America’s Next Top Model is an American reality tv show in which endeavoring ‘models’ embark on their journey to becoming a top model. Their main goal is to spark their career in the fashion industry by taking a collective amount of photographs and completing a set amount of challenges. The winner is promised a modeling contract whether it is Covergirl, Wilhelmina Models, Elite Model Management, Revlon etc. The winner will also receive a spread in a magazine, commercial, or cash prize of some sort. From the outside, it looks like fun and games for the contestant. They are seen living in luxury and meeting with the hottest names in the industry, but everything is not what is seems. I am here to give you the truth behind ANTM and hopefully shed a real light on what these ladies went through during and after the show.
The Girls Were Sent to a Hotel Prior to Eliminations
Cycle 12 contestant, Allison Harvard, revealed how eliminations played out in a Reddit ‘Ask Me Anything’ session. When asked what happened post eliminations she confessed that the ladies are sent to a hotel rather than actually getting to immediately go home and see their families. “The stay was determined by the time of elimination,” she revealed. “Sometimes a girl would stay there for a few weeks (if she was eliminated early on) and other times only a few days.” The producers knew the longer the girls were in the competition the more excited fans would be to see them and talk to them. With that being said, the producers didn’t want the girls to be tempted to spill any secrets or anything. I personally don’t understand how throwing someone in a hotel after they are eliminated would help with that issue, but I assume there’s a method to the madness.
The Girls Never Get to See Tyra
Tyra portrays a ‘second mother’ role to the girls on the show. Once again things are always different on the other side of the screen. Considering the fact that Tyra is an entrepreneur with many different jobs she was often too busy to just spend all of her focus with the girls. Sarah Hartshorne (Cycle 9) explained to Bustle, “I only saw her once a week, and there were a lot of us and only one of her, but she was always very nice and insanely knowledgeable”. According to another one of the girls, Angelea Preston (Cycle 17), Tyra was “non-existent,” Preston explained to The Daily Mail. “The only time we saw Tyra was at panel. Tyra never came in to talk to us personally. When the cameras stopped rolling, it’s like she’s a stranger”. As a child I would always be confused as to why the girls were overjoyed whenever Tyra would come around because she would “see them”multiple times in an episode. As I continued to watch I realized they were elated due to the fact that they didn’t see her often, once a week to be exact.
Household Ban of Electronics
As we all know there was no electronics allowed in the top model house. We would constantly see girls bickering over who gets the phone next and how some girls would spend an excessive amount of time on the phone. “We had no TV, internet, or phones,” Erin Wagner (Cycle 13) confessed on her own AMA thread on Reddit. She continued by saying her least favorite part of the entire experience was in fact the limited phone time. “The first thing we did when we woke up was get a microphone put on. Whenever we were waiting for challenges and such, we couldn’t talk in the limo, and when the cameramen were on break or went home for the night, we just had to read or something silently,” Wagner revealed. This was the producers way of not missing any drama. This method also prevented them from listening to hours and hours of unnecessary footage.
Was Tyra Truly Rooting For Tiffany?
If you watch America’s Next Top Model there is no way you could miss the iconic panel in which Tyra Scolded one of the contestants before send her “home”. Tiffany Richardson of Cycle 4 had an elimination that was one for the books. Tyra lost her cool when she felt disrespected by Richardson for having an attitude as she walked off the show. Some say it is fake and overly dramatic, but Tyra later explains that she truly did care for Tiffany and she felt as if she was throwing the whole competition away. It turns out there was more to the story than production showed the viewers at home. When speaking with BuddyTv Richardson revealed that the situation was situation was worse than what was aired. Along with what we saw, Tyra exposing the fact that she couldn’t even afford a bathing suit prior to making it on the show, she apparently was screaming more below the belts. Tyra reportedly told the contestant, “You can go back to your house and sleep on your mattress on the floor with your baby” along with other personal comments. The producers pick and choose what they want to air and although it seemed like an entertaining moment of the show for us Tyra’s words really hurt.
I think it is really important that America knows what goes on behind the scenes in shows like this. I personally love America’s Next Top Model, but after listening to what happens on the other side of the screen it just makes you think a little harder about what you are actually watching. The show is entertaining nonetheless but as a viewer of reality tv you truly should not believe everything you see.