Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
America’s Next Top Model is a deeply strange and wonderfully fascinating show.
A friend once gleefully described it as a show that follows what happens when you throw 16 hungry young women in a house and tell them “the prettiest one wins.” It pits these young ladies against each other in increasingly embarrassing competitions and keeps them all together in close quarters hoping that drama will erupt. They are criticized, and in turn celebrated, for genetic quirks they can’t control. Worst of all, these women are being appraised almost solely in regards to how they can sell their own appearance. They are reduced to nothing but their looks.
It’s not exactly the most feminist of reality show competitions, yet America’s Next Top Model passes the Bechdel Test with flying colors. Until Cycle 20, it was one of the few shows on television that was almost exclusively starring women. These young women weren’t competing to win the heart of a bachelor, but for the chance to make their own bank. With the exception of few judges and photographers, men only appeared on ANTM as literal accessories or disastrous distractions. And the “prettiest girl” never won; the winner was always the young woman with the confidence to sell herself and the tenacity to overcome everything Tyra Banks and company threw at her.
So, in a strange way, America’s Next Top Model wasn’t just a pulpy reality show; it was an education in how to sell yourself as young professional woman in modern America. In a culture where women are making 70 cents to the dollar and struggling to burst through glass ceilings, America’s Next Top Model is one of the only shows on television that offers women any kind of advice about how to advocate for yourself in a professional environment.
Here are five important lessons that America’s Next Top Model taught me.
Know your angles and find your light (or figure out what your strengths are and figure out how to showcase them)
Amateur models seem to struggle with “knowing their angles” and “finding their light.” In modeling terms, this means they haven’t studied their own bodies enough to understand how they look on camera when they strike specific poses and they don’t know how to position their bodies towards the light source to take advantage of said angles.
In the real world, this advice can be translated to know your strengths and your weaknesses — and then position yourself in the workforce in a way that highlights all the good you have to offer. If you’ve always wanted to be an English teacher, but you’ve always been slightly better at math, you have to decide whether you should beef up those literature skills, or go to a school where they need a math teacher. Figure out what you have to sell and then find the best market for it.
Nail all of your "go sees" (or if you say you're going to do something, do it in a timely manner)
Towards the end of every season of ANTM, the models are sent on “go sees” in a foreign fashion capital. Go sees are auditions (or job interviews) for models. They are supposed to bring their books, meet with designers, and hopefully get booked for jobs on the strength of both their portfolio and in person appearance. The funny thing is most of the models who fail this challenge don’t fail it because of their own weaknesses as models; they fail because they suck at time management.
It’s more impressive to Tyra and company that girls make as many go sees as possible and get back to the agency in a timely manner than it is if they book every go see they do make it to. I always think that the go see challenge offers two lessons. One: it hammers home the importance of time management. A late model can actually cost a client thousands upon thousands of dollars, but tardiness is a bad look in all professions. Two: if people offer you opportunities for advancement, you should do your best to show up for them.
Take a good passport photo (or assume everything always counts)
If you watch enough ANTM, you’ll notice that Tyra has a lot of stories about how she broke into modeling. One of them involves booking a big shoot just on the basis of her passport photo. Her point is that since you never know when opportunity will knock, you should always be prepared for it. Even though something might seem like a trivial task in your industry, if you do it well, you might wind up impressing someone when the moment counts.
In later seasons, Tyra would take this philosophy further. She made one photo challenge hinge on the candid backstage photos the models didn’t realize they were posing for. Again: always assume that everything counts. Years ago, Decider’s own Mark Graham hired me for one of my first professional writing jobs because he had been reading my personal tumblr on the down low, and for whatever reason, it impressed him. So, yeah, everything counts.
"We were all rooting for you! How dare you! Learn something from this!" (or the only failure is giving up)
In the entire history of America’s Next Top Model, Tyra Banks has only thrown one major tantrum — and it was a doozy. Banks laid into one girl, Tiffany, not once, but twice about the importance of not giving up. First, Banks was pissed off that Tiffany gave up on a challenge that she was actually doing pretty well on. You see, Tiffany was demoralized by the fact that she couldn’t make out words and phrases like “magenta” or “Karl Lagerfeld” on a teleprompter, not realizing that the challenge wasn’t to see which model had the highest reading comprehension, but which one could soldier through a difficult tongue-twister on camera with the most charm.
Later, when Tiffany gets eliminated for this defeatist attitude, Banks flips out when she sees the girl giggle the set back off. For Tyra Banks, the only failure in life is giving up, and that’s something to take to heart when our professional life doesn’t go our way. We’ve all had to do thankless tasks, we all will face rejection, and we’ll all screw up sometimes. The important thing is to keep going.
Finally, never forget that YOU are America's Next Top Model (or NEVER STOP SELLING YOURSELF)
Every once in a while, Tyra will ask the contestants to appraise themselves. Specifically, she wants to know who each contestant thinks will win. You would think that this is a subjective question. Their answers are going to be a matter of opinion, but in the profession world, it’s not subjective. If you’re competing on America’s Next Top Model, and Tyra Banks asks you who you think will win, the answer is always you. You are always America’s Next Top Model.
Banks always follows these sessions up with a mediation on self-confidence and how if you don’t believe in yourself, no one ever will. It’s true. Having this kind of brash cockiness might play as annoying in interpersonal relationships, but it’s necessary if you want to climb to the top of your profession. So, the next time someone asks you if you’re the best; you’re the best. Maybe you’re not quite at the height of your talents today, but you’ll never be there someday unless you believe it’s possible. [Where to Stream America’s Next Top Model]
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