Was Reality Even In the Room With Us for Reality Check: America's Next Top Model?

I’d say I was waiting for the E! Docuseries to air its America’s Next Top Model episodes for me to comment on The Tyra one where Tyra didn’t have anything to do with production see, so it’s totally non-biased. Except, surprise, or not, if you’ve seen the documentary, the part where you think you’re getting some expose about what happened and potentially have the people involved at least fess up to it and try to make some amends has been replaced with Tyra, in a trench coat, saying all at once that she spent long evenings on the cutting room floor but really didn’t have anything to do with production, and that the audience deserved it because they were asking for it, basically. 

So what happens is, the guilty pleasure show that probably had a much larger effect on you than you would’ve thought as a child, because by the numbers a lot of ANTM’s core fanbase was me, who was freshly 20 and people my sister’s age and much much younger - tweens and teens – is actually blaming you for liking it while taking absolutely no responsibility for the harmful messages it was sending or the inhumane way it treated contestants, AND teasing a brand.new.season. 

Stop!

No, seriously. Stop. Maybe I didn’t write what I thought of the documentary because a bad review still ticks the SEO machine in the franchise’s direction and I want them to have none of the attention. See, the thing is, I don’t believe in boundless cancellation. I think there’s room for rehabilitation if there’s recognizance and an actual effort to restore damage done. But when your, I’m sorry, “not your” documentary not only features you in between every blatantly condemning scene denying that you’re at fault for anything, then I don’t feel like entertaining that kind of gaslighting and manipulation. It’s not fun.

And the thing is - I think there’d have been a certain beauty to it, if anyone at all seemed to do anything but take the blame off themselves. There was far more fingerpointing and “It was a different time” and not enough simple “I fucked up, and that’s on me.” 

The thing is, my generation? Owning up to it is all we care about – we’re not here to mete out justice. We just want you to know better next time and do better. I mean, isn’t that the entire point in pointing out bad behavior? 

While I do think Niles, and Miss and Mister Jay had some good reflections, I still can’t help but feel like they could’ve done better, and Tyra? For one, the trench coat is giving me some weird cult vibes, and the monotone yet very announcerly answers are, frankly, infuriating me no matter what drivel they form into on the back end. It’s not even that I don’t understand, or haven’t made some rather distasteful mistakes in my past I would hope wouldn’t get dredged up - it’s just that dismissing, minimizing and gaslighting us to believe, in fact, we WANTED this…well…WE WERE ROOTING FOR YOU! WE WERE ALL ROOTING FOR YOU!

And Tyra? 

You let us down.