle on another season of Curse Of. And one of the former stars on that show, he told me, he was like, after I left that show, I was suicidal.

26:37My life is pretty much ruined. and I didn't get paid anything for it. If I'm going to bring up that pain again, I at least want to get paid this time. I didn't get that. I was like, you know what? Respect. That's a good argument. I couldn't believe when they were on American Next Top Model living in the house, they got their per diems. It was like, what, like$20 a day or something? To live in New York City, you have to do your own laundry? That's breakfast and maybe one spin in a washing machine. That's it. It would fluctuate, right? So we talked to somebody from season one and somebody from the last season.

27:14And the ones on the last season, it was like a graduated thing. I think they made like$12 or$15. And if you made it to the next week, you make$22. And then if you make it to the next week, you make$30. They didn't even start at like the$20. And I think season two or three, they were making$50 a day, right? But as you said, you had to prepare your own laundry. If you weren't on a photo shoot, you had to buy your own food, which I didn't realize that. I just thought if I'm on a TV show and I'm here 24 hours, at the very least, they're going to feed me. No, the food that they ate in the house, they had to buy themselves from that per diem, which is incredibly unfair when you're thinking about how much money Tyra Banks is making from this show.

27:53I had to wonder in the end how much control she really had. In the Netflix show, I guess there was a whole story about Tyra and the two J's. What are their names, Bridget? Help me out. Miss J and Mr. J, you could say. Miss J and Mr. J. Miss J and Mr. J, who were like two core stars on the show. And at some point, the network decided that they didn't want to have them on the show anymore. And then Tyra Banks has to like basically fire them. And it's this whole storyline, this betrayal, blah, blah, blah. And I was left wondering, was that her decision or not? It wasn't clear to me that it was. And then I sort of was thinking like, well, OK, she is in charge.

28:30She is making a lot of money. And these contestants are looking to her, you know, as a mentor and all of that. But at the end of the day, like, it's really the network driving the bus. That question of how much control Tyra had is one that depending on whose podcast or what docuseries you're watching, there are different answers. Tyra herself says she didn't have that much control, right? Like, she's one person in a room of execs and she's not the final person making the decision. She wasn't the person making the decision over production choices and all of that, right? But then there are other people that are like, especially in the first seasons, Tyra's in the editing bag.

29:04Tyra's meeting with the producers. Tyra makes a lot of those decisions. And I've heard from at least one source that it was Tyra's decision to cut Nigel Barker and the Jays because the show wanted a shakeup. I mean, there are other reports that like it was something that execs wanted. They wanted a new, fresh batch of people. At that point, the ratings were kind of failing. Like this is past A &T M's heyday. I think, though, for me, it kind of doesn't matter. If Tyra is the one making every decision or she's just a part of a larger team, Tyra is the one who benefited from these decisions. And she benefited for a long time.

29:38Because, you know, maybe I do this show for one or two seasons and I realize this is super exploitative. Tyra Banks doesn't have to continue to do that show, but she did for a really long time. And so if you don't like the decisions that execs make around you, you don't like the things the producers are doing or you don't agree with them, continuing to host that show and get a huge check from it certainly doesn't send the message that you are not in approval of these things. So yeah, for me, it kind of doesn't matter if she made all these decisions. She stayed and she was the main beneficiary.

30:11One thing I wanted to ask you to talk about again, because you do talk about on your podcast also, sort of like your evolution on where the show stood in terms of how it portrayed, I guess, Black people, how it portrayed LGBTQ people. And it seemed like you came into it towing more towards the Tyra Banks line, which was like, we did so much for diversity. You know, we were just so groundbreaking. They did have the transgender woman and the show ISIS, you know, obviously tons of black women. And thinking back to 2003, like I was an adult, you know, and it was actually unusual to see that much diversity just on network television.

