While the world reckons with the America\u2019s Next Top Model franchise thanks to a new Netflix expos\u00e9, Alex Casey finds the New Zealand version to be an equally disturbing rewatch.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was while rewatching New Zealand\u2019s Next Top Model this week that I realised just how closely I have held lessons from that wretched franchise since I was a teenager. As the young aspiring models race around Auckland visiting local designers for \u201cgo-sees\u201d, they are repeatedly scorned for the \u201cincredibly embarrassing\u201d misdemeanour of wearing bright coloured bras and black underwear. \u201cThe number one rule for models is always wear nude underwear,\u201d says Anna Reeve from Showroom 22. \u201cAn agent can ring anytime,\u201d Colin Mathura-Jeffree advises.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Since that episode in 2009, my underwear drawer hath overfloweth with fetching salmon coloured gruts and bras, rendering me nothing more than an oversized Sea Monkey on the daily, and yet my phone has stayed resolutely silent. If American Idol sold the myth that any Joe Blogs could wander in off the street and get a record deal, and Survivor convinced us that anyone could outwit, outplay, outlast on a desert island, Top Model dabbled in a much more dangerous fantasy \u2013 that anyone could be a model if they just worked hard enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A promo image from cycle 9 of ANTM in 2007<\/p>\n
The franchise has been re-examined recently in the Netflix documentary Reality Check: Inside America\u2019s Next Top Model, in which Tyra Banks goes on the PR offensive in a trenchcoat and refuses to apologise for the show\u2019s many scandals<\/a>. There\u2019s the photoshoots in which young women were forced to swap races, appear as strangled corpses, and simulate bulimia. There\u2019s the non-consensual sex captured on camera and framed as a cheating scandal. There are teeth ripped from skulls during makeovers, and endless comments about the contestants\u2019 weight.\u00a0<\/p>\n When the judges weren\u2019t cooing over being able to put both their hands around one contestant\u2019s entire waist, they were berating them for gaining weight during the competition (\u201cget a burger, take the bun off\u201d Tyra tells Keenyah in cycle four). It reminded me of a viral post from writer Lucy Huber: \u201cif any Gen Z are wondering why every Millennial woman has an eating disorder it\u2019s because in the \u201900s a normal thing to say to a teenage girl was \u2018when you think you feel hungry, you\u2019re actually thirsty so just drink water and you\u2019ll be fine.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, the entirety of popular culture in the mid-2000s was centred around an obsession with thinness. Magazines like Girlfriend and Dolly were lined with pictures of Paris Hilton, Mischa Barton, the Olsen twins and Lindsay Lohan, interspersed with at-home workouts for tweens and healthy lunchbox snack swaps (replace everything with cottage cheese). Trinny and Susannah barked endlessly about apple and pear-shaped bodies, and movies like Bridget Jones, Shallow Hal, and Mean Girls framed weight gain as the worst possible fate a woman could ever meet.\u00a0<\/p>\n America\u2019s Next Top Model rode this toxic wave of lemon juice and cayenne pepper (Victoria\u2019s Secret model Gisele B\u00fcndchen\u2019s juice cleanse of choice) and eventually spawned international versions of the franchise, including here in Aotearoa. The first season of New Zealand\u2019s Next Top Model arrived in 2009, the same year that Kate Moss infamously said \u201cnothing tastes as good as skinny feels\u201d. I was 17 years old, had Mari Winsor\u2019s Advanced Body Slimming Workout DVD on high rotation in my bedroom, and was hooked on every moment of the series.\u00a0<\/p>\n While the seasons of America\u2019s Next Top Model that aired here had been savage, including forced weigh-ins for contestants, there had always been an air of distance between our humble island nation and the over-the-top American-ness of the franchise. But to suddenly see thousands of local girls flood to auditions, excited to win a \u201cCovergeehl\u201d contract in their little Glassons waistcoats, brought a new proximity to the alluring, and deeply toxic, ideas in the show. One of the finalists went to my primary school \u2013 the call was now coming from inside the house.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the very first episode (the whole first season is available on NZ On Screen<\/a>), the girls have to strip down to their bikinis for the judging panel of Sara Tetro (then-owner of 62 Models) Colin Mathura-Jeffree (international model) and Chris Sisarich (photographer). \u201cGo put your swimsuit on, I\u2019m dying to see it\u201d says Tetro of Christobelle, a 16-year-old from Auckland, soon complimenting her \u201ckiller\u201d body. Rhiannon from Blenheim, also 16, walks in awkwardly, admitting she normally prefers to wear shorts. \u201cGo home and throw your shorts out,\u201d says Tetro.