Inside the Workings of America's Next Top Model

Review of America's Next Top Model Talent Search

Super model Tyra Banks, whom everyone knows, created the concept for the first professional model competition on national TV, America's Next Top Model (ANTM) way back in 2002. Ever since, girls have gone wild seeking fame and fortune to get a chance at the few slots offered in this modeling career craze.

America’s Next Top Model is back, and the contestants are…shorter than ever? This season, Tyra Banks has decided to cut the short girls a break and she’s excluding tall girls the way that girls under 5’7’’ have been historically barred from the runway. One of these girls is going to win and prove to the world that you can be short and still stand tall, and model.

How tall do you need to be? Perhaps Tyra should be commended for going against the grain by trying to insert a few girls here and there who wouldn’t fit into the modeling industry according to its standards. The show gave us the plus size woman, Whitney Thompson, who is nowhere near a size 0, and next it’s going to produce a girl that doesn’t measure even close to 5’10’’. It’s yet to be seen whether these girls will really make it big in the modeling world, but that’s a brand new Top Model issue. The main issue here is whether Tyra and these girls are really defying the norm.

Take the “Make Me Tall” modeling photo shoot, in which the girls were encouraged to make themselves look taller than they really are. During judging, some of the girls were criticized for making themselves look shorter. But wait a minute—didn’t you say that it was okay to be short and still model?

That kind of makes this photoshoot one of the biggest contradictions in the history of Top Model. It’s like Tyra isn’t challenging current modeling standards after all. What she’s really doing is allowing girls that were previously denied to conform to them. Cycle 13 of America’s Next Top Model is telling us that “short models can be tall,” rather than “models can be short.”

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The critique isn’t necessarily that Tyra is failing to break down barriers. Of course modeling has to have standards. What’s next, a cycle full of unattractive women walking the famous runway and a cycle of obese teenage girls wearing swimsuits and bikinis after that? That’s a huge exaggeration, but it’s meant to illustrate the fact that not everyone can be a model, or else the profession of male or female modeling wouldn't exist anymore.

Maybe the entertainment industry needs a bit of a makeover, but you can’t strip it naked until nothing of the business is left. The real problem is the apparent hypocrisy. Modeling has strict, sometimes harsh physical requirements such as height and weight, not to mention clear skin, good teeth & hair, etc.

It is absolutely okay if you and the America’s Next Top Model agency scouts support that, that’s your right. You don’t have to pretend to believe and say otherwise. And by the way, if it’s okay to be just the way you are, it is odd to spend an entire show segment demonstrating how the real reason you looked fat was because of unflattering photo angles and poorly positioned lighting in the studio.

Next time you hire a professional photographer, even to apply to local model agencies, think of these advantages and disadvanteges. Ask your photographers to help with posing and how to position your body and face to look your best when creating your portfolio.

You may not become America's next top model or appear on the cover of Glamour magazine but you can look great in pictures and it's possible to work in the industry with some planning and common sense. Good luck and success to you!