Bite Back with Abbey Sharp - Blackface. Body Shaming. Sexual Assault. The America’s Next Top Model Reckoning is FINALLY Here.

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

Here’s a run down of what we discussed in today’s episode: ANTM Then vs Now: The Promise vs The Reality Diet Culture & Fatphobia on America’s Next Top Model Public Weigh-Ins, Tokenism & Body Storylines The Makeovers: Empowerment or Compliance Training? Dental Work, Nudity & Loss of Bodily Autonomy Sexual Harassment & Production Failures to Protect Contestants When Trauma Became Reality TV Content Dangerous Shoots & The Gamification of Harm Race-Swaps, Stereotypes & Performative “Progress” Rebranding Harm as Empowerment: The Cultural Legacy of ANTM   References: https://people.com/antm-trainer-shannons-eating-disorder-storyline-would-have-been-handled-exclusive-11909301   Disclaimer: The content in this episode is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is never a substitute for medical advice. If you’re struggling with with your mental or physical health, please work one on one with a health care provider. If you have heard yourself in our discussion today, and are looking for support, contact the free NEDIC helpline at 1-866-NEDIC-20 or go to  eatingdisorderhope.com. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •✨ Reach Your Weight & Health Goals — Without Dieting! Pre-order The Hunger Crushing Combo Method, Abbey’s revolutionary additive approach to eating well. Learn how to boost satiety, stabilize blood sugars, reduce disease risk, and improve your relationship with food — all while getting the best nutrient bang for your caloric buck. With 400+ research citations, cheat sheets, evidence-based actionable tips, meal plans, and adaptable recipes, The Hunger Crushing Combo Method is the only nutrition bible you’ll ever need. 👉 Pre-order today! 🛒 Where to Purchase:AmazonBarnes & NobleAmazon KindleApple BooksGoogle PlayKoboApple Books (Audiobook)Audibleabbeyskitchen.com/hunger-crushing-combo• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •✉️ Subscribe to My Newsletters:Abbey’s Kitchen Newsletter 📘 Check out my FREE E-Books:Hunger Crushing Combo™ E-BookProtein 101 E-Book👋 Follow me!Instagram: @abbeyskitchenTikTok: @abbeyskitchenYouTube: @AbbeysKitchenBlog: abbeyskitchen.comBook: The Mindful Glow Cookbook • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 🎧 Don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen — and leave us a review! It really helps support the show ❤️ 💬 If you liked this podcast, please like, follow, and leave a review — and let me know who you’d love to hear about next! ⭐ ⭐ ⭐⭐ ⭐ 

That is not empowerment. That is full-blown compliance training, and it sends the message that the industry, not you, decides what happens to your body. Welcome to another episode, A Bite Back with Abby Sharp, where I dismantled diaculture rules, call out the charlatans spinning the pseudoscience, and help you achieve food freedom for good. As an 87 baby and a 90s kid,

I went through some of my most formative teen years during the early 2000s, which, let's be honest, was a total dumpster fire era for responsible media. It was essentially peak problematic tabloid culture, plus let's do anything for ratings, reality TV, plus zero sensitivities or protections against harmful rhetoric, all wrapped up in this glossy, it's just a joke, it's just honesty, it's just the industry, The 24 seasons of America's Next Top Model is a prime example of this media blueprint. For teens like me, the show was so much more than just entertainment. It was a full-blown cultural event. It shaped how we understood beauty, bodies, ambition, and what it means to be marketable in the eyes of the world. And looking back through the footage and commentary on Netflix's recent docu-series, reality check inside America's next top model, I think it's fair to say that a lot of what we

took for granted as normal back then was actually really fucked up. What's perhaps the most ironic aspect of this was that AMTM sold itself as progressive. I mean, even to this day, looking back 22 years later, Tyra proclaims that her MO was to expand the definition of beauty, to celebrate difference to challenge the industry status quo. But when we zoom out in 2026, all I see is a ratings-hungry production team undermining bodily autonomy, normalizing humiliation, treating race, bodies, and identity as costumes, and completely disregarding contestants' well-being. So today we're going to unpack it all one contradiction at a time. A quick reminder that if you are enjoying bite back, I would really appreciate if you would subscribe so that you can get

notifications in your listening app when a new podcast episode is live. And I would also love if you would leave me a five-star review and a comment because it really does help me out. Also, I'm going to be leaving links in the show notes to my brand new best-selling book, The Hunger Crushion combo method. There's also an audiobook version of that if you prefer to listen instead of read the actual book. But I would really again appreciate your support. All right, friends, buckle up for this wild and problematic blast from the past because, yeah, it has not aged well. So I often think about, you know, the game shows and the reality TV that I grew up watching, but seeing the new A&M docu series really laid out the contradictions in what we were promised

