Not My Best Work…

I might just have to mute “Tyra Banks” and anything America’s Next Top Model related from my timeline after today. If you haven’t been waiting with baited breath to tear the supermodel to shreds for participating in the shenanigans of the early 2000’s surge of talk shows and reality TV, you may have not yet tuned into the Netflix documentary Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model which premiered this past Monday.

Full disclosure: I loved me some Tyra in the early 2000’s. As an elder millennial, I remember Tyra being very instrumental in transparency about the harmful standards that were ever-present in the modeling and beauty industries that she had to fight her way into. She was the first Black supermodel to be featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated, as well as the first Black Victoria’s Secret Angel. She is also credited as a television pioneer with the creation of hit show America’s Next Top Model. In honor of all things Black History, you gotta put some respect on my girl’s name. She’s also a Sagittarius and while I realize that placements of stars and planets on the day of your birth can’t be blamed for your entire personality, there’s a blend of passion, aloofness, sarcasm and idealistic but intimidating confidence I can identify with that makes the honest intentions of many of us archers grossly misunderstood.

If we’ve learned anything about problematic systems in the past year (I hope y’all been paying attention) it’s that very rarely is there a single perpetrator. Whether we’re talking entertainment or government, more so what you’ll find are co-conspirators that sometimes have decent intentions but find themselves at the mercy of systems and bureaucracy that force them to move ways they might not intend to and subscribe to the narrative that the ends truly do justify the means. This make no excuse for Tyra’s participation in problematic photo shoots in blackface or deep dives into dental surgery for the world to judge on a weekly basis. However, to pretend that Tyra had sole decision-making power and make her to sole scapegoat in these things is unfair and biased in itself. We love when Black women are building and solving shit, and unfortunately when things go left, we love blaming them as well.

I won’t spoil the documentary for those who intend on watching but cast members including judges and fashion industry mentors Jay Manuel, Nigel Barker and J. Alexander aka Ms. Jay, along with many of the alumni who appeared in the 24 cycles (including fan favorites such as Bre Skylark, Keenyah Hill and Ebony Haith) as well as Tyra herself all gave viewers insight into their experiences filming the show as well as the culture it existed in. And in no surprise to me, their takes on the show are filled with fondness, regret, resentment and appreciation all in one. Like many things in life, hindsight is 20/20 and it makes sense that their feelings are complicated as they look back on a different time and different versions of themselves.

Of course there were viewers who couldn’t wait to post to social media and express their disapproval for what they felt like was Tyra’s half-assed apology and failure to take accountability. However, I feel like these critiques send a message that no one is saying out loud:

Black women aren’t allowed to make mistakes and furthermore if they do, if they don’t roll out a whole apology tour, they must not really be sincere.

As an elder millennial who now has been working for over a decade in sex education, I come from a time where R. Kelly’s abuse to his child victims was being sold from the bootleg man on Broad Street here in Philly. I was probably a high school senior at the time, and many of my peers would agree, we didn’t have language like “grooming” and “power dynamics and imbalance”. Shit, I didn’t even become aware of laws that addressed statutory rape and child porn until started in my public health career. In fact, the lack of sexuality education that prevailed in my community was the reason I became a sex educator. Back then we just knew R. Kelly had some major issues and his entanglement with Aaliyah “wasn’t right” before we knew the actual term for that was “predatory.” Context is truly everything and for many us the more we learned, the better we did when it came to developing and expressing our opinions on problematic behavior.

As a sex educator, when I’m introducing a workshop to audiences, sometimes of a variety of ages, one of the ground rules I emphasize is, “Respect: We understand that all participants are at different levels or learning when it comes to the information shared. We don’t shame or dismiss people based on their lived experiences, what they know or don’t know or the tools they require to retain the information.”  But if social media’s reaction to Tyra’s statements in the documentary are any indication, we only recognize this and give grace when it applies to celebrities we like or we feel have really done the work, many times when we have so much work to do ourselves. Lastly, mistakes aren’t viewed with nuance; once a person messes up we rewrite history, “Their songs were never that great anyway. Was she even really a supermodel? He didn’t have THAT much of an impact on music despite me listening to that one song for six months straight.” I’ll save my thoughts on separating the art from the artist for another time, however what I will say is if we can’t criticize accomplished people without discrediting their entire catalog of work, what kind of treatment should any of us expect from a society that is already designed to not uplift marginalized people as it is.

