When Netflix’s Reality Check documentary peeled back the curtain on America’s Next Top Model (ANTM), I didn’t expect to feel so nostalgic. Previews had primed viewers for outrage and reckoning, but as the opening shots rolled and that unmistakable theme song kicked in, I found myself smiling. The photo shoots that once felt daring and glamorous flickered across the scene. For a moment, I was 17 again, hosting watch parties with my friends and filming a cringey, largely unscripted version of the show for a high school project we genuinely believed was art.

And then, just as quickly, it was heartbreaking.

Reality Check forces viewers to see Top Model with clearer eyes. The documentary revisits some of the show’s most controversial moments: photo shoots themed around violence against women, eating disorders framed as aesthetics, racial caricatures disguised as “edgy” art, body shaming repackaged as tough love, and sexual assault and misconduct minimized. Contestants and even judges describe a dark culture behind the scenes, one in which they felt disregarded, manipulated, and disposed of. It’s disheartening but not surprising. It reaffirmed things I sensed in just a few days of filming as a contestant myself.

Top Model wasn’t just a show to me. It was a dream. 

In the ’90s, Tyra Banks was a symbol of beauty and power, a household name featured in Victoria’s Secret catalogs and on international runways. She was rare—a Black supermodel commanding global attention. So when she launched ANTM in 2003, it felt trailblazing. She was lifting the veil on the modeling and fashion industries, offering everyday viewers access through a reality TV show competition that also promised a platform and coaching for the contestants. I wanted in.

When I turned 18, I began waiting hours in mall lines to audition. I mailed in application packets stuffed with headshots and my life story. I practiced my runway walk down dorm hallways, posing in the bathroom mirror, memorizing the names of designers I’d never wear. 

At age 20, I finally got my chance to be “on top.”

In 2010, I was selected as a semifinalist for Cycle 14 after winning an online “Last Call” contest. In many ways, I felt like I had been preparing for this almost my entire life. Discovered in a mall, I’d modeled on and off since I was 4, booking toy and clothing catalogs, modeling in school fashion shows, and picking up embarrassingly small jobs while living in Hong Kong. There, my look wasn’t European nor Asian enough. I definitely wasn’t thin enough, and stylists didn’t know what to do with my naturally coarse and curly hair. But when I returned to the United States for college, my look suddenly felt marketable.

When producers told me Tyra had “handpicked” me, it felt surreal. In hindsight, it was a promise loaded with more production than prophecy.

After some calls and meetings, I was named one of the 33 semifinalists and flew to Los Angeles to compete for a coveted spot on the show. I was buzzing with anticipation and emotion, but from the moment I landed, the fantasy began to fracture.

We were picked up in a van and told not to speak. We weren’t allowed to talk to each other unless cameras were rolling. The crew called it “on ice,” a tactic to prevent drama from unfolding off-camera. They wanted to capture everything. Some of us bonded anyway, sliding magazines across tables to each other, whispering when we thought no one was looking. 

Then came the evaluations: medical exams, psychological screenings, and conversations about trauma and insecurities. I remember crying during a scheduled meeting with a psychologist in a random hotel room. Another girl shared that she’d been told her psych profile after a survey read “extreme.” In the excitement of it all, we brushed it off as a safeguard for the pressures of the competition. Later, we’d learn that our vulnerabilities held value for views.

Once filming officially began, we were prodded and prompted. We’d get a hint before entering a room that there was a surprise guest and to be excited (Tyra!). We were encouraged to gossip in confessionals and, even when talking in groups, to shift our conversation to certain topics. We were sorted and compared—girls who looked alike or shared similar styles, skin tones, or features were arranged on the catwalk side by side. It quickly became clear who production saw as our competition and who they believed made good television. Those girls were usually mic'd even during downtime (I wasn’t one of those girls).

When I finally stood before Tyra, J. Alexander (Miss J), and Jay Manuel (Mr. Jay), I was so starstruck, I missed my floor mark and nearly walked straight into their table. We had to redo the moment, even though it didn’t make the episode. I felt clumsy. I didn’t yet understand the choreography of TV. I only knew how badly I wanted to be there. 

Following a runway lesson with Miss J and a photo challenge with Mr. Jay, all the models gathered to learn their destiny. Across my image, the word “DECLINED.” I was eliminated. 

A camera hovered inches from my face as I cried. I later learned that anyone eliminated past that point was forced to stay put, sequestered for the rest of filming with no contact with loved ones. In retrospect, my early exit may have spared me something deeper.

Judges themselves were allegedly surprised by the cuts. As we sat in a room waiting for our flights home, a crewmember told us we’d been cut because production said we weren’t “good for TV”—it didn’t mean we weren’t good models, they reasoned. I chose to believe it.

Back at college, I hid in my room for about a week. When my episode aired, I watched it once. I was thankful for the opportunity, but I was gutted. My ideas about ANTM had shifted, but I kept trying. I kept modeling anyway. While working a magazine internship and waitressing, I’d travel from DC to New York and back for 20-minute castings. I was often told I was too big, even at my thinnest, and given suggestions on how I could change myself. Before placing as second runner-up in the Miss Maryland USA pageant, I was advised that I might have a better chance if I dyed my hair blonde.

The modeling world I’d encountered didn’t seem that different from what I had mentally prepared myself for on ANTM, where finalists were almost guaranteed to undergo drastic makeovers to fit the supermodel mold and where critiques of their bodies were expected. Other Top Model contestants seemed to be going through similar experiences in the real world. I’d run into other women who had made it much further than I. Regardless of when we were eliminated, many of us were still hustling. Being chosen by one of the biggest supermodels in the world hadn’t changed the grind.

Eventually, I started working with a small Black-owned agency that embraced my features instead of trying to revise them. At a casting for BET’s Rip the Runway, Bethann Hardison, one of the industry’s most iconic Black supermodels, got up from her seat, wrapped her hands around my waist, and told me she loved my look and my energy. I booked that job and saw what it looked like to be surrounded by beautiful models of all shades and sizes.

But once I enrolled in graduate school—Sandra Nyanchoka (Cycle 12) and I attended the same college—I mostly left the modeling world behind. It was too fraught, too image-driven, too uncertain. I chose writing and journalism, another industry that, ironically, can feel volatile. But it wasn’t asking me to shrink. It was asking me to tell the truth—and interrogate the systems that do the shrinking.

Rewatching my episode back this week for the first time in over a decade, I see a 20-year-old girl chasing a dream inside a machine engineered for spectacle. Reality Check makes it clear that Top Model wasn’t truly about cultivating supermodels. It was about crafting storylines and dressing up entertainment as an opportunity. It was part of a larger reality TV ecosystem where drama, tears, and trauma are profitable content. It revealed that no one—not contestants nor viewers—really grasped at the time what it meant to be “on top,” particularly when someone else controls the ladder. 

With Tyra shifting much of the blame to producers and viewers (“You demanded this.”), I’m not sure she fully grasps or accepts her role in shaping it or perpetuating the same harmful behaviors and practices she originally sought to challenge. Because of that, ANTM became less of a rebellion and more of a reflection: another system that encouraged women to shrink, change, and endure; another space where women’s bodies and their valid concerns were disregarded or dismissed.

The modeling industry has yet to undergo a meaningful reckoning—one that fully addresses the exploitation and predatory behavior, the weaponization of youth and beauty, and deep misogyny and sexism. Reality Check reveals we are, at least, better at identifying and naming the harm now. Whether we take action to dismantle it is the harder task.