30:47So I could see how you would think that. But now everyone is looking back on it from the 2020 lens and from the modern day lens. And it's just so clear that they were setting up these storylines. Like you were saying, like, this contestant is going to be the angry black woman and this contestant is going to be like the two butch lesbian contestant and like, blah, blah, blah. So can you talk about sort of how you evolved your thinking around all of that? There's a reason Tyra uses that line in the face of her criticism. The line of we brought diversity to TV when there was no diversity, right? Yeah.

31:19And And it is very true. Like, that's, I think, one of the hardest things about this show, especially when you're talking about something like beauty, right? It could be very limiting, our idea of who's a model. At that time, I think it was often like a very tall, thin white woman. And that leaves out so many people. And Tyra Banks, and including plus-size models from the very first season and always including black and brown models, really challenged that idea. And she said that's something she wanted to do because of her own time in the fashion industry, being like literally one of two supermodels, black supermodels of her time.

31:51So it's so hard because it's like, it's true. And it did change people's definition of beauty. I don't remember plus size models before A &TM, not on a mainstream stage. I know they existed, but I can't tell you anybody before that, right? But I can name plus size models after that. It is within my realm of understanding that a model can be skinny, a model can be plus size, a model can be a lot of different things. And I think Top Model had a lot to do with that. In that same regard, they were trying to make a really entertaining TV show. And people love stereotypes. And they love to see other people sort of torn down for things that they may even feel insecure about themselves.

32:32Why does she think that she gets to be a model? And she's plus size. So now they like to hear Tyra and the judges say, oh, you need to lose weight. Oh, she's too big or whatever. Stereotypes help tell easy stories, right? They're characters. That's the angry Black girl. So I expect her to blow up on people. That's the pageant girl, right? So I expect her to not be able to, you know, put a spider on her face or whatever and not want to cut her hair. Like, it's shorthand for us, right? And so because they sort of played into that and because they clearly found a formula that worked for them, they continued to do it.

33:07But in doing that, it sort of damaged, I think, a lot of these models' careers, but it also just like reinforced stereotypes that people already felt about people of color, about plus size people. And so, yeah, when I came into it, I very much wanted to celebrate that part of it. Season three of Top Model was my favorite season because up to that point, it was the most diverse season. There were several black girls. The two finalists were both black women. I loved Eva. I cut my hair like her. But when I revisited that season, every Black girl on that show was sort of turned into a stereotype or treated poorly.

33:47There was a Black girl who was Black on the outside but white on the inside. They made that her storyline. There was Takara, who was a plus-size model and I think probably one of the most successful plus-size models from that show. She was treated horribly. She went on sets where they didn't have her size even though they knew she was coming. Yaya was very Afrocentric, and they constantly tried to tear her down for that. I think because she wouldn't play into certain stereotypes, and because maybe she thought highly of themselves, or they just didn't know what to do with her. It was 2003. She was wearing head wraps, and they didn't know what to do with that.

34:19Eva, Tyra says during Eva's audition, you know, Eva was known to sort of like be Eva the diva. Eva had like a, you know, a little mean streak, or at least that's how she was painted. Tyra said during Eva's audition, I don't want to cast another black bitch. That's a quote, you know? And so basically calling out this like angry black woman stereotype. So what they did with the diversity, yes, they had these very beautiful women that challenged our ideas around beauty. But they didn't challenge our ideas around like stereotypes and how people act, you know. Asian contestants were brought on. There's a contestant, April, who was constantly told, you're too mechanical.

34:54Where's the heart? Where's the soul? She was very good, but she was too good, which like plays into this model minority thing. So they brought diversity on, but what they did with that diversity was just like, tell the same old story, which is even more heartbreaking because Tyra is a black woman who talks about the racism that she felt in the industry. And so to sort of like revisit that on these women that are sort of looking up to you as a mentor, it's something I couldn't ignore. Because when I rewatched this show, it's early 2000s. And so there are a lot of wild stereotypes on TV at that time.

