I loved America's Next Top Model back in the day. Not only did it feature gorgeous hotties, it was full of gay people back when Ellen was the only "representation" we had. Miss J, Jay Manuel, lesbian models like Ebony Haith, Kim Stolz & Kayla Ferrell were suddenly all over our screens. It was prime time appointment viewing in my dorm and I'm sure many others. (I even did a very short stint writing for an ill-fated Tyra fashion website online. In true Tyra form, they fired half the writing staff early on but I made the cut only to quit later because they wanted magazine-quality pieces for $15 per article). Anyway, I was gut-punched to see the recent documentary Reality Check: America's Next Top Model which showed what REALLY went on behind the scenes and on our screens. Things were very different than I remembered.
Let's start with the offensive-but-not criminal things (I dare not call any of it "small stuff" because chiiiiile). Not only keeping the girls stick-thin but celebrating when they fainted, vomited or got taken to the ER due to being underweight & overworked. Racism on a show executive produced by a Black woman (race-swapping, REALLY?). Using the contestants' most traumatic life experiences to try and provoke a mental breakdown (and creating brand new traumatic ones specially for the show!). The list goes on and on.
How they framed a rape
But by far the most shocking and disgusting revelation to come from this documentary was the one involving Shandi Sullivan of Cycle 2. Not only was this woman raped on the show with cameras rolling, not a single person intervened to stop it. But it gets worse. Cameras continued rolling when she broke the news to her boyfriend and he called her a stupid bitch and dumped her on national TV. And of course it didn't stop there. They spun this horror as a "cheating scandal" and painted the victim as a perpetrator, even calling Shandi to come on Tyra's nightmare daytime TV talk show and playing footage of the assault on the big screen after she'd asked them not to.
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| Rape victim told by Tyra to "fight her carnal desires". |
Background on the assault: Shandi was starving and underfed, then got overly drunk one evening when it was sprung on the contestants that male models would be coming over for dinner. She was blackout drunk when one of them climbed on top of her and raped her as cameras continued to roll. Let me repeat: A VIOLENT CRIME WAS COMMITTED ON CAMERA AND BROADCAST TO THE WORLD with the victim painted as the villain. That's a whole other level of wrong. The fact that a woman could be raped--literally forced to have sex when she was incapable of consenting--while the whole world watched, and then PAINTED AS THE VILLAIN is proof that rape culture is alive and well. Today, in 2026. Because to this day, no one has been prosecuted or even questioned by law enforcement about this incident. The offender's face & name are immortalized on camera and he continues to walk free.
But back to ANTM. The girls pretended to be homeless once. They did a shoot on the impacts of smoking, so silly. They forced a model to close the gap in her teeth against her will. This is what the documentary does, somehow managing to center Tyra and the ANTM judges when there were women being abused and endangered on their watch. And here come the meme lords turning it all into a big joke AGAIN.
I can't imagine how Shandi must be feeling right now or for the last 20+ years. Do we know how her mental health is holding up, if she has access to therapy and other support? Legal representation? These scumbags should've been sued under the table for what they did to her. Cycle 2 should've been the final cycle and everyone involved should've been held legally and financially accountable. That's what would've happened if we lived in a world where misogyny & rape culture weren't the law of the land. If preventing suicide and other harmful outcomes was REALLY as important as all these networks make it out to be when they broadcast suicide hotline numbers at the end of episodes where they've driven someone over the edge for ratings.
Molested on set & told to shut up.
Shandi is incredibly strong for surviving that--all of it. If by chance she ever reads this, I hope she knows none of that was her fault and there's NOTHING for her to feel bad about. She had every right to sue the producers including Tyra and to publicly tell the world what happened at the time. I don't blame her for not being able to do that, but she had every right to. The fact that she survived and is still here with us is all that matters. It's now on law enforcement to follow up on the perpetrator(s), though there's probably some bogus excuse not to ("statute of limitations," or "she didn't press charges"). Therein lies the problem. The one time on the show where a model (Keenyah Hill) DID speak up for herself because she was being groped by a male model, the panel of judges shut her down, basically telling her to shut up and take it.
"A Different Time"
Because common sense & basic decency didn't exist until Twitter.
The fact that everybody acts like the mid-2000s were "a different time" before basic morals existed is also ridiculous to me. Sure, #MeToo hadn't happened yet and Black Lives Matter didn't exist, but those movements are not the starting point for morality or law and order either. Rape was still a crime; a Black woman should've known not to paint white women Black and put dashikis on them for a photo shoot. Knowledge of the harms of eating disorders was most definitely a thing.
For a show populated by so many minority and gay people, ANTM sure wasn't very conscientious about the crap they were churning out to impressionable young viewers. Would a show full of male contestants EVER think to behave this way? Today's reality TV landscape suggests not. Shows like The Real Housewives, Dance Moms, Sister Wives and Toddlers and Tiaras prove that exploitation of women and children is not just accepted but celebrated in American society, even as the Epstein files rule the headlines. Cue faux performative outrage. Keep scrolling.
The fact is we live in a world where people will watch a crime against humanity unfold and say "that's wild." No, you dumb shits, it's not "wild". Wild is bonkers, bananas, silly. Like Nick Cannon's "Wild'n Out." This shit is criminal. Revolting. Psychopathic. Unforgivable. The fact that the modeling industry is a major playground for Epstein-affiliated crooks like Jean-Luc Brunel goes completely unmentioned in this documentary, naturally.
And all of you enablers calling Tyra a "perfect scapegoat" and making excuses for her because she happens to be a Black female: stop. You're giving rape apologist vibes. It's the same shit that happened when Cosby, R. Kelly & Diddy's crimes were revealed. Not every Black person is MLK or Maya Angelou. Some people are just indefensible narcissists worthy of every bad thing written and said about them. The fact that these assholes victimized OTHER BLACK PEOPLE seems lost on you terminally stupid excuse-makers. She said it herself: this show was her dream. Her baby. She was Executive Producer, editor, judge and host. It made her even filthy richer than she already was at the expense of poor, traumatized and minority women, and then she comes out unapologetically and promises us "Cycle 25". If you don't see the issue with that, you can burn right alongside her.
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