#291

Mostly the ANTM documentary

So, last week was not great. I’d been interviewing for a job and I got the job. The recruiter called and told me the company was working on the offer and he’d present it to me soon. A week went by and I started to feel like something was off, so I checked in. The recruiter called back and told me the hiring manager left the company abruptly, so the company was pausing hiring for the role. So, no offer. No job.

I know this is not even one billionth on the list of the worst things that happened to people last week, but it did suck. I am frankly just very sick of everything, mostly myself? I’m sick of doing laundry just to feel like I accomplished something. I’m sick of making bread (though it is good bread), I’m sick of arguing with unemployment every week, I’m sick of applying to jobs only to be rejected by a computer or, at the end of a long process, rejected in a new and uniquely bummer way.

Wednesday night after I got this news I announced there was no way in hell I was making dinner and we went down the street to what passes for a neighborhood pub.

(Quick story, one night when my husband and I were barely dating, we went to this bar after starting the night at a different bar. I was three gin gimlets into my cups and drinking something called a Cherry Rain, and the bartender brought over a bread plate. “Oh,” I said. “We didn’t order this.” He smiled neutrally and said, “Just eat it.” So we were definitely Those People.)

Anyway, at the pub I drank my cocktail too quickly and didn’t feel very well the rest of the evening or the next day, which was unfortunate because I’d signed my husband and I up for a wine tasting. The tasting was fine, but I mostly just wanted to crawl into bed and feel sorry for myself.

Instead of doing that, though, I went to a cake decorating class on Friday with my friend Camilla, which perhaps was exactly the right thing to do at such a time. Here is my cake:

When I finished the lettering on the top of the cake, you couldn’t tell me SHIT.

I was buoyed by cake success most of the weekend, which was very nice. My husband made a leg of lamb and pommes boulangère for our Valentine’s Day dinner and, of course, we ate some cake.

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If you are among the vanishingly few people who read my OG blog, you know I was extremely into the early seasons of America’s Next Top Model, and accordingly I was thrilled to find out there is a new documentary about it. This week I watched all three episodes of Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, and I am not sure this was a great move for Tyra!

I am glad that Tyra participated, along with Jay Alexander, Jay Manuel, and Nigel Barker, and I am glad it focuses mostly on the early seasons. I stopped watching after season 10? Ish? I don’t remember exactly, but if it had anything to do with USA vs. UK or girls vs. boys, I didn’t fuck with it.

The documentary doesn’t shy away from some of the show’s biggest fuckups, like Shandi in Milan, the blackface photo shoots, the eating disorder shoot, the body shaming stuff, JOANIE’S TEETH, the sexual harassment, Tyra yelling at Tiffany. These were the big ones I remembered, but plenty was left out or glossed over. It would certainly take more episodes (cycles!!!) to adequately dive into the many ways the show fucked up (and fucked up the people on it).

But even as the documentary explores these issues, it also gives a lot of room for everyone to let themselves off the hook. Tyra in particular does this very confidently. Of what happened to Shandi, she simply says “It’s a little difficult for me to talk about production because that’s not my territory.” Oh?

PLEASE NOTE THE CHYRON. “Not my territory,” indeed

There is a lot, A LOT, of time spent on the topic of the early 2000s being “a different time” and how that is a magical, blanket excuse for everything shitty that happened. Like, sure we body shamed people, but that’s just what you did back then! And certainly it was a different time, and there are many shows that don’t age well, but it would have been interesting to have a more robust discussion about that, rather than hearing a bunch of fifty-somethings make excuses for themselves.

Here is Nigel Barker wincing at himself telling Keenyah in 2005 that “there has to be a way you can handle it” after she points out for the second time that a male model was making her feel uncomfortable on set:

…right before taking stock of what he might have learned over the past 21 years and doubling back down by saying “figure it out and just get the job done.”

For his part, Jay Manuel says he felt incredibly awkward about the “switching ethnicities” shoot, and says he asked to be excused. However…

Speaking of makeup choices, this contour is very distracting

Jay insists that if you look closely at his face in the old footage, you can tell he is uncomfortable. Whatever. The next thing he says is “I just had to do my job,” historically a great excuse for all kinds of things that never should have happened.

And then there is Tyra, who seems as full of shit as ever. If you haven’t been keeping up with Tyra post-ANTM and post-talk show, she lives in Australia with her son and long-time boyfriend and has a – sorry because this isn’t going to make much sense – hot ice-cream business. She’s also worth about a hundred million dollars.

Double also, Tyra may be impenetrably wacky, but she’s not stupid. Early on in the documentary she clears the decks by saying she knew a lot of what she did was “dumb shit.” I guffawed aloud when she said this because it effectively neuters the documentary, rendering any probing questions like “Why did you make a contestant who struggled with her weight represent gluttony in a seven deadly sins photo shoot and then an elephant in a wildlife photo shoot?” absolutely moot. She already said she knew it was dumb, why continue to talk about it? Next question!

She slips easily back and forth between her regular-girl mannerisms and that bizarre, halting cadence she used when eliminating models at the end of an ANTM episode. (And that, I have to believe, is by choice, since she ominously warns us that we have no idea what she has planned for cycle 25 of America’s Next Top Model.) Overall, she’s just narrating her own mythology. We get what we want and yet we don’t get much at all. Tyra is contrite-ish but as far as she is concerned, her hands are clean.

It’s telling that Jay Manuel and Jay Alexander do not seem to have relationships with Tyra anymore. At one point, Tyra says she “should call Jay” (Manuel) rather than discuss what happened between them on camera. I suspect he is still waiting for that call. Jay Alexander had a stroke in 2022 and has never had a visit from Tyra. Jay Manuel and Nigel both visited him in the hospital and the three still seem to have a lovely relationship. Also, Jay Alexander is a treasure and I live for the merest meaningful eyeroll.

Immediately after saying Tyra texted that she wants to come see him “soon”

None of the contestants who appear in the documentary have anything good to say about Tyra. Not all of them have something bad to say about her, but Danielle Evans – who won her season and then was effectively ignored by Ford Model Management for the duration of her prize contract – absolutely blames Tyra for mishandling both contestants and winners.

Near the end of the doc, Tyra claims she’s fine with being called out on her shit, saying it helps her to evolve. She then invokes TyraLogic™ and confusingly invites “you guys” to continue to call her out and to also be ready to be called out, because “that day will come.” Danielle isn’t having it:

If you were ever a fan of this show – or, actually, even if you were a hater – it is worth watching. I wish there had been a little more to it, and in addition to one journalist and some social media commentary, it would have been interesting to hear insiders from the modeling industry discuss the show and why nobody was ever going to be a “top model” based on winning. It was satisfactory enough, but I wish I didn’t feel like it was a launchpad for Tyra’s next One Weird Trick. Because while I can understand Jay Manuel’s complicated feelings about the show and Tyra, every time Tyra talks it just sounds like a load of hot ice cream.