America’s Next Top Model was a staple of reality TV for many years. Earlier this year, the show went viral for its extreme tactics in making the next model.
Although Tyra Banks has already addressed the issue from the backlash from months ago, she recently opened up about the situation again.
From making a white woman wear Blackface to making another woman shave her hair only to make her go home — not to mention scolding a girl for not closing her gap — there were so many problematic things about the competition.
Tyra admits that these things were not okay. However, she explains that at the time she was still a model and she knew how cutthroat things were behind-the-scenes which is why she was so harsh on the women while trying to find the next huge model.
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She admits that they missed the mark and also messed up when it came to inclusivity.
‘We were still operating in a world—I was still a model at the time, not a retired model yet, and still operating in this world that had so many rules. It was this awful push and pull that we all had,’ she explained to Tamron Hall.
Banks went on to say: ‘I was trying to push boundaries but was also torn to try to make sure that these girls could work, so it was a balance. It was like, ‘Oh, break beauty barriers,’ but yeah, I can break them all I want on the show, but they’ll graduate from the show, and they won’t work.’
She also revealed that there were things going on that the public doesn’t know when it came to why she didn’t go hard enough against beauty standards.
‘I had model agents here saying, ‘These three girls could really, really work, but this must change,’ so there was a whole behind-the-scenes thing happening. Instead of me saying, ‘You must change this,’ on TV, I think what I should have said is, ‘You’re beautiful.”
What do you think about Tyra’s explanation?