America's Next Top Model Analysis

America’s Next Top Model was created by Tyra Banks in 2003. The show has been popular and successful in it’s ratings, now going on it’s 21st cycle of models (Sauers). One of the show’s values is that they believe in helping girls boost their self-esteem, showing them that they are beautiful in their own way. In one particular episode, they worked with young girls who had been bullied by matching them with a contestant mentor. Although the show seems to be making a positive impact on their viewers, the show unfortunately is stuck in the media’s effect on institutionalized racism. The media follows and enhances common racial beliefs held by it’s audience. Constantly giving the same “roles” based on one’s race. Tyra Banks, an African American
From when we are young we are told what we should look like and the media shows us who is and who isn’t defined as beautiful. The standard of beauty that we see on television is tall, slim, and having an attractive face. What we also see is that, for the most part, these “beautiful” women are white as well. A women’s interest website tallies up the race of models featured in New York’s Fashion Week each year, the current data showed that 82.7 percent of models were white (Sauers). By excluding nonwhite models, is that insinuating that blacks are not considered beautiful? That is exactly what is believed by children and young adults who see this. In the audio clip we listening to by This American Life, we were told of the awful story of how quickly the white dolls sold out of a store, while the nonwhite babies were left to slowly be picked through by desperate mothers (Baker). This is an example of how the spectrum of “beauty” is attributed to the lightness of your skin, giving the idea that beautiful and ugly are traits attached to individuals just based on the color of their
al, p. 487). Every person has a mixed racial identity, containing both ascribed and achieved authenticities. Many are stereotyped by the authenticities that were ascribed to them from birth. Although someone might not even involve themselves in their culture’s practices, they are assumed to do so because of the color of their skin. On America’s Next Top Model, their first Native American contestant came on the show in 2012. In one of their photo shoots, they put her in a tacky Pocahontas costume and made her hold a tomahawk in her hand. This is not something that she walks around in everyday, but her Native American heritage ascribed to her the identity of a Native American savage