versus what we actually got. While Tyra insisted she was trying to reform the industry and showcase different types of beauty on television that the industry would traditionally reject, the show actually proved to enforce the same punishing standards and expectations. Consider the diet culture and fatphobic messaging that we saw strewn throughout the show. In cycle one, judges talked about Giselle Samson's wide ass and Janice Dickinson called Robin Manning huge, stating as clear as day that America's next top. model is not a plus-sized model. In cycle four, Kenya's weight becomes an entire storyline when

she gets told she needs to tone up and then is teased for being cast as an elephant for an animal-themed theme shoot and as portraying a gluttony in the seven deadly sin shoot. Subtle? Not so much. Also truly abhorred was when the season one trainer John Silverman weighed all of the girls publicly on national TV, triggering contestants like Shannon Stewart, who had a history of an ED. And when season 8 and 10 contestants, Whitney Cunningham and Whitney Thompson, didn't fit into the sample sizes, their not size zero bodies became their entire personalities in the eyes of the show.

So was Whitney's win all tokenism and lip service? I'll let you decide. Another contradiction in this was the show's framing of body control as empowering when these young contestants were quite obviously stripped of their own bodily autonomy again and again. One of the most popular episodes in every season was the big makeover. It was always marketed as a transformation or stepping into your potential or a push to evolve into the world of high fashion. But what it actually looked like was contestants sobbing while their hair was shaved against their desires, half-hazard weaves or styles that damaged their natural hair,

or forced styling that countered their cultural identity. And God forbid a contestant pushed back. They were immediately told that they weren't model material, or they clearly didn't want it enough, and they would be then threatened with an almost certain elimination at the next round. That is not empowerment. That is full-blown compliance training, and it sends the message that the industry,

not you decides what happens to your body. Not exactly my definition of progressive. And it didn't stop there. In multiple seasons, girls were put through permanent and insanely painful dental work to create a look that Tyra insisted was more marketable. In a clear example of contradiction, cycle 6's Danny Evans was told to close the gap in her teeth. While 11 cycles later, Chelsea Hershley was told to shave her teeth, down to widen her gap. So yeah, so much for Tyra's mission to showcase different types of natural beauty.

Another example of contestants' loss of bodily autonomy was when they were pressured into nude or hypersexualized shoots that they didn't feel comfortable with. The show also normalized sexual harassment, failed to protect the young models on set, and ultimately used harm as viral content. One of the most widely criticized examples of this was Kenya Hill in cycle four, who was the victim of inappropriate comments and non-consexual touching by a male model during a shoot in Africa. And instead of immediately stopping production and checking in with her, or ideally getting that male model the hell out of there, the cameras just kept on rolling,

Kenya's concerns were minimized, and her trauma was used as content. Perhaps even more jaw-dropping was what happened to Shandy Sullivan in season two, where production invited a bunch of male models to the girls' apartment in Milan, where they proceeded to drink in a hot tub after having eaten very little all day. In the new docu-series, Shannie reveals that she ended up blackout drunk having sex with one of the models, and not only did no one on production intervene, but they actually continue to film the entire thing. thing, including the aftermath of Shandy breaking down having to tell her boyfriend and ask the model about STDs. And after a whole 22 years, Tyra Bank still passed the buck on her responsibility in this interaction, acting like she could barely recall the situation, and insisting that the edit wasn't her jurisdiction. Except as an executive producer, it is quintessentially her jurisdiction. Unfortunately, the modeling and entertainment industries are hotbeds for unsafe working

conditions for women. Surveys and research suggest that sexual coercion, harassment, and assault are an egregiously big problem. One survey found that 94% of women in the entertainment industry had experienced sexual harassment or assault. 21% said they had been forced to do something sexual at least once, and only 28% of those who reported these incidents said that their workplace situation had improved. In another survey, specifically on models, they found that a third of models had been inappropriately touched and or had been pressured to have sex at work, and nearly 90% were asked to pose nude without any prior notice. The fact that Tyra not only didn't intervene in these situations, but that her and her team appear to set them up, amplify them,

and then share them with the world? Feels like more than enough evidence to blow up Tyro Banks' I want to change the industry facade. But A&M didn't just mirror a broken system. It gamified it. Instead of protecting young women from the industry's most toxic dynamics, the show packaged those dynamics as character-building moments, as tests. as entertainment. So every single season, the production had to dream up more extreme

and in many cases more potentially risky shoot themes to keep the ratings rolling in. The women were forced to pose with live snakes, spiders, bees, dodge a massive pendulum on the runway or pose in extreme heights over a massive hole. In season seven, Cari D ended up with hypothermia after filming in frigid waters for hours. And then two seasons later, Heather Kuzmich had to be treated with oxygen

