#americas-next-top-model

#americas-next-top-model

The interviewer has just asked her about Shandi, a long-ago contestant from the second season of America's Next Top Model. Remember, Tyra? The one the show filmed having what may or may not have been non-consensual sex, while in an alcohol-induced blackout? The one where producers followed up by insisting they capture the poor girl's tearful phone confession to her distraught boyfriend back home? The one still traumatised to this day?

"I really struggled over some of the things that happened, and that was something that was slowly depleting me, chipping away at my soul,"

A '90s runway coach who taught supermodels like Naomi Campbell and Kimora Lee Simmons how to walk a catwalk, Alexander shifted careers in 2003 when one of his pupils, Tyra Banks, tapped him to join her on a little UPN show called America's Next Top Model. As a judge and runway coach for a passel of wannabe supermodels, he transformed into "Miss J," bringing drag to the screen at a time when queerness was vanishingly rare on American TV screens.

In the cold light of hindsight, America's Next Top Model feels like a fever dream of a reality show. The entire franchise feels like an improbable 30 Rock joke: A gaggle of models in their late teens and early 20s share a house and are run through weeks and weeks of challenges at the behest of ur-supermodel Tyra Banks, who spends most of her time teaching the girls how to "smize." How much blackface is involved? Much more than you'd ever imagine possible.