35:26If you watch TV from back then, you can't believe that like we were okay with all of this. But revisiting it, I think it really just stood out because of how far we've come in terms of conversations around race and stereotypes. Obviously, there's still like a lot of racism, right? There's just certain things you can't do and say on TV anymore. And Top Model did a lot of those things. So that's how I sort of evolved on it. Yes, there were all these models of color, but also they were treated really badly. Yeah. And just based on your reporting, it wasn't like it was unconscious bias or something.

35:55There were producers behind the scenes, like, actively shaping these women's portrayal. You had one woman. They asked you, like, your three favorite foods or something and three places you've lived. Will you tell this story? Yuvie Gomez. I think she was cycle four. Yuvie is Mexican-American. And she told us that they wanted her to be, like, a Mexican gangbanger. The show said that she was formerly in a gang. When I talked to Yuvie, she was like, when I was in middle school, I used to get in trouble. And I had some friends who were in a gang. But I, myself, was not in a gang. And I did not tell them I was in a gang.

36:28But that was the stereotype they wanted from her. So, yeah, she told me that they ask you, like, what are your three favorite foods, three jobs you had, and three places you lived, right? And I think UV was like, I like sushi, Taco Bell, and, like, I can't remember the third one, McDonald's or something, right? And so they chose, of course, Taco Bell. What are your former jobs? I think she'd worked as a model before that. She'd worked as a janitor. And then she'd worked at, like, a retail store. They chose the janitor. So now she's a taco-eating, former janitor, Mexican gangbanger. And it was like she had lived in like Monterey, but also Oakland or something.

37:04And they were like, Oakland. Oakland. They picked the place that like it was all of whatever stereotype they could pick because that's the character they wanted. Yuvie also had a theory that when she didn't play into that, right, like she wouldn't play into that stereotype, they had to find a new storyline for her. And her storyline was like the girl who couldn't take a decent picture. Tyra actually said to her, this is the worst picture in top model history. And UV was like, but someone behind the scenes told me my pictures were just fine. But she thinks that because they had painted her as a Mexican gangbanger, she wouldn't perform as a Mexican gangbanger.

37:37She now had to be something. And they needed to find a way to get rid of her. And that's what they found. I feel like I want to like zoom out a little and like ask about the modeling industry. Because it's changed a lot since 2003. Not only, we already talked about the influencers and all of this. But, I mean, Tyra Banks was a supermodel. Supermodels were definitely, used to be a thing, a big deal, highly paid. But are supermodels still even a thing? Is there a top model in America now? Supermodels are still a thing, but not in the same, they don't get there in the same ways they used to, you know?

38:09Like, I think, like, of the Hadid sisters. They're supermodels. But their mom was also on a huge reality show. That's kind of why they are also very popular. I remember a few years ago, models were upset because, you know, it was a lot of actresses who are getting the covers of magazines. You remember that? Yeah. So I think who we sort of look to as models or the definition of a model, right, a person who is placed to sell clothes or a product, that sort of shifted to include folks who may have gotten there through being influencers, right? Who may have gotten there because they're actually actors and actresses, but they also do this other thing.

38:46So we have them, but it's just different now. But I will say the thing that I think hasn't changed in the industry, not on the supermodel level, right? Because a supermodel, so many models, like one out of like, what, thousands of them actually get to be a supermodel. There's this whole industry of models who are just working models. Models whose names you really don't know, but they are, that's the only job they do. They're constantly booked. They're in ads. I don't know how much that industry has changed, right? Like that part of the industry is still super exploitative. Models are not paid a lot of money in a lot of instances.

39:17There's a certain level you get to where you're now making a lot. This was something we didn't explore on the podcast. It was something that's been very interesting to me, especially in certain parts of the world, right? Like, especially in certain parts of the world where models are pulled from to sort of, like, show diversity, right? Like, so there are a lot of South Sudanese models now. So one could look at the industry and say, it is very diverse. We have a lot of Black models in. But those same models are often like not paid at all or they get into contracts where they're kind of like indentured servants.