Tyra Banks may not take accountability in the way we like, but she does own up to certain moments where she went too far like the famous “We were all rooting for you!” confrontation between her and cast member Tiffany Richardson. While I refuse to invalidate the experiences these women had in the moment or in the ANTM aftermath, what I will attest to is that folks sometimes show us love and support in ways that don’t make the most sense to us (Shit, anyone with problematic parents knows this). Only Tyra knows her true intentions, and I won’t assume what she did from her heart and best judgment, and what she did because studio execs or investors told her was provocative and would get the people going.

When it comes to the aftermath of ANTM, my takeaway is this: Tyra definitely could’ve done better, especially years later if she knew better. I would really like to hear her side on why she failed to visit Ms. Jay after their health issues kept them from the runway they once ruled (and I believe will rule again as they anticipate especially since I believe they were partially responsible for the show’s high ratings). I also don’t invalidate the pain that alumni like Shandi, Dani and others experienced when they say Tyra was nowhere to be found in situations where they felt unsafe, exploited and discarded. 

What did Tyra get absolutely right? We all will have a reckoning with our former selves at a certain point in life. She says, “That is the only way you change. That is the only way you get better, is by somebody calling you out on your shit.” She continues,

“And I want to let you know that I want you guys to be as open as I am now about getting called out on my shit, when somebody calls you out on yours. Because that day will come.”

We’ll look back at cringey social media posts or decisions we made in our careers where we might have had the best intentions to uplift people that have been used and abused by racist and patriarchal systems, only to realize that we too were a part of the problem. I always use cigarettes as an example. In the 70’s and 80’s you could smoke in a bar, in a car, in a chair, at a fair, you could smoke cigarettes EVERYWHERE. Eventually we realized that secondhand smoke was actually kind of dangerous and we started limiting when and where folks could smoke. However, as an adult who is currently on asthma prevention medication with a sense of smell that is permanently affected, you won’t catch me vilifying my parents. They didn’t know the dangers. Is that an excuse to not do better now? Nope, but I truly don’t think my parents were intentionally trying to shorten my lifespan at the time. I know what y’all woke asses fresh from Therapy Threads wills say: Intent doesn’t erase impact. But for me, at least, I can accept someone who lacked foresight or knowledge easier than I can accept someone acting from a place of selfishness or malice.

What I hope we gain from this discourse is that we can and should be able to question and dismantle problematic systems instead of directing our anger at the individual people who are simply existing within them and making some kind of effort to find a way for us all to not be completely exploited and extinguished by them. Those people will inevitably get it wrong….and probably fuck up several times. Because ultimately, Tyra wasn’t the only executive producer greenlighting so many of these questionable artistic directions. ANTM was one of the first but not the only show at the time created with one narrative only to subsequently amplify and edit the most painful and embarrassing moments of many folks’ lives for ratings. We can’t shame ANTM one moment only to jump on social the next to discuss all things “Love is Blind” or “Real Housewives.” And we all have to be willing to admit:

Confirmational bias and bandwagon thinking got our asses in a chokehold.

Shout out to my undergrad mass communications class! Instead of approaching new information with open minds, many of us are just regurgitating the opinions we scrolled through on social media before we even have an opportunity to develop our own opinions.

Whether y’all like it or not, we aren’t all “woke” from the womb. Everyday is an opportunity for us to learn, grow and make mistakes. White people have forever been afforded this opportunity and will continue to be. We can’t just pick and choose the celebrities we like to allow them the space for growth. Black women, whether we like their delivery or question their sincerity or not are allowed to be imperfect and they deserve grace without the expectation they should grovel for it….

Especially not during nobody’s Black History Month. Are y’all forreal?