A Review of....America's Next Top Model: 12 Cycles on but still compulsive viewing

America’s Next Top Model is the perfect viewing experience: mindless, brightly coloured and addictive. The show, presented and produced by Tyra Banks, is now airing its twelfth season (or cycle as the Americans would have it) and the format has been exported to countries around the world. A thirteenth cycle is being put together at this very moment.
I’m certainly conscious of what I wear and how I want to be perceived but I’m definitely not a fashion slave, partly due to financial constraints and partly because the whole concept is clearly dubious from an environmental or basic human happiness point of view. Nevertheless I am a dedicated and unashamed Top Model fan and I am committed to spreading the love far and wide. So, here goes!

For anyone who doesn’t know, Top Model follows your basic elimination reality game show format. Thirteen model wannabes are whittled down over the course of the series by process of elimination based on their performance in the weekly tasks. Each series contains a number of standard set pieces: the makeovers, the runway challenge, the go-see challenge and the Covergirl commercial. Eliminations take place in front of a panel of industry expert judges who critique the photos and performance of the girls. The winner receives a modelling contract with Covergirl cosmetics and gets signed up to a modelling agency.

From the first episode that I watched I was instantly hooked and ended up watching the entire series in a single night (I believe in seeing an addiction through to the end). The appeal of Top model is simple yet contradictory. Ultimately it’s pure escapism. During the show the girls don’t have to worry about work or the mundane features of everyday life. They are thrown into an extravagant illusion of easy success based on looks alone. Yet it’s hard to say whether watching girls, who are prettier and thinner than me, having a good time actually makes me feel better about myself or worse. It’s rather like facebook stalking: you only stalk the people with more exciting lives than yourself even though you know it’ll make you feel inadequate.

But even with the escapism aside Top Model is worth watching for its visual appeal alone. The American version is the clear winner over the export versions in this respect. The budgets are incomparable. The American version is brighter and more lavish from the photo shoots to the judging rooms. The judging room in series one of Britain’s Next Top Model, for example, looks like the conference suite of a cheap hotel with a ‘Top Model’ sign stapled onto a grotty curtain. The Canadian judging room looks like it was borrowed from the set of an awful eighties quiz show.

As to the photos, some are truly stunning and you always look forward to the photo critique each week. In Britain’s Next Top Model the photo shoots are approached with a good, British dose of realism that reflects the overwhelming probability that even the winner is unlikely to feature in any serious fashion editorials. The judges’ in the American original make claims to look for an all-round winner who can do ‘commercial’ and ‘high fashion’ but there’s no sustained commitment to preparing the contestants for the realities of the less glamorous end of the fashion industry. The show never sacrifices the aesthetic glory of the dream for such dreary concerns.

So you’ve got escapism and aesthetics but Top Model also has some good, clean, family-fun entertainment thanks to the foibles of some of the judges and contestants. My all time favourite contestants from this point of view include Robin (cycle 1) who seems to have a biblical or moral maxim justification for everything she does, including buying $400 boots. There’s also Melrose (cycle 7), who epitomises the bitchiness that elimination shows can produce in people who are probably perfectly pleasant in the real world. In fact there’s a bitchy one for every cycle and usually a pair of girls who can’t stand each other so this never disappoints. The girls in Britain’s Next Top Model are arguably bitchier on the whole than their American counterparts and seem to form factions rather than there just being one or two bitchy girls within a larger group of nice girls. The first episode is always a selection episode and some of the auditions are priceless. Jaslene’s audition in cycle 7 is utterly glorious.

My all time favourite contestant by far, for entertainment value, has to be Jade Cole from cycle 6. She is outrageously arrogant, not only because of her looks and modelling abilities (frustratingly she does produce good photos) but also from a wildly misplaced belief in her level of intelligence. You have to see it to believe it but she has a unique vocabulary featuring words such as ‘analystic’, ‘tornness’, ‘dwelve’, ‘withhandle’ and ‘derrogatoriness’ which she not only believes are accepted words but that they make her sound intelligent. My favourite quote is “Elephants are just incredible. They’re so preposterous” but there are countless others.

Some of the judges are brilliant too. Janice Dickinson (cycles 1-4), boldly asserting herself as the world’s first supermodel, represents the brutal voice of the fashion industry and generally berates the girls for being ‘too fat’. She also has a hilarious argument with another judge Jay Manuel (who presents the Canadian version and claims that his skin is naturally that colour) in cycle 1 and is eventually replaced with Twiggy (cycles 5-9), the lovable fashion aunty who has a genuine claim to being the world’s first supermodel. The veteran model in Britain’s Next top Model is Huggy Ragnarsson: a walking warning to anyone considering plastic surgery. Back in America, two- time judge Nole Marin (cycles 3 and 4) ought to have some sort of statue erected in his honour for fulfilling so many fashion stereotypes. He’s a fashion editior who is gay, bitchy, short and a bit tubby, ruthless in judging the girls on their weight and has a miniature dog. Nigel Barker, the most enduring judge, probably owes the longevity of his service to the fact that there would be a tidal wave of abuse letters if the female viewers didn’t get to look at him each episode. His English accent appears to particular advantage next to the Americans and makes him all the more handsome.

Finally, there’s Tyra herself. There’re moments in the cycles when she shows surprising insights and she usually has intelligent and worthwhile advice for the contestants. There’s also her achingly awful attempt at a pop single and her frequent crazy moments which I can only assume are unfortunate attempts to make her look a bit quirky or original. When watching the programme you may sometimes wonder if you’re watching some sort of speech therapy programme as both Tyra and Jay Manuel belong to the presenter school of thought that believes in speaking patronisingly slowly and over-enunciating. There’s also the scandal as to whether cycle 9 was fixed so that Saleisha would win. It’s all on Youtube but the evidence looks pretty convincing to me, particularly as Chantal, the runner-up was basically a goddess.

The real question though, after twelve cycles, is does Tyra actually care about the girls anymore? Certainly comparing cycle 1 to the following cycles there’s a massive decline in the amount of time that Tyra personally invests into the girls’ progress. However, anyone questioning her interests needs to watch Tyra yelling at Tiffany in Cycle 4. Literally watch it now! It’s the rawest emotion that I’ve ever seen on a reality TV show, or maybe on any TV show, and it’s hard to believe that they didn’t edit it out.

So where should the Top Model novice begin their obsession? At the very beginning... Cycle 1 is probably still my favourite cycle and as I said there’s a lot more Tyra time and a feeling that there’s more at stake as there can only be one original top model winner. Cycles 8, 2 and 7 closely follow as my next favourites but, believe me, once you’ve watched one you will NEED to watch them all!