The ‘America’s Subsequent High Mannequin’ Documentary Proves the Sequence Was At all times Doomed to Damage Us

I’ve struggled with disordered consuming my complete life. Being 13 years previous and obsessive about America’s Subsequent High Mannequin in tandem with the ever-pervasive food plan and tabloid tradition of the 2000s completely contributed to my shaky physique picture. With a frontal lobe about as agency as in a single day oats, I, like many others my age, fell sufferer to the beliefs introduced within the docuseries: It’s simply how issues are. My buddies and I entered center college and traded juice packing containers and multiplication tables for food plan soda and calorie counting. We didn’t perceive on the time how the media we consumed, not our diets, was inflicting our anguish.

However in Actuality Verify, Banks—who has been interviewed concerning the unfavorable influence of her present a number of occasions—smizes unflinchingly into the digital camera lens as she utters each adage and platitude as an alternative of, “Hey, I am sorry for fucking up a era of younger folks—significantly younger ladies.” (For what it’s value, Banks has stated in previous interviews that she “agreed” with criticisms for “off selections,” however it was nonetheless predicated by the “it was a unique time” spiel.)

However the sins towards contestants—and society writ giant, for that matter—prolong past distorted conversations about magnificence. The spotlight reel of what-the-absolute-hell moments on America’s Subsequent High Mannequin additionally included the now-infamous race-swap photograph shoot, a photograph shoot the place the fashions pose as unhoused folks, and a spine-chilling photograph shoot the place the fashions (considered one of whom was the daughter of a gun violence survivor) pose as homicide victims. The fashions Banks vied to empower so audaciously grew to become her dolls for makeovers and enjoying faux. It stripped contestants of their bodily autonomy—if they may not protest a bob, they didn’t have a leg to face on when the sequence took unpredictably darkish turns.

As many followers vividly keep in mind, the manufacturing filmed and aired cycle two contestant Shandi Sullivan’s intoxicated encounter with a person in Milan, which she describes within the docuseries as sexual assault. “It’s a bit of onerous for me to speak about manufacturing as a result of that’s not my territory,” Banks stated when requested why manufacturing didn’t intervene to guard a clearly intoxicated Sullivan, blaming Mok and different members of the group. (Author’s be aware: Banks additionally held an government producer title on the present; the docuseries doesn’t interrogate precisely how manufacturing wouldn’t have been her “territory” on this occasion.)

In a single occasion, she does apologize—on digital camera, not face-to-face—to cycle 4 contestant Keenyah Hill, who confronted undesirable sexual advances from a male mannequin on the set of a photograph shoot. These cases occurred on digital camera and in entrance of the complete manufacturing crew, however when Hill stopped the shoot to share her misery, she was dismissed and later instructed she wanted to take extra management. Banks’s response in hindsight: “None of us knew… however she wanted extra [protection],” Banks stated of Hill’s expertise. “Boo-boo, I’m so sorry.”