39:49The folks will say, OK, I'm going to bring you from your city to Cape Town or London or Paris. But I'm going to pay for your flight, pay for your visas, pay for everything. But we're going to recoup that through the contracts that we're getting you. So you might be walking for, you know, a huge brand, but a large majority of that money is going to go back to pay your debts. They're also paying for where you're living and charging you an exorbitant amount of money to live there, right? The money you're getting from that photo shoot you did is going to go back to pay that debt. And so it keeps models in this cycle.

40:23They're often the models that have the least agency or have the least resources that are preyed on. But it's not just that. Like, there are reports about models living in terrible housing. You know, European models, American models living in terrible housing in Europe. these model houses where it's like one bathroom, two bedrooms, and 12 people in bunk beds, right? And these are working models. Like, these are people who are on the pages of Vogue. So in that way, I think the industry is still extremely exploitative for people who don't have a voice. So we see the folks that go from influencer to model making a lot of money, right?

40:55But by the nature of being an influencer, you already had a voice when you came into it. It's these other models that are nameless, I'll say, whose faces we see everywhere who are still getting exploited. And in that way, I think Top Model did mirror the industry. Top Model mirrored the industry a lot, to be honest, body shaming and all. But even the way that they like didn't pay girls, you know, they weren't making anything from this, although they were making this show a lot of money and very, very popular. That is very much a page from the industry. So basically, I want to know, A, America's Next Top Model, is it different in any way from the other reality TV shows, like, is there anything exceptional about it versus the other reality TV shows?

41:34I mean, I think it's exceptional in its entertainment. I'll say that. You just like it a lot. Yeah. It's a good show. I mean, it's a horrible show, right? But they made a good product. I think in terms of, like I've mentioned with the contract, even for reality TV contracts, Top Model went really far. But other contracts of that era also went far. And there have been, you know, conversations about some of those shows too. I mean, I think The Biggest Loser There was a documentary about The Biggest Loser and how exploitative it was. So there were other shows that were really bad at that time. And I think because it was the wild, wild west of reality TV, there were no rules.

42:10We see that. But I think how Top Model stands out is it just went on for so long. And the contracts, the way they treated people didn't really change over that time, even though the rest of the industry was kind of changing. I mean, I remember just a few years ago, there was talk about reality TV stars wanting to unionize. And you say that was the Wild West back then, but have things gotten actually better for reality TV show stars? Not really. I mean, I'll give a very brief history of television and reality TV. In the early 2000s, right, like this is where we see these shows. But the reality TV boom, like Real Housewives of New York, Real Housewives of Atlanta, Teen Mom, like shows that we, Jersey Shore, that we think of as defining reality TV.

42:51That was around 2008 or 2009. What happened in 2007 was the writer's strike in Hollywood. Yeah, of course. So a lot of scripted programming was put on hold. And so networks that had not already turned to reality TV turned to reality TV because it's cheap to make. And reality TV actors or reality TV contestants or stars are not in a union. You can pay them what you want to pay them. There are certain things you don't have to do. Unfortunately, although reality TV sort of became this huge genre in and of itself that for many networks is their bread and butter, the reality TV part of it. unfortunately, even though it became that, people didn't really go back and look at that sort of union part of it, the protections that maybe we should, if we're going to keep doing this and doing it at such a large scale, maybe there should be some sort of protections.

43:40It just kept on going in that way. So Bethany Frankel, who was on Real Housewives of New York back in the day, I think she's always eating chicken salad on TikTok. She is. She's the one who does the skinny girl margaritas. Like if we have to drink our margaritas and think about the calories. Like, have we not taken the fun out of it? What are we doing? Anyway, Bethany is the one who called for the unionization of reality stars because she's on Housewives. And Housewives has been—Housewives is just full of drama. And I'm not talking about on the show. Like, Housewives has been sued before. They've been accused of not great working conditions.

