“Boo-Boo, I’m so sorry.”
This was verbatim what Tyra Banks said in response to seeing a clip of contestant Keenyah Hill in the new Netflix docuseries “Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model.”
Charting at No. 1 in its first week of release already speaks volumes about the notably popular yet controversial show that aired in 2003.
Twenty-three years of unopened wounds unstitched during just three one-hour-long episodes, and I fear it did nothing short of disappointing. But, hey. What else were we supposed to expect after seeing Tyra featured in the show’s trailer? For those who expected clarity or maybe even an apology, sorry, sister. Wrong channel.
The series, which dropped last Monday, featured the familiar faces of Jay Manuel, J. Alexander (Miss J), Nigel Barker, some contestants and winners from past cycles and, of course, the one and only Tyra Banks.
Like many around the globe, I picked ANTM back up in 2020 when COVID-19 interrupted the middle of my high school experience. I was a junior trying to decide where I wanted to spend my next four years. To take off the stress, I would crack open my laptop, go to my Hulu app and start my next episode of ANTM.
Before high school, I grew up in a household that went to church every Sunday, I attended a Christian school Monday through Friday and Saturdays were blocked off for Girl Scouts. I didn’t have much time to indulge in secular media on my own without a parent looking over my shoulder or older siblings prepared to snitch on me. But I did know one thing. I knew Tyra, alright.
“Life Size” was my absolute favorite movie, and I think it was because it was the first time that I’d seen a Black girl who has light eyes like I do. I instantly made that connection with her, and she became a role model, almost. Through this bond, it was only right when I discovered ANTM that I should start it.
I was instantly hooked.
I promise you, reality TV was never really my thing, and I was only catching glimpses of my mom watching “The Bachelor” in passing. I surprised myself when I started to binge cycles within days and speed through them because I couldn’t get enough.
Till this day, I’m not sure if it was because of my one-sided connection with Tyra or because it was a competition show and I loved sports, but I always saw it through to the end.
Obviously, when you’re young, you are impressionable. Hearing your presumed heroine call a 115-pound girl “fat” on national television is going to leave a stiletto-sized imprint on your neck. Imagine being that 115-pound girl and coming back to face the world after being eliminated for:
- Standing up for yourself because, once again, a man was getting too handsy.
- Being told that you are gaining weight and that you’ll never be employed in the fashion industry while producers push the narrative that you are unhealthy.
- Having Tyra Banks say, “Boo-Boo, I’m so sorry,” not directly to you, but after rewatching a clip from over two decades ago. Let’s not forget, this is a clip she definitely has watched before because she was the show’s creator and executive producer.
Let’s face it. A lot of us knew exactly how this docuseries was ending. I stopped believing that true clarity exists in the television and political space when I accepted the reality that we live in a capitalist society.
Black feminist theory teaches us that Black people experience a premature death because of a system structured on hierarchy. And, if it wasn’t obvious, Black women are not at the top. If we look at Maria Stewart’s claims alongside this framework, we can recognize that the girls in the show have gone through an educational, economic, social, political and spiritual death just from what the model industry sets as the standard. It’s made them try to fit into jeans knowing they are way too tight for them.
Tyra went through this, too.
As a journalist and a criminology minor, digging and engaging with people and trends with sociological texts is the way I develop my pieces. Yup, that’s my secret to Faith Harper bylines, folks.
Tyra was a victim. Maybe she saw conducting race swap photoshoots featuring Blackface and widening a girl’s tooth gap — after making another contestant get rid of hers — as a way to inflict the same trauma she went through on her contestants. Maybe she thought it was better coming from a Black woman who knows how harsh the industry really was.
Or maybe Tyra realized something: She was a Black woman who had the odds stacked against her the moment she decided to become a model. By the time she was 20 years old, she was rejected by dozens of agencies because of her body, her face and her race.
This is all to say, she was one of only a few Black models to walk runways around the world, which was an unthinkable feat for young girls auditioning for ANTM. She created this show with the intention of showing the world that Black girls and girls of all sizes were beautiful, but the unexpected happened: The show skyrocketed. Now became the question of making sure viewers stayed entertained, and the shock factor soon shot up to top priority to keep this entity alive.
Tyra had made it. She had really made it.
And she wasn’t going to let anyone take that away.
Was any of this right? Of course not.
This is not to come up with excuses for a grown woman, but only to “engage with the text.”
Tyra is complicated. Like, “sit on my couch, tell me what your deepest trauma is and let’s do a photoshoot,” complicated.
She’s a Black woman who might have figured out way too early how to play the game (of working the system of capitalism). If that’s true, then I’m not making this crazy leap like the cow over the moon.
But if this is true, then Tyra has either slipped through the cracks of capitalism to the point that the white guards didn’t see her wiggle herself in, or she’s drowning and succumbing to the same words that she first heard when dreaming of evolving the modeling industry. Only right now, she has lost the trust of the community that believed in her mission.
Rewatch the show, then you’ll see what I mean.
Faith Harper covers culture, lifestyles and trends for HUNewsService. This commentary/essay/review was originally posted on her Substack.