\u00a0<\/p>\n The spectre of weight and dieting looms over the series from the opening montage, when the girls order a pizza \u2013 \u201cmodels eat too!\u201d they cackle. In an early aviation-themed photoshoot purporting to be a tribute to Jean Batten, 17-year-old Ruby, a size eight, receives the following critique from the photographer: \u201cshe looks really good on camera\u2026 she could lose a tiny bit of weight.\u201d And at the judges table: \u201cI do think that she could lose a little bit of weight and she\u2019d do a lot better for it.\u201d Just as our Jean would have wanted to be remembered, no doubt.\u00a0<\/p>\n Other times, the critiques come from the contestants themselves. Teryl-Leigh, a 23-year-old beanpole, hates her Snow Planet photo because she thinks she looks fat. \u201cMaybe I could be more toned?\u201d she says to the judges. \u201cIf you feel that you aren\u2019t toned, then tone,\u201d Tetro nods sagely. When the girls get delivered bags of chocolates, Hosanna refrains, admitting privately that she\u2019s gained weight in the Top Model house. In the next scene, an Elite Fitness van arrives, and the girls hug in elation as two men offload cross-trainers and exercise balls.\u00a0<\/p>\n It is hard to overstate just how fucked up it is to absorb these scenes as a teenager, especially when an adult male photographer advises that a 17-year-old girl \u201cjust needs to get on that treadmill\u201d. The final six are eventually flown to LA to meet with Next Model Management, at which point the agent brings out the measuring tape. \u201cThe ideal measurements would be 34-24-34, that\u2019s really what you need,\u201d he says, singling out a few of the girls to \u201cwork a bit harder\u201d to bring down their numbers. I was shocked to realise I had those measurements memorised about as well as my childhood friend\u2019s phone number.\u00a0<\/p>\n The next morning, Teryl-Leigh chooses wedges for breakfast over her usual shoestring fries. \u201cI was trying to make the healthy choice,\u201d she shrugs.\u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019d love to say that times have changed, but just look at the return of cottage cheese into the culture<\/a>. While we don\u2019t have weekly appointments to watch grown adults tear apart women\u2019s bodies on TV anymore, the Ozempic era has emboldened a wild new kind of body surveillance. This season of Married at First Sight Australia has seen not one but two grooms declare \u201cno fat people\u201d in their audition tapes while, at the other end of the spectrum, the ever-shrinking Kelly Osborne has had to beg people to stop dehumanising her<\/a> after her rapid weight loss.\u00a0<\/p>\n All I know is that a whole generation of women really could have done without being let inside the cursed tips and tricks of the modelling industry, complete with a panel of judges externalising all our self-hatred in primetime. The most twisted thing of all is that the Next Top Model fantasy of being discovered strolling the streets actually does happen sometimes. I was once in a homewares store on Ponsonby Road with my exceptionally beautiful friend, when a woman with spiky hair and statement glasses sauntered up to ask if she had modelling representation.\u00a0<\/p>\n Halfway through the conversation the woman turned to me, as I pretended to be deeply absorbed in a pineapple-shaped candle, and produced the look of pity one might afford a cat with a tin of beans stuck on its head. \u201cOh,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019re cute too.\u201d<\/p>\n Before I could even tell her I had been swapping wedges for fries, and had my nude go-see undies ready to go, she had already turned her back on me.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the world reckons with the America\u2019s Next Top Model franchise thanks to a new Netflix expos\u00e9, Alex…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[164654,156,1438,5289,111,170959,139,69,1066,1093,170960],"class_list":["post-315051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-americas-next-top-model","tag-entertainment","tag-fashion","tag-models","tag-new-zealand","tag-new-zealands-next-top-model","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pop-culture","tag-reality-tv","tag-tyra-banks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}This is what the 2000s looked like.<\/p>\n
Judges Colin Mathura-Jeffree, Sara Tetro and Chris Sisarich.<\/p>\n
The girls are measured at an agency in Los Angeles<\/p>\n