44:15They've been accused of racism. They've been accused of a lot of stuff. But that comes from a place of, yeah, reality stars not really having any protections. There's no protections around the amount of hours you work. There was a lawsuit against Love is Blind, the Netflix show. One of those contestants said that they were working 20-hour days, but they're making$1 ,000 a week. You know, like they said they were not even making minimum wage. Yeah, that doesn't math out. That doesn't math out. But because reality stars are often contractors, they're not employees, these networks are able to sort of skirt around some of these protections that would be there.

44:46And then on top of the fact that they are not unionized, so there's not a targeted effort to have a standard of pay or a standard of hours. In a lot of ways, I think reality TV has come far in that there are shows like Housewives where you can make$2 million a season, right? There are shows like Love Island where you can make a lot less a season but get off and get a million-dollar contract to do something else, right? Your earning potential is there, but the treatment, I don't know if that's changed that much. Maybe we can't do certain stereotypes, but they've replaced that with other things.

45:17Maybe we won't do a runway where a girl is being pushed off a runway into a pool to possibly break her neck. But, you know, we will humiliate them or give them too much alcohol and we know they're a recovering alcoholic. Like, these are the sort of things we still continue to see. So in a lot of ways, I don't know. I don't think reality TV has changed. It's just become such a big industry that we think it's better because we see these stars are the beneficiaries of more success. I guess the last thing I wanted to mention, just the narrative shaping that happens in the background. The producers, you know, typecasting contestants and making them into these personalities.

45:56I was thinking about that so much just listening to your show and just thinking about, obviously, we have a president who, like, our view of him was informed by producers on a reality TV show. And so I was wondering, like, is that still going on? I don't really have a question about it. I just was thinking about it a lot. Absolutely. It's definitely still going on. And I think I talked to Oliver Twixt. He's a content creator. And he interviewed a lot of the models back in, like, 2020. He was a consulting producer kind of on our show. We used a lot of his tape. But he was also on a reality show himself.

46:29He was on The Circle on Netflix. And when I talked to Oliver, he gave me so much insight on reality TV now. and the things that have changed. Like he was like, yeah, you know, I had someone checking in with me all the time to make sure I was mentally okay. I was able to give breaks. I was able to say like, hey, I don't want to go down that road in terms of story. He said it was just a really great experience. However, he did tell me that when Oliver is queer, once he realized that they wanted him to be a certain character, right? He decided like, okay, I'm going to play into that. Like, that's what you want.

47:00That's what I'm going to give you. So even with all of sort of the protections and like him not feeling necessarily exploited and them checking in on him. They had a psychologist on set, which is something Top Model did not do, but they had a psychologist on set when he was on the circle. Even with that, they still made him a character. The formula of reality TV and why it works hasn't changed, right? Like we want to see people humiliate themselves and to understand these stories, we want to see them as a character or a stereotype or something that we understand. And so that certainly still happens.

47:34I think the difference now, in some cases, not all the time, right? Some people are still exploited and aren't signing up to be that character. I think the difference now is that reality stars feel like they're more in on the story. They know what they're supposed to show up and give, and they give that because they know that this will either make me popular or infamous, and I can gain from that. I think that's the biggest difference. They're still doing it, but the reality stars may feel they have more agency in some cases. Thanks. Well, Bridget, thank you so much for coming on and explaining this whole world to all the listeners.

48:04This has been great. This has been. Thank you so much for having me. It was really fun. And that's our show for this week. Thank you to Jessamyn Molle for producing. Ben Richman is Senior Director of Podcast Operations. Mia Lobel is Executive Producer of Podcasts. And I'll be back in your feed on Saturday, along with Felix and Elizabeth, for a regular episode of Slate Money. And until then, thanks for listening.

48:47We'll be right back.

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