Reality TV Assignment

For my reality TV post, I decided to analyze America’s Next Top Model. ANTM (as it is called by fans). The premise of the show is simple: select a group of 12 young women and each week, eliminate one who has an “inferior” photograph or doesn’t act enough like a “model” – whatever that means. Each week consists of a challenge, a photoshoot and judging. Finally, you are left with one shining example of the “perfect” model! Despite the title, America’s NEXT Top Model does anything but find the next top model. Instead it finds the woman who most conforms to the modeling industry now. The show should instead be called “America’s Current Model” Overall, the show reinforces self-contempt and encourages young women to constantly change and mold both their bodies and their attitudes.

“America’s Next Top Model” is shown on the CW, a product of a merger between UPN and the WB at 8/7 central on Wednesday nights. The prizes for winning the show are coveted contracts with Covergirl and Elite Model Management, and a a cover and six page spread in Seventeen. In many of the photoshoots, the models wear clothing and make-up advertised to young women such as OP swimwear, Old Navy and Covergirl. Though the models are 18-26, the show is advertised to tween girls aged twelve to fifteen. The show constantly mentions creating positive role models, which speaks to the malleability of these young girls. In addition, these girls are “extremely desireable to advertisers because they are new consumers, are beginning to have significant disposable income, and are developing brand loyalty” (Kilbourne, 133). America’s Next Top Model attempts to sell the “need” for make-up and designer clothing to young girls through their conspicuous product placement.

In her book Unbearable Weight, Cynthia Enloe discusses how society has enabled women to sculpt their bodies, much like pieces of art through plastic surgery. She argues that “..technology that was first aimed at the replacement of malfunctioning parts has generated an industry and an ideology fueled by fantasies of rearranging, transforming and correcting, an ideology of limitless improvement and change, defying the historicity, the mortality, and, indeed, the very materiality of the body,” (Enloe, 246). With expert help, we are now in control of our own destinies. America’s Next Top Model greatly endorses this idealogy of self-improvement and applies it not only to bodies, but to personalities. This idea implies that there is an objective personality for a model and effaces individual differences. Cycle 11, which just generated a new winner, featured a young woman named Marjorie. From the beginning, Marjorie had a nervous disposition. At first, Tyra made fun of it, but as the competition progressed, this personality trait became more of a “problem.” When commenting on Marjorie’s photograph late in the competition, Tyra remarks that "This girl [in the photograph]; is strong; this girl is sharp [in the photograph]; this girl [in the photograph] is cunning; this girl in front of us is weak and timid and unsure. We need to figure out how to get this girl into a natural picture and how to get her in front of us too." Marjorie’s nervousness translates into a weak, timid and unsure woman. So, she must change and “improve” her personality. Through alcohol, Marjorie was able to subdue her nerves in episode 12. However, the judges found this “improved” personality still deficient: now she has no charm and is even condescending. Tyra mentions that she wants the “light to shine within [Marjorie] without the nerves” and that because she’s worked so hard to please the judges, she’s lost her “essence.” “We only wanted to polish you up a bit,” says Tyra. Through their constant encouragement to embody an “ideal” personality, Marjorie lost herself similar to the thousands of women who participate in plastic surgery and lose their unique bodies in the pursuit of an “ideal” body.