after nearly fainting from heat, exhaustion, and lack of food. Injuries and illnesses like these were rampant on set, and the girls were just encouraged to push through rather than take care of themselves and their needs. We also have got to talk about the shows completely wild and inappropriate array of Photoshop. shoes themes. These women were forced to pose as drug addicts, homeless people, Hurricane Katrina survivors, transgender women, celebrity meltdowns, chain smokers, folks with eating disorders,

and victims of violent crimes. And these were more than just quirky challenges to get the girls to think outside the Ocature box. These shoots normalized and glamorized horrific real threats against women. Like to build a fashion shoot around something like bulimia, treats a real deadly mental illness as a costume and reduces eating disorders to some kind of visual trope. Likewise, making women pose dead with pretend gunshot wounds to the head to see who plays the prettiest dead woman, trivializes and glamorizes real-world gendered violence and treats female victimhood as some kind of beauty aesthetic. Oh my gosh, and we need to also talk about the race swap photo shoots.

Because not once, but in two separate seasons, contestants were forced to give black face, brown face, various ethnic transformations. I mean, I don't understand how both producers on this show, a black woman and an Asian man, did not flag that treating race as some kind of theme or styling choice or costume was not okay. So when Tyra gets on her soapbox with her motivational speech about being the first Black Sports Illustrated model and celebrating different unconventional forms of beauty, I feel like it's safe to call that out as BS. Because difference was only marketable when it could be heavily controlled by the show. That, my friends, is not inclusion. It is full out commodification. Ultimately, Tyra and the rest of the cast in production had so many opportunities to do what they had promised. To acknowledge the problems in the industry, including moments where male models get handsy, or they are pushed to change their look in ways that didn't sit right with them, or to participate in a shoot that threatened their mental or physical health.

But instead of teaching these girls how to know their worth and stand up for themselves, she threatened to eliminate them if they didn't tow the line. Production pushed these vulnerable, desperate girls into the darkest depths of the industry, and when they floundered, they not only didn't extend actual mentorship, but then they monetized off of their embarrassment, shame, pain, and trauma. And here's the part that I think matters the most. This episode of Byteback is not about canceling Tyra Banks. It's not about pretending that we didn't all watch and relish in these challenges and drama.

And it's not about rewriting history like we were not steeped in this culture as well. But I'm hoping that we can recognize how easily harm can be rebranded as empowerment. because AMTM didn't feel villainous or problematic at the time at all. It felt aspirational or edgy or progressive. And that's what makes it powerful, but it's also what makes it really, really dangerous. Because when humiliation is framed as mentorship, or when coercion is framed as ambition, or when body policing is framed as industry reality, we basically just stop questioning it. And I think that's the real level.

and that we can take away from all this. You know, back in the early 2000s, we didn't have the language for consent culture or power imbalances or body neutrality. We didn't talk about exploitation pipelines or interrogate editing or demand duty of care for public figures. But thankfully, you know, we do now.

And that's really important. Because while the modeling and entertainment industries still have massive, serious problems and the data makes that painfully clear that we have so much more to do, there have at least been some beneficial shifts. So we now have intimacy coordinators on film sets. We have more conversations about labor protections for reality TV contestants.

There's more scrutiny about diversity that isn't just aesthetic. And there are more models and actresses speaking publicly about coercion, sexual harassment, and unsafe conditions. So is it all fine and dandy now? Absolutely not. But I think the audience is a little smarter and more critical. We don't all just consume media and assume what is common is ethical or okay. You know, we get on our social media accounts and we analyze and we fact check and we question and call it out. And what I'm proud of as a millennial who was raised to internalize the whole your body is a project narrative that shows like, like this and the biggest loser and the swan, et cetera, has taught us, is that we are now a generation who is working really, really hard to dismantle it. So one of the hopeful takeaways for me here isn't just that A&M totally failed to change the industry, because that's obvious. But maybe that 22 years later, if we use our newfound critical eye, we can learn a lot from rewatching it. We can

learn how empowerment language can so easily be weaponized and how to protect our bodies and boundaries when they are threatened by people with power. And if you're still struggling having had these early lessons so deeply ingrained in your being, I want you to just know that your body is not a storyline or your whole personality. Your trauma is not content and your worth is not determined solely by how marketable you are in the eyes of a few people with celebrity or power. And maybe just coming to terms with that could be the most valuable transformation. But I would really love to hear from all of you. How did A&M shape how you saw your body and your autonomy growing up?

Did you clock any of these shoots or challenges as problematic back then? Or did re-watching these clips in 2026 raised no. new flags that perhaps you didn't see before. I would love to hear all of your thoughts, so please do leave me a comment on this episode. And if you haven't already, check out all the links in the show notes to grab my brand new bestselling book, The Hunger Crush and combo method. Signing off with Science and Sass, I'm Abby Sharp. Thanks for listening.