TV Guilty Pleasure: America’s Next Top Model

As much as I love cuddling up in bed with a cup of tea and a film, TV shows are my main love in life. I honestly get a bit too wrapped up in a tense, new storyline. In fact, from watching a documentary when getting ready in the morning to catching up on the latest nail-biting episode of Scandal while eating dinner, I spend a good part of my week watching TV. Although I try to make all this time as useful as possible by learning about the birth of the universe or at least something to gossip about while waiting for my next seminar, I am partial to some absolute trash TV. I’ve flitted from Keeping up with the Kardashians to Made in Chelsea, but – major confession time here – my continual guilty pleasure in television is the Top Model series.

Yeah, I know. Of all the shows to love so passionately, why this one? My mum is totally responsible for my (sort-of) secret addiction as very early on in high school, we would both sit down with my sister to giggle over the famed catty fighting and tears in the best and original Top Model show: America’s Next Top Model. Tyra Banks’ version of the show is particularly damning for me because of her dead seriousness over the importance of the competition.

No fan could forget the angry rant that launched a thousand gifs in the fourth season.

Episode 4 entitled ‘The Girl Who Pushes Tyra Over’ sees Banks definitely pushed to her limit when she famously yells “we were all rooting for you” in her admonishment of a model with a negative attitude. Whether it was staged or not, we all loved the drama in the competition, alongside Tyra’s cool but slightly crazy personality. In fact, it fed into why we ultimately ended up watching other Top Model shows from different countries. From Heidi Klum’s loveable kookiness in Germany’s Next Top Model to seeing the American judge, Jay Manuel, take his silver locks to his native Canada to host his own version of the show.

“We were rooting for you!” Tyra Banks is a judge on the show. Image: Wikimedia Commons/ Digitas Photos

In addition to wondering what crazy task the girls (and later guys!) would have to attempt next, I am drawn by the fashion element of the show. Deciding my own opinion on which girl had the best photograph of the week, to seeing famous faces of the fashion world with eccentric judges such as J. Alexander or André Leon Talley, has fed into my interest in this crazy, colourful world. Although the show is a guilty pleasure for me, it does have its merits in showing the less picture-perfect elements of a very glamourous industry.

Also, contrary to popular belief, an advantage for aspiring models was to be slightly ‘odd-looking’ or different. One of the most popular contestants was the model Allison Harvard, who had previously won internet notoriety as a 4chan internet meme known as ‘Creepy Chan’, and had a fascination with blood. However, ultimately I never feel too bad about my guilty pleasure, as for me, it’s something that always reminds me of home, so indulging in an old episode or two is nothing to feel too embarrassed about.